Just yesterday, a printer yelled at me for calling it that. “It’s a line gauge!” he sputtered, but “pica pole” or “pica stick” is how I’ve known them for the past 30 years.
Of course, he may have just been a bit goofy from kerosene fumes as he was cleaning a press at the moment. A genuine cast-iron behemoth of a treadle-driven press, circa 1880.
Hey! I’ve got a Linotype and I still use it. It doesn’t seem obsolete to me.
Who am I kidding? It’s completely obsolete. But I still like it.
I misplaced my E scale years ago and occasionally still miss it. Still have my pocket pal in a drawer somewhere though.
Anybody remember the VariTyper? A WW II-gizmo, I think. You had to type the line twice to get one line of justified text.
It precursed phototypesetting. I always wanted to learn Hot Type!
Living Blues Magazine, 1970-1983, was hand-produced using the majority of itemsmentioned in the OP. There was NO Mac, NO PC. I used a Mergenthaler LinoComp (TWO sizes of type, via interchangeable lenses & lever, four fonts at a time! Whoopee! This piece of crap had a 36-**character **memory. That’s it.) Also had a godawful ComputGraphic something??? which only set one size, one typeface at a time.
Wanted to buy an AlphaComp with 5" disc memory, but never could afford it.
Hazards of the job: Destroying one’s hands hand-developing photos. Stepping on the xacto knife (I couldn’t go to my day job that day). Spilling coffee on the final pasteup.
Overwork and overtime for no pay, other than delivered pizza on occasion. Burnout.
It was all a labor of love. www.livingblues.com is the slicked up version. Now in its 38th year of continuous publication.
Camex, anyone?
You’ll never take away my kneaded erasers and X-acto knives!
…of course, I only use them for art projects.
I think it’s fascinating how much the design and production of printed material has changed so quickly. It makes me wonder whether there will be another revolutionary change within my career like so many people have already worked through.
One of my favorite classes in college was a senior class about the history of printing–we had a lecture and a lab where we fiddled with typesetting and made proofs the “old-fashioned” way. I loved it–wish I’d had time to take a similar class on graphic design and layout. (Making proofs with film is a bitch. I had one layer wrong-side up on my first try…and didn’t notice until I’d laminated the damn thing together.) It was satisfying working with my hands and getting it right, though. Now I’ve got to find that mix of intellectual and manual creativity in my hobbies. (Which is why, again, you’ll never take my kneaded erasers!)
Also, I still use a type gauge, but only when I get a project where someone has handed me a printed original to recreate. No file? Oh, of course not. Why would you keep a silly thing like the original file around?
Ruling pen. A part of all good drafting sets… which are now almost as antiquated as slide rulers.
Oh yeah, we had a CompuGraphic and a rack of lenses way back when I was in high school. About the only higher-tech linesetters in the region were at the Chicago Tribune, and even at that time, they were primarily pounding it out in hot lead on Linotypes.
When I learned graphics we used all of the stuff the OP mentioned. In post 62of this threadI commented on it, actually. I used to really be good at copy fitting back then since I had to take the copy to the typesetter myself where I worked.
Man, I was a binderer around 1986 over summer break. The print shop was on the first floor and the typesetter was on the second floor. They had some kind of German computer for laying out type. I can’t remember the name, but it had the most godawful keyboard and ergonomics I’ve ever encountered. The keys were flat, and had a travel about 1/3 as long as you’d expect, with no feedback. It would print out the block of text for paste up, photography, then offset paper photoplates.
I remember looking at this stuff as a lay person and trying to see the difference in color between two runs and not being able to do it. Some of you folks have some crazy color perception.
We had a hydraulic paper cutter and a wicked old hand operated cutter…and I remember screwing up the occasional set of business cards when the ink wasn’t quite dry, or not clamping tight enough and having the cards move during the cut…man what a crappy feeling.
I remember when we got our first color copier, how careful we had to be to make sure it was driven by one of the employees, and how there was no expectation of the colors matching the original…and how freekin’ expensive they were.
I remember playing around with the padding glue, and the hole press…
I started working there the second summer after losing ‘the love of my life’. It was kinda cathartic going to work there and just unplugging. You’d have to throw together 1500 pamphlets with inserts, you’d remember the first 20 and the last 20, and somewhere in the middle, your mind would just wander off.
Not for us artists. I draw in black and white, and scan to Photoshop for colouring. Sometimes I have to do this at work as well. It’s amazing how much getting really dark and neat lines without gaps and errors saves bother after the scan.
When I took hand lettering years ago, a Letraset catalogue was the course textbook. We had to know how to do a number of fonts by hand, and that was the best all-in-one source.
I still have my ruling pens, and I think I still know how to use them, but it’s been years.
Actually, I have a lot of the stuff listed in the OP. I did calligraphy for many years, and still have my pens, papers, boards, and so on, though of course, my inks and paints have long since dried up. Still, I like the idea that others here have mentioned: doing up something unique and then scanning it. Hmmm… 
I have some books that mention good techniques for cleaning up, scanning, and colouring black-and-white artwork, if you’re truly interested. They enabled me to do, among other things, this.
I’ve often wanted to know how to design and make a font.
I see no mention of carbon paper. My father was a printer before his retirement so we always had a variety of paper around, including carbon paper, which I used to use to trace comics onto blank sheets of paper for no better reason than that I enjoyed it.
Now it’s all NCR paper and has been for a couple of decades now I guess.
In our lettering classes, we had to learn how to do just that; and eventually, do it. Tell you what–someday, when we’re in the same city, I’ll borrow your books on cleaning etc. black-and-white art, and you’ll get a quick lesson in letter design.
Nice artwork, by the way–I’ve seen your work before and it’s always good, but this is somehow better. I always wished I could draw, but all I could ever do was make nice letters. Oh well.
Thanks. This is reminding me more and more that I need to draw again. 
In grade 11 drafting class, lettering was the thing I was worst at. Definitely a trade would be good.
