[Coco] OT:press (was Book review)

[Glen VanDenBiggelaar]

Gene,
I too, did my time in the Darkroom, In a 12 hour shift, I did batches of 30-40 rolls of B&W film (average of over 200 /night) then printed them out on a Durst which looked like long strips of toilet paper! Cut them out and helped in "paste up" making the pages by hand for the 15 or so weekly issues of the Various Trader mags oh and rolled film!. About '97 we went all digital, eliminating the Darkroom, where I went to "paste-up" and still made the pages by hand after the digital pictures were printed out on a laser printer. The descriptions were printed on a separate sheet, and we cut and pasted each by hand with wax holding the master pages together. We then photographed the 4 pages (vertical camera) to make the film for the plate, then it went off to the (Film) stripping department to make the huge plates for the press.
It was only about 1999 that we phased out paste-up and used a program called "Imposition" on the PC's to print it right to the film. It was a lot of tedious work, but a 12 hour shift flew buy in no time flat- we had deadlines to meat for each section of the magazines.