Ear on Chicago; Print Me 20 Million: R.R. Donnelly & Sons Co

That was the sound of a printing press at the RR Donnelly & Sons Company, a 23rd Elake Shore Drive in Chicago. Today we are doing the story of printing, and we're taking a tour of this giant of the printing industry, commonly known as the Lakeside Press. Our guide for this tour is Mr. Hugh Cifarth. We have come now to the operating department, and we're going to talk to the manager, Mr. E .A. Olbrick. Well, Mr. Olbrick, the obvious question is, what is the operating department? Well, now that's a rather high sounding name, and it does not mean exactly what it says. In this case, the name operating department means the job managing of the jobs that are in work in the plant. We manage them for the customers to see that they receive that which they paid for. Could you tell us a little bit about it, give us a few more details? Well, the work, of course,

has to be sold by a salesman. And immediately thereafter, we are given the papers that go with the work, the contact with the customer, and we take over from that point, contact all the people at the customer's office, write out our instructions for the factory, and see to it that the work is produced as specified. We mentioned earlier in the program, Mr. Olbrick, that R .R. Donnelly is, if not the largest, certainly one of the largest printers in the world, could you tell us a few of the customers you have, some of the jobs that you do? Well, we are quite large in the magazine field, but there are other customers of whom we are equally proud, and I'd like to mention a few of those. Let's just say the word telephone directories, and that covers a great field, and then let us also say mail order catalogs, which we are, most likely, the prime supplier. And we also get into the field of encyclopedias.

Again, I won't say that we are the largest in the country, but we certainly are one of the largest. I noticed that Don Harris, the head of the planning department, was looking over some sheets. This sheet is a forecast of work for the next six months in 1956. Buy jobs, buy weeks, so that we know at any particular moment, just where we are at as far as people, machines, and production are concerned. Well, thank you very much, Don Harris. And you too, Mr. Olbrick, for talking to us about the operating department. Now we'll move on, Hugh. Where do we go next? Well, from here, let's go down to the composing room. The composing room starts with the layout, and in charge of the superintendent, Franz Prell. We are now in his office, and we're going to talk to Mr. Prell about his department. First of all, Franz, tell us what layout is.

Layout is the function of the composing room, which receives the basic design, layouts, the copy, the illustrated material. Taking those materials, the layout man then will draw up a set of instructions, a kind of blueprint. You might call it, which all of the operations following in the composing room must follow. And who does this work? The layout man himself does it. Each layout man is assigned to certain jobs, and he handles these jobs under repetitive nature. For example, here, as I understand, you have some advertising layout over here? Yes, this lady handles all of the advertising materials for a national publication. Let me talk to her just a moment about the particular ads. What is your work here? What exactly do you do? Well, I handle all ads that commend on this Duns Review magazine, and help the layout man in the way I can. Are these plates

some of the ads? Yes, these are all ads for Duns Review. Two column, half -colors and fill -play ads. Who sends those to you? Well, these come from all the various agencies. The advertising agency? Yes, and then we send proofs to the customer in New York. You have a Scotch accent? I'm Scotch. How long have you been over here? Two years. Do you like your work here? I'll love it. Well, how do you arrange all these pictures and all the written materials so that they'll fit into the book properly? That's probably a general question, but I think we ought to ask before we go to the composing room. Yes, it's a very good question, and I think it forms a basis for describing generally the activities of a layout man. The layout man will receive cut copy, which generally speaking is just photographs. He will scale that to a particular size, which will fit in the page of his book.

