Ian Riley, Tarrangower Times

Once again, I have been trying the patience of the friendly helpers at the museum … this time I’m in the printing exhibit.

Assuming that you’ve picked up a hard copy of the TT, just have a look at what is in front of you, a newspaper Duh! Ok, where is this heading? 

Alright, not all that long ago in terms of world history, there were no newspapers. Printing of any form is about 500 years old, but the first English-language newspaper is about 300 years old.

It’s hard to imagine how even basic news would have circulated before the invention of the printing press, but the reality was that unless you were very highly placed in society, you simply had no idea, or you heard everything on the grapevine.

Weirdly, with the overwhelming amount of information we have now, I feel that we have almost come full circle! Oops, was that an opinion? I’d better be careful … (try and get hold of a copy of the movie The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer, MGM please take note).

Anyway, back to the museum.

The very complicated-looking mechanical devices in the printing shop are primarily the actual presses used to publish the Tarrangower Times in the past.

The biggest one in the centre of the display is called a platen press and it’s a direct descendant of Gutenberg’s design from the 15th century.

Herr Gutenberg was a real radical and it’s no exaggeration to say that he revolutionised society.

In fact, Time Life picked Gutenberg’s invention as the most important of the second millennium.

I’ll say that again, the most important invention of the second millennium.

That’s a big call; he was a direct influence on the Renaissance, Reformation and Humanist movements. There’s a whole article in each of those, which I’ll let you follow up yourself, if you’re interested.

So, back to our humble tin shed with some complicated- looking machines. There’s a Linotype machine at the back. I saw one of these in action once at an old printing shop and I’ve never forgotten it. It actually casts the individual letters out of molten lead and then arranges them in order to create the words, which are then placed in a tray on the Platen press. They are smeared with ink and the paper sheet is pressed onto it, resulting in a printed page. This all happens very fast and is fascinating to watch. The significance of all this is that before Gutenberg, each page had to be hand-carved out of wood before it could be pressed, this kept many monks employed, but was very slow.

So, the church lost its control of the media, the people found out what was really going on and it’s all been downhill ever since, or enlightened and reformed, depending on your point of view. All because of the humble printing press.

There are some other interesting gadgets in the exhibit too. There’s an offset press, which is even quicker than a platen press. It works by etching the image of the page onto a flexible plate, which is attached to a revolving drum, which transfers the image onto the paper. Think of your grandmother’s old mangle for squeezing the water out of the washing, if one of the rollers had ink on it, your granddad’s shirts would have an inky pattern on them. That’s basically how an offset printer works, except much faster and instead of shirts, you’ve got sheets of paper.

There are also, typewriters, duplicators, a guillotine (for paper, not revolutions) and other items once commonly found wherever printing was happening.

Most of these things are now just exhibits in a museum, but the need to spread the word and the need to know have not changed, which makes the story not really about technology, but about human nature.

This article appeared in the Tarrangower Times, 6 December 2024.