Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Printing Presses, Typewriters, and Mimeographs

This blog was originally written on January 3, 2013, but may have been invisible to everyone but me since my list of blogs indicated DRAFT on this and the previous two. You have to click on PUBLISH to complete the blog.

Bridget had Pat and me start this Remembrances blog (she, actually, set it up for us) so her kids would learn things about their grandparents that even she didn't know. Here is an exchange between Amy Loveless and myself which points out some of my background and an interesting period of time beginning with the publishing of the Guttenburg Bible centuries ago which was done with movable type rather than with woodblocks with the letters carved out to form each page.

EMP is electromagnetic pulse (from a nuclear bomb  exploding in the atmosphere) which threatens to wipe out all of North American electronics. How do we get along without our cars, telecommunications, electrical power, aircraft, GPS, and thousands of other modern conveniences? Well, I guess we do what they did 100 years ago or more. Most of this correspondence was from yesterday and this morning.
  • John Fawcett

    Just a private and personal comment regarding a word you generally misspell so as not to embarrass you.
    "Loosing" bees would be like setting them loose. You are talking about "losing" bees to natural attrition or to plague or famine. I know you would annoy me on purpose when given the chance, but this misspelling brings discredit onto you, and I'm sure you are probably reluctantly thanking me.
    Now, kill the messenger!
    John
  • Amy Downing Loveless

    Wut? I dunno how somethin go's....wunder wie I mist the mistakes wen I rite wif my thums on a cell and spell check thinks it no's wut I meen... hmmm.
  • John Fawcett

    Used to be that "being all thumbs" was not an honorable thing. Is this the new smarts?
  • Amy Downing Loveless

    John... the new smarts is what ever the grammar standard is in any age... have you looked at Joseph Smith grammar... you will know the BofM is a miracle after seeing it.
    Old English has even evolved.
    I do not like spelling errors... but when your phone changes words as you write them. .they sometimes happen.
    Thanks though for making me self conscious and aware.
  • Today
  • John Fawcett

    I guess I'm glad I don't think with my phone. I am more of a perfectionist. Besides, I haven't mastered writing long messages with my thumbs, and I understand and commiserate with your troubles when your phone mis-corrects your spelling. By the way, using the desk top, I googled the correct spelling of "commiserate."
    I've got an original page from the Book of Mormon, and I know the book has been cleaned up many times over the years. Joseph Smith didn't write the book, by the way. He dictated it. I believe Martin and Oliver and other transcribers were more responsible for spelling and grammatical errors - but especially E. B. Grandin, the printer and his staff, would have been responsible for errors.
    Here is an interesting first hand report on a man involved with that process:
    http://www.boap.org/LDS/Early-Saints/JHGilbert.html
    I don't know if you remember, but I wanted to do my mission with Pat at the Grandin print shop. I believe I can still set type and actually have my print shop dating back to the 8th grade at my office in Everett. Unfortunately, I still haven't used the equipment since high school or early college. The ink rollers have deteriorated, and I would have some work to do to get it working again.
    Now a kid with an iPad can print off in minutes what I used to take hours t o print. After the EMP, though, we'll see who can get the word out. I've also got a typewriter collection and a mimeograph machine, all EMP-proof. I'll be the handbill king!
  • Amy Downing Loveless

    I meant Josephs journals

Rabbit Fun

This was originally published about a year and a half ago but I noticed on the list of posts it and the next one indicated DRAFT in red. I thought I would edit it and "publish" it which I had apparently not done. Well, it makes it today's date when you do that. So, this post, the last one, and the next one were all made over a year ago. Mark Collins (last paragraph) is no longer the fire chief in Snohomish and has enjoyed retirement for over a year.

