Type!

This week/last week we were able to set type, which is actually a really soothing activity.  I found that once I got to working on setting out my paragraph and finding the letters, my hands started to remember where the letters were and it became muscle memory to just go grab the letter I needed.  I wasn't sure how exactly the process worked at first, because I had never really seen the type itself or the method in which it was held.  But once I saw how everything was set up, it was pretty clear to me how it worked.

What amazed me, though, was thinking back to how people used to make entire newspapers by doing this.  And some newspapers were daily editions, so the type had to be set and changed every day.  Not only that, but there were stories that needed to be written before they were set in type, and then the type needed to be checked for errors.  That makes today's methods of printing newspapers seem SO much easier.  Seems to me that there shouldn't even be mistakes in today's newspaper, considering all we have to do is click on some letters and use spell check to correct things.  And mistakes can be removes supremely easily.  It's a wonder to me that people were able to make so much using movable type.

However, I really enjoyed the activity, and would like to do it again.  For me the fun was just in finding the letters and seeing how efficient I could become, how fast I could go without making a  mistake.  In all of my efforts, I only ended up making one mistake, which was an inverted period.  That's what I get for competing with myself!