How books were made

A fascinating video has appeared on Youtube. It's called Making Books (though the Youtube clip, below, has a different title, and it describes how books are made. Or at least, how they were made when the video was filmed in 1947.

"This gentleman is a typesetter. He types the story on this machine, letter by letter," the narrator says near the beginning.

It was made by Encyclopedia Britannica Films Inc in collaboration with a gentleman named Dr Luther Evans of the Library of Congress, which fulfils roughly the same function in America as the British Library does here.

Both the pictures and the narration are fascinating records of a bygone way of producing books. As a journalist, I find it fascinating that, until 40 or so years ago, most newspapers were produced in a very similar way. Even 20 years ago, although many publications had gone through 'photosetting' and even computerised their processes, some newspapers were still working using technology that had been invented a hundred years earlier. 

These days, everything is computerised, of course. In fact, as the video below shows, describing the Espresso Book Machine, it's possible to print a book yourself quickly and cheaply on a small printing press. Similarly, machines such as the impressive Indigo printers from HP allow publishers to print personalised covers for readers at a cost that would have been unimaginable when the above video was made. 

And as a bonus video that's sort-of related, here's a great, beautifully made look at how ink is made: