It was really fascinating to read about the evolution of typographic technology. I never realized how many different machines were developed over time to get to where we are today. The only two that I had familiarity with were handset type and modern day digital type.
My high school graphic design lab had a ton of manual printing machines, and my favorite was always the letterpress. Although it was incredibly tedious and difficult to set every character and space by hand, I loved the “happy accidents” that often came along with it. I always had the most trouble with setting the paper or cardstock down on the inked letters without smudging. After I began getting the hang of that, though, I missed the uniqueness of each print as a result of “messy” printing. From there, I started using the letterpress as an artistic medium, purposely smudging prints and “badly” putting in the different characters just to see what would happen.
Although I’m very familiar with the concept of handset type, I never put much thought into what came after it. I knew that we didn’t go from letterpress to Macbook, but I didn’t really know what came between. I was honestly kind of surprised as I read this chapter; I had no idea that there were so many different kinds of technology developed for typography. It was also really interesting to me how many steps were involved for many of these machines. In particular, the Monotype machine stuck out to me. The “puffs of compressed air” sound so strange; I can’t help but wonder how the inventor decided upon using that in their machine.
