Words and Phrases Based on Obsolete Technology...

That headline caught my eye, and I just had to go off and read the article.  I had to laugh at myself when I did, because I knew every one of these terms – and more related ones.  For the most part, that's just a simple reflection of my age.  For instance, I'm plenty old enough to remember when telephones all had dials, and you really did have to “dial” a phone number.

But the most interesting one to me was the post about terms related to typography.  In junior high school I took a class in Graphic Arts, which included a segment on how to manually set type.  For some reason I really can't fathom, I did really well at setting type – I could very quickly pull the individual letters from the “California job case” they were stored in, place them properly in a frame, use en- and em-spaces, use shims for the line spacing, and quoins (photo at right) to tighten them all up in the frame.  I loved operating the old-fashioned letterpress, and I could stand in front of it for hours feeding each sheet of paper in manually while the press was operating at top speed (20 sheets/minute!). I took that course in the '60s, and even then this equipment was on the verge of obsolesence.  I remember Mr. Mayer, the teacher, complaining that it was difficult to replace some of the type, and he urged us to be careful with them. 

I haven't thought about typesetting for many years, and yet all the old terms and gear came right back to mind.  I'll bet you I could still set type today, after a few hours of practice.  But the equipment may only exist in museums today...