Putting Words On Paper

The Des Moines Register features one of their stereotypers from the old days:

Let me explain in a roundabout way: When we talk about the last century at 715 Locust St., the material that tends to define our old-fashioned trade is paper: giant, 1,700-pound rolls of newsprint that could stretch for as many as six miles if unwound.
But heavy and molten metal is just as much a part of the tale of publishing a newspaper at 715 Locust St.
So Holmes often must explain that his department on the third floor was responsible for converting “a flat page of type to a rounded cylinder that was placed on the presses.”
Stereotyping developed in the 18th century as a way to enable presses to churn out more pages faster.
From the Register archive: “Letters from the Linotype machines dropped down and hot lead was poured over them to create slugs — lines of type. The slugs were placed in a page form and sent on to the stereotype department to produce curved lead plates that fit over the printing press’ cylinders.”

Pretty cool.