old school

[Beth Agnew]

<raises her hand> As a student I worked on the college paper doing 
exactly that - typesetting with the Justowriter and then pasting up the 
camera ready copy by waxing the back of each story and placing it on the 
layout sheets. For copyfitting we used an EXacto Knife to cut the copy. 
We had rolls of rules (lines) in various sizes and laying them straight 
was always a bit of a challenge. Cutting and pasting -- pshah, the young 
whippersnappers today don't know how good they have it!

Later as a communicator in the military I used a typing reperforator to 
create paper tape in Murray code. In those early days as a writer I also 
worked on low-budget newsletters where we did typewriter justification 
-- manually adding spaces between words and sentences to justify the 
text. That meant typing it at least twice, or more if you counted wrong. 
I also used to buy rolls of 3-ply teletype paper to run through my 
typewriter (a Remington manual, if you please). 1 original and 2 copies 
from one pass through the machine, and since it was a roll I never had 
to stop to insert a new sheet of paper. The paper was colored green, 
yellow and pink, but it was perfect for drafts. Again with the cutting 
and pasting to get the final story, at which point I typed up a pristine 
version on white paper for submission.

Which I then had to deliver by hand, walking uphill in a snowstorm.
--Beth

Jessica Weissman wrote:
> Did anybody use a Friden Justowriter, which let you type copy on one
> machine which created a paper tape with punched holes.  You then fed
> that tape through a reader attached to another machine, which in turn
> produced justified camera-ready copy.
>
> Setting copy on one of these was my first job out of high school.
>
> -  Jessica