Minutes of the meeting of the 25th of April.

Present:
Mr. Jones, Chairman
Mr. Holroyd, Treasurer
Mr. Coombes, Secretary
Mr. Duckering

Mr. Jones [Chairman] leafed through the notebook and accepted the minutes of the last meeting, introduced Mr. Duckering and the meeting was brought to order,



Mr. Holroyd expressed his interest in Road Signs and proposed a special mention to Mr. Jeremy Tankard, who he believed was largely responsible for the typeface used on British number plates before they went all to shit and allowed any old crap typeface to define the letters. But this is clearly not the case as Mr. Tankard is no’but a lad, graduating, as he did, in short trousers, from the Royal College of Art in 1992 and The Great British Number Plate coming about in 1903.

Edward Johnston, now there was a designer, he designed the famous London Underground typeface.



He also clarified the London Underground logo



after its corruption from the General Omnibus logo when the Underground group bought the London General Omnibus Company in 1912.



However the main item on the agenda was Mr. Holroyd’s passion for vacuuming in general and Charles Dyson in particular. This may seem like an opportunity to go into the Life and Times of Mr. Dyson, but as he has done little to further the cause of typography, or tunneling, we shall have to pass on that one. Suffice it to say Mr. Holroyd was interested in challenging the patents on the cyclone system, which is so central to the operation of Mr. Dyson's Hoovers, with a view to patenting his own wind-up clockwork beer-mat vacuum cleaner for use in the Immerging World.

At this juncture Mr. Jones [Chairman] pointed out that the best van he ever saw was in Batley.

There was a brief pause [which in some of the cheaper Westerns would be denoted by sage brush blowing down an empty High Street] and the meeting moved swiftly on.

After a particularly smutty and unbecoming comment from Mr. Coombes, Mr. Jones [Chairman] proposed creating another website, that could be used for fun and profit.

Following a train of thought known only to himself, Mr. Holroyd pointed out that the famous climber and mountaineer Michael Schumacher, is also quite a good racing driver.



Mr. Duckering replied that they had a platen printing press in Trumpton, thereby confirming two things: 1. he's on the same wavelength as Mr. Holroyd and: 2. he's an ideal member of the Holmfirth Typographical Society. He went on to remark that said printer printed the poster:

DON’T FORGET
THE BAND CONCERT
AT 3 O’CLOCK.

But as the print rate was about one poster an hour most people probably missed the band concert. Whether Michael Schumacher uses a Dyson vacuum cleaner was not established.

As the meeting moved into its Twiglet phase the matter of Internet Chairs was brought up – after Mr. Jones [Chairman] pointed out that internet suits were available that enabled you to enjoy the murkier pleasures of the World Wide Web [see Mr. Jones’ Other Website] in a more intimate fashion. It was proposed that the Society look into developing Internet Chairs to help online customers experience their bank balances at a more fundamental level.

The Treasurer’s Report failed to materialize for the third week and certain members of the Society are beginning to doubt the commitment of the Treasurer.

Mr. Holroyd did however, proposed another excellent money-making venture for the Society, which didn’t involve either Charles Dyson or vacuum cleaners. He pointed out that some lesbian acquaintances of his were making a fine living by washing their nether garments in the local launderette, collecting the detritus from the filter in the drier and selling it as Lesbian Fanny Fluff for a 100 notes a bag on EBay. Readers wishing to purchase this kind of thing should go to Mr. Jones’ OTHER website.

Great Letter Men

Claude Garamond

Born in Paris in 1490, at the age of 20 young Claude was apprenticed to the notable Parisian Punchcutter Antoine Augereau. Here Claude trained as a Punchcutter with Simon de Colines and Geoffroy Tory and went on to eclipse his masters.



When he were no’but a young ‘un Claude would spell his surname: Garamont, not out of ignorance or youthful high-spirits but because that was the custom. Indeed most things were spelt which ever way the writer wrote them, and everything was rather confusing. But seeing as nobody could read anyway this didn’t matter very much - as often as not it was the writer who read the writings. But with the onset of printing, and Adult Literacy Programs kicking in all over Europe, well-meaning philanthropists decide the Fifteenth Century was a good time to standardize spelling. It’s taken them five hundred years and we’re still arguing some of the finer points.

[can you have ill-meaning philanthropists?]

In 1523 Claude Garamond [now, you’ll notice, standardized with a d at the end] designed and cut a typeface which he derived from Griffo’s Roman typefaces, and he called it, not entirely unreasonably: Garamond.



The first book to use Garamond typeface was Paraphrasis in Elegantiarum Libros Laurentii Vallae by Erasmus. Not one of his best sellers it has to be said – the film rights are still on option we believe.



