Aren’t mnemonics supposed to be easy?
As a data point, I had a working Linotype in my garage (along with other typecasting equipment) for several years, up until I moved to Santa Barbara and couldn’t justify the moving cost. I knew the guys that made the Linotype film, most of the people in it, and a number of other users/preservationists.
I got tested for lead exposure every year and never showed any kind of elevated levels at all. The thinking from the film group through long experience was that anyone that practiced any kind of reasonable hygiene would have problems. Metallic lead isn’t skin-soluble. The molten lead isn’t kept hot enough to fume. If the operator washed their hands before eating, exposure was minimal.
Different story if you were regularly using a type saw to cut slugs down to length. That process generated a little dust. I’d want to wear a mask for that.
You can watch the film free on Tubitv.com
Watch Linotype: The Film - In Search of the Eighth Won - Free Movies | Tubi
This was the keyboard on my machine right after I got it. I can’t find an after pic, but it cleaned up really nicely.
I had remembered reading about it somewhere, and when I finally watched it, realized where. One of the interviewees was from Springfield, MO and I lived in the region at the time.
I’m pretty sure that movie would have been shown at the Moxie, which is still going strong a decade later.
Should be “wouldn’t”? (bolding mine)
Thanks for bringing me up to date.
Ugh. Yes. Good catch.
Whoa. Do you think that’s why the escape key is where it is? I can’t look at that keyboard without seeing ESC in the corner.
The phrase also turned up in “Bored of the Rings” as part of a mystical incantation:
“O Nasa O Ucla! O Etaoin Shrdlu! O Escrow Beryllium! Pandit J. Nehru!”
This is fascinating, and (assuming it’s correct) better information than what Cecil himself provided. He’d said, back in 1986:
Back when newspapers used to be set in “hot” (i.e., cast metal) type, “etaoin shrdlu” would occasionally wind up in print because a careless Linotype operator neglected to throw his test lines away.
So not test lines, but mistake identifiers. Thank you!
Etaoin shrdlu is in use every day as I consider my Wordle options.
Also, I’ve always thought that Etaoin Shrdlu and Lorem Ipsum would be good names for a brace of cats.
From the operators I knew it was both.
For test lines, you have to think about how the keyboard was used. Your left hand covered the leftmost two rows, so lowercase ‘etaoin shrdlu” plus the space lever. Right hand covered everything else plus the assembler elevator lever. So to quickly send a line, you’d swipe the ‘etaoin shrdlu’ keys and then send the line for casting with your right hand.
When you made a mistake, it was usually easier to finish the line with garbage and send it rather that open the gate on the assembler elevator and fiddle with the individual matrices. And as with the test line, the easiest and fastest way to do that would be to swipe the leftmost keys and press the lever on the right to send the line.
When sending a line with a mistake, the ‘etaoin’ business was important for two reasons. One is if the line made it to the composing table, any editor would know to discard it because of that specific sequence.
From an operator’s perspective though, even if the line had a mistake and was to be discarded, it still had to be full length. If the operator sent a short line through, it wouldn’t have enough characters for the spacing system to justify the type to full width and thus cover the whole face of the mold. So one of two things would happen. Best case, the vise automatic would detect the short line and stop the machine, forcing the operator to stop typing and to manually send the line trough without casting. Worst case, the vise automatic doesn’t catch the short line and pumps molten lead through the gaps with great vigor. Lots of Linotype operators had burn marks on their left arm or leg for this reason. Once the burning was done, then some poor bastard has to spend an hour picking solidified lead out of the intricate works of the first elevator and jaws. I have done this. Multiple times. It really sucks.
Also fascinating, thank you. So short lines can hurt you, and our friend Etaoin prevented that danger.
Now I get the ease of finishing out your mistake line with garbage rather than try to fix it, but what was the purpose of running an initial test line at all? If instead of the expected “etaoin shrdlu,” you got “it was the best of times, it was the blurst of times,” you knew the machine needed maintenance? Why not just put through a real slug, and check it like all the others are checked? (Amazing how these men and women could read a sheet of backwards, mirror-image type about as easily as a printed page of the newspaper.)
(Side note: did anybody else have Print Shop in high school? Obviously I’ve forgotten everything I ever learned there, but we did not have a Linotype machine, nor did we cast lead. We composed boards using pre-cast lead type pieces, printed them with a Gutenberg-style machine, and were graded on the quality which was of course always terrible. This was in the early 80s after all hope of printing as a career had already ended, an example I like to give of criminally negligent education spending, but it was fun.)
Has it, though? I thought it was just called “fine press” now. Plus, the place that does posters, wedding invitations, business cards, etc. probably has more steady demand for that than for handcrafted books. Some newspapers and books are still around, too.
The frequency table I memorised in 6th(?) grade started ETAONRISHD.
This is where I’m a few years to young to have direct experience. Restoring one of these machines in my garage is hardly the same as being a full time operator from the glory days. But I can speculate! And my guess is that it’s like how you have to click a pair of tongs a few times before heading out to the grill. It’s a satisfying motion that becomes a habit.
In many cases, these machines were never turned off and often run in shifts. If you were to sit at one at the start of your day, you really weren’t testing it out fully, you’d just be interested that the last guy didn’t change any settings or leave the machine in an unusual state. You’d just send a few mats through to see that the machine cycled without hangup and then get to the real work of the day.
Eighth grade junior high was print shop (there were other studies thrown in there – I think there was a short bit on photography and I’m pretty sure I made my scale model guillotine then), but no Linotype, we had letters in a galley (?) and spread the ink on a platen and pulled the crank. I made return-address envelopes that didn’t look too shabby but almost lost points because I used “ave”. Fortunately, just about all the other boys used it, too, so I was spared.
The beginning days of print shop was carving the linoleum block (Being heavily into Star Trek then, I cut a nifty looking ST promo with ship orbiting a planet and listing the name – Enterprise had a reversed N in it.), but sadly you can’t get much detail with one of those dealies and it looked more like one of those German block prints of Vlad the Impaler in orbit around Sigma 6.
Later was printing T-shirts; that was a blast – a bust of Fred Flintstone (with necktie) was staggeringly popular with classmates and several wanted a print-T.
Because so many people are clearly clamoring for this, here’s a picture of my machine…
The thought of that machine rotting at the bottom of a landfill just fills me with… well, it ain’t HAPPY.
Happily, it’s in Vancouver, not a landfill.
I like it as a fake swearword for use in the presence of children etc.
Indeed they would.