The Story of the House of Cassell
In some printing rooms the unwary has a time-honoured joke played on him. He is asked if he would like his name and address, and as the finished "line" is thrust out from the machine the operator gravely and with deliberation hands it to the confiding visitor, who finds it decidedly hot and drops it with more speed than dignity, to the delight of the operator, whose hands have become inured to the temperature of the "line." But the visitor to Cassell's may go sans peur, for their men are sans reproche; at least, their overseer would have us believe that gentle fiction.
The development of science has brought in yet other devices in the march of mechanical evolution. As well as the linotype, the monotype finds a home at the Yard. This last is a double machine—its brains in one room and its body in another. There is the keyboard as in the linotype, but it operates on a series of needles which have the seemingly purposeless mission of piercing a roll of paper with idly scattered perforations each no bigger than a pinhole. As the worker is watched it is soon evident that there is a regularity and method in the stabbing process—and not a little scientific ingenuity, for when a complete roll is pin-holed to the bitter end it goes to the other room, and, as the "brain" should, "tells" the "body" what to do. If you happen to be there when the chief operator has a moment to spare, and he is in good stride, he will reel off, with a sincere desire to enlighten you, and in undeniable wealth of technicality, all about the monotype principle. Compressed air, he would say, is forced through each pin-hole, blowing molten metal into the matrix of the particular letter wanted. But of all the vicious machines—truly printers' devils—ever created, the caster, or body, of the monotype is one. It looks in a perpetual state of sustained spitefulness as, at lightning speed and with a noise that sounds like malice unrestrained, the centre of the machine darts hissingly here and there, conveying the mould to receive the modicum of molten metal necessary to make the required letter.
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