Sunday

ETAOIN SHRDLU

And while we’re on the subject of Linotype, we should pause for a moment and tell of the Great Etaoin Shrdlu. Etaoin was a Bangladeshi typesetter known for his speed and accuracy, it is said he could set lines in hot-metal faster than any man. Here he is as a young boy in his grandfather’s printing works in Dhaka:



In his youth Eato ik’olkjjjjjjF fhkm wqlKJNU ,.,2., IUYK,LK JKK;ok

The Holmfirth Typographical Society would like to apologise for this article, which, as you will no doubt have realised by now, is complete nonsense. The perpetrator has clearly been at the turpentine again. Normal service will be resumed just as soon as we get a new lock on the typewriter case.



Right, where was he? Etaoin Shrdlu, or rather, as it was wont to appear, either ETAOIN SHRDLU or etaoin shrdlu. These were the letters as arranged on a linotype keyboard:


[click on the image to see a bigger version]

Now when you’re typing at a linotype machine, as I’m sure you’re aware, you can’t correct a mistake, you have to go through the business of casting a whole line, then eject the hot slug with the mistake in it. If a mistake is made at the beginning of a line the operator would simply run their finger down the keys on the left hand side of the keyboard and PRESTO! etaoin shrdlu would be cast along with the mistake. If the slug wasn’t ejected a proof reader could easily spot etaoin shrdlu in the galley. But, such is the nature of human error, they would sometimes miss it and ETAOIN SHRDLU get through into the paper.

Indeed this happened so much that it got appears in dictionaries. Here it is in our copy of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language [unabridged]:

Saturday

Mr Mergenthaler’s canny invention.

Here is the man largely responsible for a great deal of teenage back ache:


Ottmar Mergenthaler, born in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, in 1854. He made an impressive contribution to the story of printing, and enabled the Sunday Times to reach its unfeasibly large volume and weigh down the paper sacks of diminutive delivery people everywhere.

Here’s what he invented:


Now, I’ve picked over the ancient business of typesetting, with two cases of type [the upper case and the lower case, if you recall] and a composing stick. Well the compositors who handled these crude tools could set lines of type at a fair lick, even so, no newspapers ran to more than eight pages. Until Mr Megenthaler came along with linotype.

Basically here was a machine that set lines of type as fast as you could type a line. So papers grew in content and, to the abject disappointment of paper-boys and paper-girls everywhere, bulk.

My brother-in-law had one and I remember using it to set a line of type, or slug as it was known, of my name. The keyboard was not of a QWERTY layout,



You punched the keys and all hell broke loose. Little brass matrices,



tinkled down shoots into a line where, when a whole line was assembled wedges were driven up between the words



to justify the text, then a hefty lever shot them over to be confronted by hot lead from which the line of type was cast.

So rather than plucking plucky characters from the lower case, or indeed the upper case, Mr Mergenthaler’s machine used hot-metal. Behind this machine was a bubbling pot of molten lead. So there was a wonderful sound of crashes and clunks as lines of type-matrices were shuttered along to be cast and the tinkling of the brass tumbling down and back into the racks. Then there was the smell and warmth of hot metal, coupled with an ever-present twang of turpentine and printing ink. A heady cocktail indeed.

more information on linotype