Stan Tacey recalls when he worked as a compositor at Bemrose & Sons, the Derby printers, and reflects on how times have changed since Caxton’s day – and even earlier.

WHAT a good grounding we had during our apprenticeship to be a compositor. We had what was called “day release”, spending one day per week at the Art School in Green Lane, plus two evenings. In the next classroom to us were the Post Office apprentices and we had nightly battles with peashooters and peanuts before lessons commenced.

I suppose that I had a fairly easy time during this period as our teacher, Bert Smallwood, unfortunately had a very bad stammer and had great difficulty in saying my name “Stan” when question-time arrived, so I invariably escaped.

Looking back to those days, we always thought that printing began in England with “Bill” Caxton and we often made the comment that some of the “old fogies” – the fully-fledged compositors – were probably Caxton’s apprentices.

There were about 100 compositors in those days who spent eight hours a day standing at a frame picking individual letters of lead type out of a case to put in a setting stick, before “locking up” to be printed.

We thought that we were the “bee’s knees” in those days but what progress has been made in the last 60-70 years! Now, one computer does all the work that my colleagues struggled to do.

In February 1967 came the announcement of a discovery in Korea of what is believed to be the earliest printed text yet discovered.

It was a Buddhist Scroll about 20 feet long, printed from 12 wooden blocks, the image being Chinese characters cut in relief. It has been dated as between AD704 and 751.

Then it was quoted in the New York Times that the technology of printing evolved in stages that began about 1,000 BC, when “chops” were introduced. These were seals on which one or more Chinese characters had been carved.

Movable type was later introduced in China but was not fully developed. It first came into use in Korea in the 13th century and the oldest known document printed in this way is a Korean text dating from 1397.

Although I may be biased, I think that my working life was spent in one of the most interesting of trades and, as the modern generation sit behind their computers, I hope that they will spare a thought for all the dedication that laid the foundations for these modern laptops.

By the way, I am now one of the “old fogies” we used to ridicule in our younger days!

• Compositor: Laying foundations for the laptop generation
• Laying foundations for the laptop generation

what Links Here

This article is from the Derby Evening Telegraph and is reproduced online here.

To post comments to this article, you need to register an account and Login