Printer's Devil

I have mentioned that I work as Printer's Devil in the Literary House Print Shop. But what does this mean, exactly?

Traditionally, "printer's devil" is the term for an apprentice, usually the youngest, in a printing establishment. Whether the term originated because printing, when it was new, seemed magical and frightening, or if it was due to associations between black ink and the black arts, it definitely involved some of the most tedious, least pleasant tasks - bottom of the ladder, go-fer work.

Today's interns detest such mundane tasks as photocopying, or such devilish ones as photocopying with a finicky machine.

My tasks as a printer's devil, though I am directed by a kind and interested master, are similar to those of printer's apprentices and devils long ago. My tasks include: setting lines of type, organizing cases of type, fetching drawers of type, and cleaning the presses. I also help print jobs, and I get to assist in the design process of jobs.

The most devilish task for me is putting away unmarked trays of set type.

Perhaps the best way to explain this is to deviate into the realm of digital music. When you copy a mix CD onto a computer, the tracks are usually titled "Track 1," etc. You have to label each track so that you identify it later on.

For the purposes of this exercise, imagine a digital music library of 100 songs copied from 100 different mix CDs - and left unlabeled. The result would be 100 "Track 1"s. Now you want to go back and label those songs. How do you identify which is which? You play a song, and you listen carefully for certain qualities, initially the beat, then the first few notes, maybe the key, then the lyrics. You try to remember the song's title and perhaps artist. You can go online and search for lyrics to find the exact song information.

With 100 trays of unlabeled type (and we've probably got even more), you have to look at the type for certain qualities and then from that try to identify which font it is. And because it's type, and not on a computer, you have to identify the size and style, too - 12 points? bold?

My familiarity with types is growing, mostly because of this task. I spent several hours returning a 25-line poem set in 12 point Garamond, and so now I can look at a few letters and think "definitely not" or "it's worth checking it against the Garamond case."

I usually spend an embarrassing amount of time pulling out Qs, Bs, Rs, and Ps, or various other letters that may have distinguishing characteristics, and comparing them to various font cases. Does this Q have a fat tail, or a thin one? Is the B's top loop smaller than the bottom, or is it closer in size? Are there serifs? Serifs, by and by, are the little nicks that hang down from the edges of letters, like the nicks at the ends of the crossbars in a T, and the nicks that give the T a bit of a base.

However, once I do identify the type, or give in and ask the Master Printer for assistance, the process of returning the type to its proper case is soothing and rhythmic, destructive knitting. By the end of this semester, I hope to achieve this rhythm in composing type as well.

Dear Reader,

A collection of buttons lets me conjure letters from the aether, arrange them into words. With another button, those words enter cyberspace, where people all over the world can read them. People like you.

We're living through a change in the way our world is structured, a change that people like Noah Robischon of Gawker Media are calling the biggest since the one ignited by the invention of movable type.

And by "moveable type" I don't mean the blog hosting service. I mean the technology invented in Europe around 1450 C.E. by Johannes Gutenberg (and far earlier by others in China and Korea) that cost a lot of monks their Bible-copying jobs. I mean the method of setting letters cast of lead - tiny physical backwards letters that you can rearrange and drop on the floor - into a composing stick. Letters form words, form lines, lines stack, and a page of type is locked into the plate of a printing press. Ink coats the type, then a sheet of paper is "pressed" between the type and a hard flat surface. Remove the sheet and repeat with another, another, another, and you have publication of a broadside. The process' complexity multiplies if you want a book, at which point you have to muck around with folios, binding, and even more type-setting.

This technology once shifted our world on a faster track toward modernity. It made the making of books cheaper, thus more accessible to non-monk publishers. It made books themselves cheaper, so they reached a wider audience, and helped to make that audience more literate. Books could contain more topics than religion. It did more, but for now I'll let it rest here.

This technology is represented by the printing presses, type cases, and book bindery crowded into a large, airy room of the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. This is the Literary House Print Shop and I work here, as a student. My job title is "Printer's Devil" and I work under the Master Printer, doing the dirty and tedious jobs. I clean the presses, and I set and put away type for posters and poems and books.

Four times a week, I enter this room and step back into time. Let me show you this dying technology, this growing art. At the very least, you'll step away with an appreciation for your keyboard, mouse, and word processor.