Then he will send that copy to the art department where it will be made into an engraving. As far as the type is concerned, he knows that type, depending upon the size he uses, will take up so much space on each page. And he spaces out his type by the instructions that he gives in such a way that the type will fit to the page. If the type fits in with a cut, then he determines the width and depth of the cut and then makes allowance for that in his type section. Now, friends, with that general fund of knowledge, which we've acquired here, I suppose we're prepared to go into what is known as the monotype keyboard now? Yes, that's a very interesting operation when I'm sure you will enjoy watching. Friends, we've come out of the monotype keyboard. You better tell us a little bit about this before we

get into it. I believe to get a better story about this part of the operation, I would call on Charlie Singer. Now, after I suppose the layout has been made, it comes to this particular machine. That's correct. Now, the operator here is punching out something and there's preparations being made on a piece of paper. Would you explain that to us? Yeah, why is sure? What the operator does here with this giant typewriter, which has about six times as many keys as a standard typewriter, by depressing the keys, he causes holes or perforations to be put in a ribbon of paper. And that, at a later stage, becomes the brain of the machine that will cast a type from molten lead. We will see that directly after we leave this room. This is the initial operation, the keyboard operation. Now, this particular job that he's doing, I was talking to friends a little while ago. It's a very technical book, put out by a metals firm or metals industry. That's correct. And this particular table he's working on, and then I saw him make some little red marks on his

scale. What is that for? Before he can set tabular matter, he must first determine the amount of space to be properly apportioned to each column. That is known as the tabular preparation. And after he finds out exactly what he can do, then he can go through and set the table very fast. Well, now this perforated paper, once it's tapped out on this machine, where does it go through there, Charlie? After he'd leave this machine, it goes to the next room in the casting room. We can walk right through the door here, I guess, can't we? Right next to the proposing room, where they're setting type or putting the perforations on the paper and the monotype machines, we've just come through the door and you can obviously hear the louder noise in this particular room. This is what Charlie told you a moment ago, was the casting room. Charlie, I'm going to have to speak quite loudly, and I'll put this microphone right up in front of your mouth now. So tell us what these machines are doing. Well, these machines are burning out type. They are working from

the perforated tape that you saw perforated in the keyboard room, just adjacent here. And every time you hear these click and click and click, a piece of type is being cast. The letters are cast, one after the other, the form words, and full lines of type, one line after the other, so that we can have prepared type ready for printing. Charlie, is this faster than line of type? It is faster than line of type in many respects, but it is slower in other respects. The actual keyboarding of the monotype type is faster, but it is, we are slowed down because we have a double operation. The man who does the keyboarding does not cast a type. He takes another man to cast a type, and that's what slows down the monotype operation as compared to the line of type. Now we're going to go talk about line of type, Charlie, so suppose we go into that room. And so here we are in the line of type department, Charlie.

First of all, tell us what you're doing here. Well, on these machines, we set mostly telephone work. We set the Chicago alphabetical and classified directories and directories for many cities all over the land. Well, now, Charlie, since the line of type machine is one of those pieces of equipment that most people would hear about in a printing operation such as RR Donnelly, why don't we just get into this machine and you tell us about it inch by inch, so to speak. Well, I don't want to tell you about it. I think I should call it on an expert like Bill Cuchero over here. Bill, would you tell us the story of Labiglattu? Well, now suppose you punch out something here and just show us how it operates, Bill. All right. Now, now the line came a number of things that looked to me like a key or something. What is that? Well, that's what we call our man. Why don't you punch one out and see how long it takes here, Bill? All right. There it is.

I only took about 15 or 20 seconds, not even that long, Bill. We get about seven or eight lines a minute out of these machines. Okay, Bill, thanks a million for telling us about your machine. And I understand you boys get pretty good at this sort of work. What you do after a while, after 25 years? You've been here 25 years. Well, close to 30 now. Is that right? Well, thanks a lot, Bill. Thanks a million. Well, where's Charlie going now? We just have the story of the line of type machine and what's our next step here, Charlie? Well, our next step, I think, should be to go to the composing room to find out how the various pieces of a page get put together. We've come out of the hand composition room. And the form in here is John Greenwood. John, why do they set to type by hand nowadays? Well, we try to set most of our type by machine. Occasionally, there are some tabular work

