Fascination with Printing Press.

by Peter Y. Woo, woobiola@yahoo.com, 8/2003
Rachelle is acquiring one, to print beautiful parchments or posters perhaps with relief on each letter. Computers would have a hard time producing such artistic work.

These machines reminded me of some printer's machines on some narrow streets of SaiYingPoon in Hong Kong today. Each little drawer has 60 little boxes holding a set of font type, to be picked by hand, one by one.

This one really look like the ones I saw in ShumShuiPo streets in my childhood.

After we returned to Albuquerque, Rachelle discovered the City Library had a room displaying printing presses. We all went there:

In these pictures, photos of the print type were flipped into mirror images, so you can see what do they say:

This is a copy of the machine that printed the Gutenburg Bible, the first printed book in the Western world. The paper has to be put into the middle folding frames, masked with another mask on the rightmost frame. Paint has to be hand-rolled to the plate, facing upwards. The 2 frames are folded, then moved to under the press. Then Jeremiah would pull the 2 ft. long horizontal lever, forcing the press to press down on the frames. All this trouble just to print one sheet of paper. Do the same for a second sheet, etc.

Other presses displayed:

Direct comments or questions to: Woobiola, woobiola@aol.com