Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Book printing (way back when)

Back in in the early 80s I took a tour of the plant where our books used to be printed, and it was a little like this video (via). One big difference was that the entire process was automated: no human hands touched anything. The text went in one end and then, in a Rube Goldberg process of presses, glue pots and little robots, on the other end boxes of books with addresses on them were dropped into the correct mail bag to be sent to customers. It was rather remarkable. It's probably not much different now, although we use a different printer (the old press was of pre-WWII vintage, if I remember correctly). But then again, if you want an ebook, that author at the beginning of the video simply needs to log on to Amazon, upload the text and—sort of—there you are. Things change...

No comments: