My father and my uncles owned a small printing company between 1970 and 1990. There were 3 linotypes at one time. I was always amazed by those complex machines. Back then, in my teens, I worked on the process of melting lead lines so that they became lead bars that feed the linotype. Imagine the safety when a teenager has to play with lead melted at 400°Celsius.
a colleague in California was the son of a man who owned three Linotype machines. The son developed a hostile reaction in proportion to the care and attention given those machines. The son personally destroyed at least two of them, with hostility.
The basis of the situation was some combination of unending penny-pinching by the Father, working the son very hard "to learn the business" including obviously cheating the son on wages and commissions, and then the powerful and accurate machines on such a scale.
Personally the machines are a marvel, and it is an ugly twist of fate that the economics of printing fell through the floor with digital type and later all of digital communications. We have lost something important in the rush to something new. And, this particular Father and Son will never be friends again.
