From hot metal to websites and apps
IN a time of news on demand, when the topics of the day are sent to your phone, it seems incredible that a journeyman like me is still in newspapers.
When I began the industry was still using hot metal typesetting. This was an innovation of the 1880s where the operators of linotype machines cast a line of type, measuring the width of a newspaper column, using a mixture of molten lead, tin and antimony.
All those countless metal lines or slugs would be formed up and clamped together on a table or stone to create the plate from which a single page would be printed.
It was laborious. Scores of people were required on the p r o d u c t i o n floor of a paper like the Townsville Bulletin.
Hot metal typesetting was commonly used in newspaper production right up to the late 1970s when I was accepted for a cadetship on The Northern Miner in Charters Towers.
I was employed by then editor Harry Bligh, partly on the recommendation of his reporter Ian Macdougall who was a friend of my family.
Later I worked under a new editor, Max Tomlinson, who also edited other newspapers in the region and became general manager of North Queensland Newspapers.
When I was employed the company used Charters Towers as a testing ground to introduce the new phototypesetting and computer technologies.
I recall company chairman Ron Mclean shaking his head and telling me that much of the savings in the use of the new technologies were being chewed up in equipment costs and the need for technicians.
I later worked at the Townsville Bulletin and other newspapers including The Australian. But Townsville has been my home and it has been a privilege to continue to work at the Bulletin with so many wonderful people.
As I now publish stories, complete with photos, videos and links to other related content on our website from my computer, I can only marvel at the changes which have occurred.