Desiderius Erasmus, revising for a spelling test.

Smoke proof

When the Punchcutter gets close to finishing cutting his punch he makes a smoke proof to check the quality of the letter. He holds the end of the punch in a candle for a moment then presses it onto some paper. The soot deposited from the candle flame creates a fine imprint which can be checked for accuracy and detail.


the punch my great grandfather used to identify his tools


smoke proof of my great grandfather’s punch

Scumfishing

In the Dark Ages castles were both a Good Thing and a Bad Thing. It depended on your point of view. If you were in one and wanted to stop people pinching your chickens and your daughters, they were a Good Thing. If you were outside one with a view to a bit of pillage and a chicken supper, they were a Bad Thing.

Once the gates were shut, the portcullis was down and the draw-bridge was up just about the only option open to you was to lay siege to the place and hope they ran out of cheese before you did.

You’d camp round the castle for months or sometimes years and build huge siege engines that could hurl rocks into the walls. These had limited effect, it has to be said – some of the castles had walls sixteen feet thick.


the trebuchet

All this is well and good you say, but what’s it got to do with tunneling [or typography for the matter of that]? Well when they found they couldn’t get through the walls, and struggled getting over them, what does any self-respecting Siege Army do? Call in the Tunnel Men obviously.

The Tunnel Men or Sappers as they called themselves, because they also dug trenches, or saps, which zigzagged up to castle walls, would dig under the foundations and lay fires there to de-stabilise everything. By the 15th Century, when Black Powder had filtered through from the East, they were putting gunpowder in the tunnels and blowing up the walls from below.

On the Scottish Borders, where the living was hard, and the ground was harder, they couldn’t roll siege engines across the rocky terrain and they couldn’t use tunnels to get at the foundations so they would pile wood and damp straw up against the lower walls and round the gates and doorways of a tower and set fire to it to smoke the occupiers out – this was called Scumfishing.

Punchcutting and counterpunching

To print a letter you need to make a piece of lead type, to make a piece of lead type you need a matrix, to make a matrix you need a letter-punch and to make a letter-punch you need a Punchcutter.



A Punchcutter cuts the punches that punch the letters into soft metal to act as a mold to cast a piece of lead type. The Punchcutter therefore is a Very Skilled Person, using files and saws he creates the letter punch from a bar of hard metal using the drawings of the typeface designer. In the olden days, the designer was wont to cut his own punches - Francesco Griffo did.



To cut the fine detail in the letters, and the insides of an e or a p for instance, the Punchcutter has a counterpunch which punches shapes out of the punch. [Who makes the counterpunch we have yet to ascertain, but - we think it might be a guy called Eddie.]


some letter punches

As a result those little bits in the middle of the letters a b d e o p q and A B D O P Q and R are called counters.

Thanks to Paul Shaw for the photographs of Christian Paput, a contemporary Punchcutter, and his Cabinet des Poinçons in Paris.

Next Post: Scumfishing

Great Punchcutters of the 15th Century

Francesco Griffo



Born in Bologna in 1450, Francesco da Bologna, as he was also known, cut letters for one Aldus Manutius who founded the Aldine Press in 1495.

Griffo started off as a goldsmith, but went on to developed the first Roman typeface after studying Roman carved lettering. He didn’t just design the typefaces, he was a punchcutter which meant he cut the metal dies from which the matrices were made from which, in turn, the lead type was cast. Cleary he was a Main Man. He’s also credited with designing the first italic typeface.

His most famous typeface is probably Bembo:



This was cut specifically for an edition of De Aetna written by Cardinal Pietro Bembo, published in about 1496.


Cardinal Pietro Bembo by Titian

Now you know you’ve made it as a writer when they design a whole typeface for your book. [And I guess you know you've made it as a Cardinal when Titian paints your portrait.]

Francesco Griffo died in 1518. It’s thought that he was hanged for killing his brother-in-law, though some say it was his son-in-law that he set about with an iron bar during a quarrel. I don’t know, these typographers do live life on the edge.

The Little Gentlemen in Black Velvet

When it comes to tunnelling your man the mole knows a thing or two.



The Standedge Tunnel, taking the Huddersfield Narrow Canal under the pennines, might be the highest [197 meters above sea level], the deepest [194 meters underground] and the longest [just over 3 miles] tunnel in Britain, and hewn out of solid rock by one man with a spoon. But it took 17 years to dig [understandable under the circumstances I guess].

These little fellas with the big paws can shift six kilos of soil every 20 minutes. We on the other hand would be required to shift 4 tons of soil in the same time to match them, so we cheat and use one of these:



The P&H 4100XPB can shift 115 tons in one scoop and can fill one of these:



in three goes.

