Brazos Trails 10-13-2011

15. Oct, 2011 0 Comments

Idea for Mayborn Museum
I visited the Mayborn Museum a couple of times. Saw a nice train set. Then I saw some Egyptian Mummies Before that I saw the Dinosour bones.
But what got my attention most was what was the start of printing and communications in Texas.
They had some hand type and some typewriters and a old camera from KWTX.
My suggestion is keep this going and make it more complete It could be a year round attraction. Newspaper people and printers would want to visit it and bring their kids to show them the many different stages we went thru to produce our newspapers and printed products.
First it was hand type, then the hot metal type. Linotypes, Ludlows, etc. I had 5 Linotypes at one time. Could get Linotype operators, so we bought an attachment where any office girls could punch a perforated tape. It was then fed into a similar machine on the Linotype. Then came the justowriters. Same thing except the tape went into an typewriter with printable type. To get a photo in the paper we had to send it to an engraving place in Dallas. Then came a Fairchild machine and plastic so we could make em “in house”. Then we started getting into the photo pages. We had various ways of getting type to paste down on page and have the big camera shoot the pages.
We went through various stages of this.
To get a photo we had to shoot it on a photo paper and the develop it in the dark room. I was so excited to hear about a plain paper opies I went to Chicago to see the first ones. After that we heard about the first I mac after trying out some crude computer system.
Steve Jobs changed our lives completely and things started getting easier to produce a newspaper. A $500 computer and printer would do more than a $30,000 Linotype
So we kept phasing out the old ways of printing and kept buying new computers and lazer printers. Now we were really moving forward. The new Imacs would run circulars around a Dell computer. But eventually they became quit similar.
Now we can buy a Computer at Goodwill for $200.
Another revolution was on the film and platemakers The Computers did away with film and went straight to the printing plate. No we have a 15 foot Chemco camera we don’t what to do with.

More printing units were added so we could print full color pages easier and cheaper. which is what we do today.