The Linotype as Invention and System WKR4 PDF

Preview

Summary

essay on material...

Description

Betances 1 Carlos Betances Lloyd Ackert HIST 285 8 February 2019 The Linotype as Invention and System:

Three Keywords: 1. Newspaper 2. Mass production 3. Linotype

Newspapers in the long run, almost without exception, succeed or fail according to their ability to serve the public interests of their community. Between 1895 and 1920 technological, economic, demographic, and cultural changes transformed American rural life. “Newspaper Mass Production” by Ryan Howard and “Good Farming-Clear Thinking-Right Living": Midwestern Farm Newspapers, Social Reform, and Rural Readers in the Early Twentieth Century” by John J Fry, convey many different viewpoints but also condone some similarities to the ideals of technology and systems. “Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of, 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact” by Andrew R. A. Conway, Christopher Jarrold, and Vaclav Smil explained how the linotype and the age of the printed word impacted society in many ways. There were many dangers of mass production explained by Howard between the 1895 and 1920. “If a newspaper is poorly written, of bad typography, inadequate in its news coverage or impotent in its editorial efforts, the public can quickly detect the weakness” (Howard.422). In "Good Farming-Clear Thinking-Right Living" the article argues that

Betances 2 historians should not take agricultural newspapers as is and assume that they expressed the farmer's point of view. Production of daily newspaper in that era became a complex job to fit the community needs therefore deemed dangerous. “Certainly, the journalist who fails to reckon with the heightening level of mass education and even mass intelligence in this country, is due for a rude awakening.” (Howard.423). Newspaper in North America have always abided by the law of survival of the fittest or as some call it, Social Darwinism. Farm newspapers were popular with country people mainly because of their information about farming methods. “Between 1895 and 1920 the number of papers nationwide increased from 303 to 405, and their circulation increased from 5.5 to over 17 million. Farm newspaper publishers reacted to the increasing subscription rate with aggressive marketing techniques.” (Fry.37). This was dangerous because as these newspapers began to mass produce the farm publishers who lived in cities or large urban areas were removed from the daily work of agricultural life. “As a result, on many issues, farm newspapers were not merely organs expressing the preference of country people for country life reforms but were forums where these reforms were debated.” (Fry.15). these two issues directly correlated to the dangers of newspaper mass production and the farm publishers who merely represented their own ideals. There are many ways this reflects the history of Technology and Systems. Conway does a great job at reflecting how typewriting and the linotype affected the era of mass production. “The machine, whose invention has been called the second greatest event in the history of printing, and which admiring Edison saw as the eighth wonder of the world, was used to set the news of defeats and victories of the two world wars, of economic expansion and crisis of 1920s and 1930s, and of the first decade of the Cold War.” (Conway.207). “By 1895 there

Betances 3 were already more than 1,000 Mergenthaler linotypes around the world, and about 6,000 copies of Model 1 were made before more reliable and more complex designs took over.” (Conway.206). a different trend started to emerge around the 1950’s where photo-typesetting and photo printing began to take its place. The last of the linotype machines were produced around 1971. “As linotypes began disappearing, the typesetters, while appreciative of the abilities of new computerized equipment, missed the sound, smell, and feel of those complex, clanging, heat-radiating machines.” (Conway.207). These machines created the era that was known today as newspaper mass production and caused many controversies but expanded society into the near future. Without these machines’ communication wouldn’t advance the way it did in that era.

Works Cited Howard, Roy W. “Newspaper Mass Production.” The North American Review, vol. 225, no. 842, 1928, pp. 420–424. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25110468.

Betances 4 Fry, John J. ""Good Farming-Clear Thinking-Right Living": Midwestern Farm Newspapers, Social Reform, and Rural Readers in the Early Twentieth Century." Agricultural History, vol. 78, no. 1, 2004, pp. 34-34+.

Conway ,Andr ewR.A. ,etal .Cr eat i ngt heTwent i et hCent ur y:Techni calI nnovat i onsof ,18671914andThei rLast i ngI mpact ,Oxf or dUni ver si t yPr essUSA-OSO,2005....