Your mole can dig 18 feet in an hour, so it would take a mole 75 days to dig through the Pennines, though at about 3 inches wide you’d struggle to get even a narrow boat through their tunnel.

But perhaps the greatest claim to fame of the mole was it’s role in the Jacobite Risings. The Jacobites rose and rebelled, when James II of England & VII of Scotland was deposed by William III, because they wanted someone called Stuart on the throne. One of the main problems was that William was an Orange and therefore Protestant, whereas James was a Stuart and therefore Catholic.



Most of the Jacobite Risings were called the Jacobite Rebellions, which could lead to confusion if you’re not careful, and were mainly comprised of the Battle of the Boyne, and gave rise to an Old Pretender, James Stuart, a Young Pretender called Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the Battle of Culloden, which in turn led to an outbreak of huge oil paintings of windswept Scottish valleys by eminent Victorian painters.

In 1702, in the afternoon, William III was out horse riding when his horse planted its hoof in a mole hill. The horse fell throwing William to the ground and breaking his collar bone. Complications set in and he died of pneumonia 16 days later.

A popular Jacobite toast was: “to the little gentlemen in black velvet”.

Let us not forget: they are primarily Tunnel Men.

The Holmfirth Typographical Society would like to point out that it has no idea about the religious leanings of James Stewart

Der Schriftsetzer

Katrin has sent us a link to a German typesetting article where, as far as I can work out, the man actually makes the letters in the first place. Truly hard-core typography.

Here’s a translation, which I have to say does more to illustrate the short comings of mechanical translation engines [in this case: Babel Fish - eat your heart out Douglas] than explain what’s going on:



Oskar Bernhard is one of the last Schriftsetzer in Germany. He works in Noerdlingen in one approximately 400 years old house directly on the medieval stadtmauer. Still today it has orders, which reach from the birth announcement over the bill of fare up to the small book. In contrast to the standardized large-scale enterprise it makes its customers of suggestions, which character font, which size or color could have the writing.


Measure the height of pictures

Out in lead the schriftsetzer builds up poured letter, which the writing caster manufactures, a text, which to him an author submitted. The letters, which it uses, have an exactly standardized height. That is later important for a constant pressure in the printing machine. Also pictures or decoration components of the side must keep this height. Sometimes it concerns hundredth millimeters. So that the height is correct, the non--text components are measured individually, before they are built into the side and supported if necessary.


A metal lead mixture is poured into a form.


If the form is removed, the letter remains.


The letters must have accurately the same height.

The schriftsetzer determines the size of the writing in the unit "point". The expression "point details work" comes along. From a setting box, which weighs approximately 20 Kilos, the typesetter takes the lead letters and puts her one behind the other into a "winkelhaken" - mirror-operates and standing on the head. At the end of a line the line is fixed: In addition the schriftsetzer blind material takes, Spatien so mentioned. With them it varies the gap between the words so for a long time, until an even line developed. The line must hold with the pressure of the Spatien at the end automatically in the winkelhaken. Thus line follows after line, until a paragraph is finished. From even bringing in of the Spatien the impression of a text block results, to the grouped style.

Katrin lives in Bavaria, near to where this printing business all began.

Of Popes and Printing Presses

Meeting on the 5th April, Farmers Arms, Holmfirth
Present: Mr. Jones [Chairman], Mr. Coombes [Hon. Sec.]
Absent: Mr. Holroyd [Treasurer}
Apologies were there none

It was proposed that the society buy a two and a half ton Heidelberg platen printing press as advertised recently on eBay.



The Hon. Sec. pointed out that the Chairman didn’t have space for it in his kitchen and even if he did it would be through the floor and in his garage before he could press GO [and he didn’t have space for it in his garage either]. And anyway the Treasurer hadn’t turned up so we couldn’t sanction spending 2500 notes of the Society’s non-existent funds.

Matters arising:

Platen printing presses.

“Presses that operate plane to plane are called platen presses. A vertical clamping contrivance clamps the bed, which carries the form into which the composed type is locked, and the platen, which carries the sheet of paper while it is being printed. When this clamping contrivance is open, the typeform is inked by a series of rollers that descend and then reascend, and the printed sheet is removed and a new sheet placed in position on the platen”

Encyclopedia Britannica

Heidelberg.

A town in South West Germany, in the Baden-Württemberg district, with a population of approximately 140,000 souls. Built on the banks of the Neckar river Heidelberg is dominated by the magnificent 16th Century Heidelberger Schloss.



It’s also famous for having the Oldest University in Germany, founded in 1386 because the Italians and French fell out over who should be Pope.