When Brett was a baby in 1980, we bought the only new car Pat and I ever had together (except now we have a 2012 Buick which was almost new -3,500 miles- when the kids gave it to us two Decembers ago). It was a yellow 1980 Volkswagen diesel Rabbit. We drove it for almost three years, and just before it was paid off it burned up. We had had three days of zero degree F. weather and diesels are very hard to start when it is that cold. I had a very bright idea of putting a space heater under the hood to keep the engine compartment warm. I pulled it up against the house just under the kid's bedroom so it would be close to the power cord from the basement. It was maybe ten pm and there was a pounding on the front door. Two very excited teen boys were yelling that my car was on fire. "We're not lying," they tried to convince me. I believed them. I knew that I had just put high heat very near the fuel line. I was able to get to the brake and shifter, and the boys helped me push the car away from the house.

The fireman knew me when the truck arrived, and they readily put out the flames which had been mostly limited to the engine compartment. The fireman it turned out was Mark Collins who I knew from Snohomish Ward. There was no way of telling from all the fire gear and helmet he was wearing. Mark is now the fire chief - probably from all the heroism he provided me and from other such incidents, I'm sure.


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Tuesday, February 18, 2014

1940's Technology

I saved the response below to a Tim Province Facebook comment a year and a half ago and just ran across it and felt it was worthy to put in my blog. This will let my grand kids (and my kids) know what life, technology-wise, when I was growing up. There's actually a lot more I should write sometime. I should share my typewriter collection with pictures and stories. We didn't have computers and keyboards. We wrote our college papers on big bulky typewriters and made corrections with correction-tape. That was even before someone invented white-out. 

By the way, I frequently learn and re-learn that when I write a long response to someone's post, I should write it in Word or Gmail and transfer it to the post in case I lose everything when I absentmindedly leave the post to view some exciting ad on the page. Not only do I save my writing from erasure, but I can spellcheck it and I can find it again. Just try to find something you wrote in facebook more than just a few days ago.

This old guy was waiting for a bus patiently listening to an arrogant young guy who was playing with his smartphone and was bragging about all the modern conveniences his generation enjoyed. "Why you old guys didn't even have TV's, I'll bet. And your movies were black and white. I guess you didn't even have helicopters and microwaves. What has your generation been doing all this time with your old fashioned ways? Huh? What?"

The old guy, unruffled by all the young man's blustering nonsense said calmly, "We were inventing all those luxuries you can't live without!"

Thursday, July 5, 2012
This blog is in response to a Face book posting, I am sure out of frustration.
Tim Provence   Honestly, I want to delete my Face book & Twitter. I want to throw away my iPhone. Unplug! I want to go back to rotary phones & photo albums on the coffee table. Will I? No. But I'm sure life would be just honkie dory.

John's Response:
By the way, Tim, a hunky dory is a small Hungarian boat (joke). I was astonished when those black Western-Electric phones got dials on them, and we didn't have to place even our local calls through the Operator anymore. To call someone out of town, we had to ask the operator to make the long distance call for us, and then we would wait for her (almost always a her) to call back when the party was on the line. Often that would take half an hour or more. The cost of long distance in the 1940's was often several dollars. Naw, I don't think you would really intentionally leave modern technology.

Those photo albums involved waiting for the film to be developed and printed and then gluing down those little corners in the album so the pictures would stay. It would have been nearly impossible to send pictures to everyone as you do on Face book. Although the stamps were only 3 cents back then.

When the EMP (electro-magnetic-pulse) comes and destroys or makes useless all our modern gadgets, including cars and phones and industry, we may want to have some of the old technology. Iran can probably do that with their current technology and a freighter that could launch a warhead into our lower atmosphere. I just realized that I have darkroom equipment to develop and enlarge photos; printing equipment to mimeograph information to pass along as well as a 5" x 8" printing press and many fonts of type in type cases to print off notices and handbills to friends and neighbors. I also have a typewriter collection that goes back to the 19th century.

Wow, I didn't realize until now that I have the start of a museum! My kids will probably throw it all out if I don't find a place to preserve my old stuff that my grand kids would love to see.