Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1874 — Type in a Newspaper. [ARTICLE]

Type in a Newspaper.

The Poughkeepsie Eagle , in an article on “How Mistakes Happen in Newspapers,” figures up the number of types used in a newspaper the size of the Eagle at 600,000, the actual number of bits of metal arranged and rearranged every day in preparing a newspaper the size of the Eagle for the press. We suppose few people think of the printing trade as the most exact and particular business, but ii is. In making type, variations that might be allowed in the machinery of the finest watch would render the type useless. It is very rarely that type furnished by two separate foundries can be used together without a good deal of trouble, though they try to make it after the same standard. We read once in a while of a wonderful piece of cabinet work or mosaic work, containing ten, twenty or fifty thousand pieces, the maker of which has spent months or even years of labor in producing it, and people go to see it as a great enriosity, but the most elaborate aod carefully fitted piece of work of this kind ever made does not compare with that which the printer does every day.— The man who does the first is looked upon a 3 an artist—a marvel of skill, and if a hundred of his pieces are put in wrong side up, or turned the wrong way, it is not observed in the general effect; but if the printer, in fitting ten times as many pieces together iu the same day, puts one where another should be, or turns one the wrong way, everybody sees it, and is amazed at the “stupid carelessness of those stupid printers.”