For seventy three years the Popes resided in Avignon, in a posh place called Le Palais des Papes, which was ok because they were all French at the time. Then in 1377, for reasons known only to himself though many suspect it was Catherine of Siena who influenced him, the seventh Pope, Pope Gregory XI, decided to up sticks and move back to Rome where, a year later, just as he was contemplating perhaps returning to Avignon, he, somewhat inconveniently as it turned out, died.



The Italians considered it a home fixture and thinking it was all over in France had sent out the change of address cards. But the French didn’t want to throw in the Papal Towel so easily, what with having a Grande Palais des Papes and all. So the Italians elected a Pope – and so did the French. Well you can imagine the trouble. Europe was in turmoil and the turmoil was called the Papal Schism.

Not to be confused with the Great Schism, when in 1054 the two main religious leaders of the time, Pope Leo IX and Patriarch Michael I, managed to excommunicate each other [a neat trick if you can do it] over who had the best conkers and whether the Filioque Clause should be included in the Nicene Creed. But that’s a whole other Can of Worms, best saved for another day.

So anyway, back in 1378, the Italians had Pope Urban VI in Rome and the French had Pope Clement VII in Avignon. This was clearly a Bad Thing and led to a string of Popes and Anti-Popes, and everyone had to decide whose side they were on.

Germany sided with the Italians which upset the French who responded by kicking all the German students out of Paris. So the Germans rang the Pope and he sent them a Bull and they founded the University of Heidelberg, where a mere 429 years later a young chap called Karl Friedrich Drais enrolled as a student and went on to invent the bicycle as we know it today.

There are no known connections between the University, Popes, bicycles and the platen printing press, but by the Strange Nature of Coincidence there was a small schism in the printing press manufacturing industry in 1873. In Frankenthal, southwest Germany, not far from Heidelberg, Andreas Hamm and Andreas Albert fell out over the development of high-speed cylinder letterpress machines, as you do. Hamm got the edge and Albert was sucked down into ignominy and probable penury. After Andreas Hamm died his company was sold [by his son – children eh?] and the new company moved to nearby Heidelberg and called itself, not unreasonably considering it made high-speed presses, Schnellpressenfabrik AG Heidelberg.



The Heidelberg Lacrosse team, some of whom could work for Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, though I doubt it as the main factories are now in Amstetten and Wiesloch. But, well, that’s the way things are in the Cut and Thrust world of the Typography Industry.

The Complete History of Typography part 3

Inky fingers or why fish and chips are no longer wrapped in newspaper.

One of the earliest expressions of Green Politics, way before Joseph Beuys started the ball rolling in fact, was the re-cycling of newspaper in the fish and chip shops of the North of England. It’s a classic image, a battered fish and portion of chips wrapped in newspaper. But they don’t wrap the fish and chips in newspaper anymore, which is sad.

There were two fish shops in the village where I lived as a boy. There were many more in the village where I lived as a dog, but that's another story. There were two chips shops in the village: Hollowgate and the Church Yard. Both were run by fierce, overly large, dominant women, both had a skinny man in the background dipping the slippy silver fish fillets into the sticky yellow batter and lowering them dangerously fizzing into the hot fat.

You had to get it right, your order. Comers-in [as those not indigenous to the village were called] had a hard time. If an unsuspecting young couple went in and asked, in an accent not of the area, for two fish and chips, the nylon clad gorgon behind the hot counter would not blink as she placed two fish on the paper and one portion of chips.

Fish and chips twice wasn’t much better, you can guess what you’d get. To get a hot meal for two you had to ask for: one of each twice. This was ok once you knew, the variations were easy: one of each, one of each and a fish. Once you’d mastered the language the trip to the fish and chip shop became less terrifying.

And why do they no longer wrap your fish and chips in newspaper? I hear you cry. Poison, that’s why. It was discovered that this environmentally sound idea was slowly poisoning the population. Printing ink can, under certain circumstances, release tiny amounts of cyanide. Heaven forefend!

Certain pigments used in printing inks have chemical structures that utilize cyanide complexes. They are iron pigments based on ferro and ferric cyanides, such as potash blue or soda blue pigments. Under conditions that decompose the pigment, cyanide can be liberated. Some tests conducted to determine free cyanide in water decompose these pigments in the test protocol and find “free cyanide.” Pigments that may test positive for “free cyanide” under some test protocols include CI Pigment Blue 27, CI Pigment Red 169, as well as PMTA green and violet pigments.

A Brief History of Road Rolling

Time was, horses or perhaps, more romantically, oxen would drag huge iron rollers about to flattern rough roads but their hooves would mess things up and road rolling didn’t come into its own until steam power arrived on the scene.

