Category Archives: History

Printing and photographic history

Gliding into a saw restoration

This is Part 2 of my story about restoring an antique Hammond Glider “TrimOsaw” for the Shakespeare Press Museum at Cal Poly. To read the first part, click here. I got to the point of removing the aluminum nameplate from … Continue reading

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Restoring that ol’ saw – a Hammond Glider

Now that the Smyth machine is working, I decided to take on a new project. Last fall I offered to restore a 1960s era Hammond Glider TrimOsaw for the Shakespeare Press Museum at Cal Poly. This machine is best described … Continue reading

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Designing a monogram font

Years ago I made a reproduction-quality proof of a type font in the Shakespeare Press Museum at Cal Poly. This font is comprised a sets of three letters that can be assembled into monograms. Monograms were quite popular for business … Continue reading

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Drawing the Lining Livermore font

Deep in the recesses of the back room of the Shakespeare Press Museum at California Polytechnic State University is a cabinet. It contains about 20 drawers of hand-set metal type. We never use this type because it is difficult to … Continue reading

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Obsessing on a 1935 bookbinding machine

I get obsessed about my projects. My current obsession is the restoration of a 1935 Smyth book sewing machine in the Shakespeare Press Museum at Cal Poly (I was the faculty advisor before I retired). That machine sews the spines … Continue reading

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Reminiscences of a prepress guy

I am an old prepress guy. I owned one of the first PostScript service bureaus in the U.S. I was there at the beginning. It was painful, but overall it was a great business. We had been traditional typographers, and … Continue reading

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Repatriation of the Blognosticator

After spending five months in Germany, teaching, learning, and exploring the region, we have returned to the U.S.A. It was a wonderful experience, one that I would repeat anytime if I could. During this time I was an employee of … Continue reading

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Photographing the portrait-in-stone

In April, my students and I visited the Landesamt für Digitalisierung Breitband und Vermessung in Munich (Read that story here). In English, this is the state office of digitization, broadband and surveying. Among the things they do is to manage … Continue reading

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Papierherstellung in Deutschland

On Thursday we took a tour of the Gmund Paper factory in Gmund, about one hour south of Munich. Gmund is the maker of some of the finest papers in the world. In their shipping area I saw pallets marked … Continue reading

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Panoramic cameras and images, Part I

The first true panoramic camera was patented by William J. Johnston in 1904. Century Camera Company brought that camera to market in 1905 as the Century Cirkut Camera. The company later became a part of the Eastman Kodak Company, which … Continue reading

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