Back in 1981 I was working as a typesetter in a shop that set copy for several magazines and newspapers in the Boston area. As it happened, typesetting was in the process of going digital. Although the editing machines had a computer screen, the typesetters were essentially massive typewriters that allowed the typesetter to key in 12 to 13 characters before the punched tape was pushed out of the left side of the machine. Once punched, there was no going back; it would have to be corrected by an editor. But with the new technology, typesetters as well as editors would have the use of a computer screen and the ability to correct on file. The shop’s star typesetters were very put off by the innovation, fearing it would take away the art of thinking out an entire framework for setting tables and ads and other types of non-narrative text. Though I was a novice, I nodded at their concern. I relocated to the South not long after that but returned the following summer for a visit. By then the star typesetters were thrilled with the new machines, having quickly realized how much more they could do on them and, especially, how they expanded the craft instead of destroying it.
Owen Young was a farm boy who grew up to become the Chairman of General Electric. Young’s biographer Ida Tarbell offers this description of what life had been like for a farm wife on “wash day” back then:
"[Young] drew from his memory a vivid picture of its miseries: the milk coming into the house from the barn; the skimming to be done; the pans and buckets to be washed; the churn waiting attention; the wash boiler on the stove while the wash tub and its back-breaking device, the washboard, stood by; the kitchen full of steam; hungry men at the door anxious to get at the day’s work and one pale, tired, and discouraged woman in the midst of this confusion."
Back in 1981 I was working as a typesetter in a shop that set copy for several magazines and newspapers in the Boston area. As it happened, typesetting was in the process of going digital. Although the editing machines had a computer screen, the typesetters were essentially massive typewriters that allowed the typesetter to key in 12 to 13 characters before the punched tape was pushed out of the left side of the machine. Once punched, there was no going back; it would have to be corrected by an editor. But with the new technology, typesetters as well as editors would have the use of a computer screen and the ability to correct on file. The shop’s star typesetters were very put off by the innovation, fearing it would take away the art of thinking out an entire framework for setting tables and ads and other types of non-narrative text. Though I was a novice, I nodded at their concern. I relocated to the South not long after that but returned the following summer for a visit. By then the star typesetters were thrilled with the new machines, having quickly realized how much more they could do on them and, especially, how they expanded the craft instead of destroying it.
Owen Young was a farm boy who grew up to become the Chairman of General Electric. Young’s biographer Ida Tarbell offers this description of what life had been like for a farm wife on “wash day” back then:
"[Young] drew from his memory a vivid picture of its miseries: the milk coming into the house from the barn; the skimming to be done; the pans and buckets to be washed; the churn waiting attention; the wash boiler on the stove while the wash tub and its back-breaking device, the washboard, stood by; the kitchen full of steam; hungry men at the door anxious to get at the day’s work and one pale, tired, and discouraged woman in the midst of this confusion."
See my post Slavery and Steam, at Quillette:
https://quillette.com/2022/07/21/steam-electricity-slavery-and-societal-sustainability/