It all started around AD62, in Alexandria, Hero the Mathematician was making a cup of tea when he noticed the steam spitting out the spout of his kettle. He thought this would make a great Spinning Thing if he put two spouts on the kettle in opposite directions. And it was. And, Oh! how the Alexandrian’s laughed. “Have you seen Hero’s Spinning Kettle?” they’d ask each other, chuckling in the streets of Alexandria. And he might have been remembered merely as a cheap showman had he not gone on to write a Treatise on Pneumatics and generally Sorted Out a few things. Even so, I guess someone will have commented: “Is that it, then? Doesn’t it do anything?” And it didn’t, it just spun.

It carried on doing nothing for nearly 1600 years until 1678 when Thomas Savery converted Dennis Papin’s Digester – a crude pressure cooker – into a crude steam engine, pump water from a mine. [see how important tunelling is in the scheme of things?]



Well there was no stopping things now, next up Thomas Newcomen, a blacksmith, built a more complicated engine which was far more efficient. Then came the Famous Inventor of the Steam Engine James Watt who improved on these other engines with all sorts of fiddley bits and technical stuff and his engine became Top Engine and was the main reason for the Industrial Revolution.

Back on the roads, another engine was gripping the nation – the Internal Combustion Engine and with the vastly increased speeds of transport the demands for better and smoother roads grew ever stronger. At first they used steam traction engines to pull the iron rollers, then found that the engine was doing a better job of flattening the road than the roller was. So Thomas Aveling decided to fix a giant roller instead of front wheels.



a 1937 Aveling Barford 6 nhp 10 ton Steam Roller, built to an earlier design by Ruston & Hornsby [see: a brief history of holes in the ground].

Aveling-Barford was formed in 1933, when Aveling & Porter and Barford & Perkins amalgamated. The question we need to ask, I feel, is why the new company wasn’t called Aveling-Perkins, or Porter-Barford, or indeed Porter-Perkins? Maybe Mr Perkins had been caught pinching biscuits from the biscuit tin, or maybe Mr Porter had been playing away fixtures with Mrs Aveling. Who knows, Aveling-Barford was the name on the Dinky Toy box and that’s good enough for me.

This Dynamite business

It worked for them under the Mountains of Mourne, it still works today – only the drilling technology has improved.


slot drilling in the an iron ore mine in Malmberget, Sweden, using Wassara slot drilling technology for Blind Drop Raises.

“For inverted blind slot raise drilling and ventilation shaft drilling the Swedish mining company LKAB uses slot drilling technology in its iron ore mine at Malmberget. The first step is to drill the pilot hole. Then the pilot tube is inserted into the pilot hole. The second hole is then drilled parallel to the pilot hole thanks to the pilot tube. The procedure is then repeated, that is when the third hole is to be drilled the pilot tube is inserted in the second hole and so on. When the required number of slot holes have been drilled the blast holes are drilled. The advantage is that the blast holes can be optimized regarding direction and numbers with respect to the slot. Blasting is then performed towards the slot.”

Courtesy of Wassar AB, Stockholm – for all your drilling needs

Tunneling Tales

Before we go deeper into the specialised world of typesetting, I must tell a True Tale of Tunnelling Men.

In 1947, in Ireland, 150 men began digging a tunnel, through solid granite, two and a half miles long, 800 metres under the Mountains of Mourne. Starting from each side of the mountain, with only candles and string, four years later the two teams met in the middle only inches out of line.



Oh, I forgot to mention they also had explosives, and this was the trick.

Now tunnelling with explosives is not a simple process, it’s not just a case of stuffing a stick dynamite in a crack, lighting the fuse and running away, as many a Western or James Bond movie would have us believe. Oh no.

First you’ve got to drill holes. Again this ain’t about setting the Black and Decker to hammer and getting it in the ear from your mum for all the dust on the carpet. These holes are nine feet deep. So you drill a series of holes in concentric circles, pack the explosives down the end of the holes and wad the whole thing up tight.

The charges are detonated in sequence a few seconds apart. The first explosion is the Burn Cut, a ring of holes in the centre which smashes up the rock and creates a space for the rest of the rock to fall into. Then the Shoulder Holes and Side Holes are detonated to ease the rock away and finally the Floor Lifters to, well, lift the rock off the floor.

Warning; DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME

True Type

In answer to the question in the previous post "Spot the faux pas" - If it were truly letterpress type, then it would look like this:



They didn't make letters the other way round, or if they did they didn't show me, or if they showed me I've forgotten, one way or the other letters for printing tend to be reversed...