Hand compositors struggled against the machine age

Press Register Linotype operators

Digital production and delivery of the news are not the first technological advances to wipe out jobs that had a long tradition of being part of The Mobile Register and newspapering.

From the time Register first set up shop in 1821 until the 1890s, the newspaper’s type had been set by

hand. By the late 1800s, several shifts of compositors sat at type cases 20 hours out of every 24, “and hereRegister told its readers.

Hand compositor sets type on a 'stick'
 Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand

the ceaseless click of the busy type, as it drops in the ‘stick’... makes a ceaseless scene of industry and active business life” the

Typesetting became mechanized when the Register installed six Linotypes early in July 1893. The average hand compositor set about 700 lines of type on a 10-hour shift. A Linotype operator could produce about 2,500 lines of type on an eight-hour shift.

A Linotype machine cost about $3,000 to buy or could be rented for about $500 a year. The operator set the type by means of a keyboard similar to a typewriter. The machine cast lines of type on a metal slug that it automatically justified and then assembled the individual lines of type on a galley.

Press Register Linotype room 1940s

The increased speed of composition afforded by a Linotype meant a reduction in the number of hours the compositors had to put in to set up the newspaper. Increased output also meant that fewer typesetters were needed and some were laid off.

One group of hand compositors thrown out of work joined together to publish a rival newspaper, The Daily Herald. But hand composition then, like the way of publishing and delivering a printed newspaper today, was doomed.