Robert Smail's Printshop - II

One of the first things we learned about was typesetting by hand. Here, you see what it looks like to see the type put in the form.

Below is the last print job set by the third generation owner, Cowan Smail before the shop closed in 1986.

And here is the magic of typesetting...the type cases. These are wooden boxes filled with sorted type for individual letters. The typesetter would stand in front of the box and select the type to put in the tray to spell out the words.

In the portion nearest to you the letters were arranged with the most used letters in the center where they were easiest to reach. The left and right extremes had all the j's, z's and such that were not often needed. this helped the trypsetter work quickly. Speed was important.

The capital letter were placed in the part farther way where you had to reach to get them. Since they were much less frequently used, this was OK. You'll notice that there are two separate boxes, one for the small letters and one for the capitals. The boxes are called 'cases' so these got the names of lowercase and uppercase letters from the printers who sorted them this way for their ease. Cool, eh?