that you must set by hand. And large faces, type of large faces are set by hand. Corrections have to be made by hand rather than go back to the machines. That's on monotype. On line of type, of course, you have to send line of type back to the machine to have another line set. Well, now what about this particular bench here that we're standing in front of? What actually happened here? Now, we call these frames. Here is where all the type that you have seen manufactured to this point. Come together with the copy, the layout, and the instructions from the layout man, and together with engravings when there are any. The compositor, the makeup man, Mr. Katsky here, puts them together in page form. What if we could talk to Mr. Katsky? Surely. First of all, tell us about this particular lineup. Is that this page up here you're working on? That's right, yes. Now, why do you have to set this particular page by hand? Well, not all of it is set by hand. The heads are set by hand, but the rest is set on the monotype machine. Are

by line of type? Or by line of type, yes. Do you say heads? Does that mean headlines? Headlines, yes. Why do you set headlines by hand? Well, because the sizes are too large is set on the monotypes. How large do you go on the monotypes? Or 18 point. And anything above 18 point you set by hand? That's right. Well, John is the, thank you very much, Sir. John, is the general purpose or the main purpose for hand composition to make corrections? Not alone, man. Make corrections. Actually, the craftsman ship of hand compositor is based on making up pages, making them up according to our blueprints, which are layouts, and following the instructions that they're giving by the layout, man. Let me go back to Mr. Kowski and ask him just one or two more questions before we leave. And this is more of a curiosity question than anything else. But this is the way it was done many, many years ago, isn't it? By all by hand? That's right, yes. In other words, the man that invented the printing press

actually had to set his type by hand. Oh, yes. Then it was all done by hand. Well, now, when you substitute a machine in this particular instance in printing, do you also substitute, say, quality for quantity? Oh, no, I say the quality is even better on a machine. Is that right? Yes. All right, John, thank you very much. Now, what's our next step in this particular department? I would like to take you to the proof room. John, we've stepped into now what is called a proofreading room. And of course, I think everybody just about knows what proofreading is. You read proof to make any corrections that have to be made, is that right? That's correct. Well, now, one of the most amazing things to me is that in good printing, and certainly good printing is done here at this company, you very, very seldom see any errors anymore. You must have a lot of checks and balances, don't you? Not too many. We are justifiably proud of our

proof readers. They do an excellent job under pretty trying circumstances. But normally our jobs are read, but once. Well, now let's start out from the beginning. First of all, right in front of us is a large sheet of paper with printing on it. What is it with printing on it? What is this? This is the galley proof. This is a picture of the type as it comes from the casting machines. It comes into the proof room with the copy and is read there, and then sent out to the composing room where it's corrected, and final galley proofs pulled. Please, excuse me, go ahead. These galley proofs then are sent to the customer, who uses them to dummy his job. In other words, he paces them on to layouts, in relation to his cuts and headings and so forth. Well, now a little while ago we saw a proof reader working and he was going through it awfully quickly. They can read these words for word? Yes, they do. Well, they go awfully fast. Well, they're trained to do so. How long would it take a man, for example, to read this long page of the type right here?

Roughly about 20 minutes. 20 minutes to go through this thing right here. That's right. To make all corrections. That's right. All right, now we've got this corrected. What happens to it then? That goes back to where we just went to, we just toured the hand composition room as I did. That's right. It's corrected there and the final galley proofs are pulled and delivered to the customer. All right, and then when he makes his corrections or whatever it is, he sends it back to you. Back to us in the form of the dummy. That's right. We use his dummy to make up his pages. Well, now we're going to go back and talk to Fran's prowl of superintendent of the Composing Department and we've moved into what is known as a lockup. So it has nothing to do with the city jail, doesn't Fran? I believe not, this time. All right. All right. Suppose we start with what's happening over here. Some boys are pounding a block of wood into some type. Just exactly what's going on here. All right. Let's say briefly that this is the final

operation in the Composing Room, where the type pages, with all the illustrative matter, everything else, is put together in form, locked up form, for press or for foundry. And I think again, for you to get a better idea of this operation I would like to present the form and build them all. Now the boys are pounding this type over here in the form. Just exactly what are they doing? Would you outline it for us? Well, as you know that we have to have one single unit when we plate or when we put it on a printing press. And to get all of these in one single unit, we have to just a lot of really small units to get the one unit intact. And we block out with material, sometimes metal, sometimes wood, but the most of the time metal, and put pressure on the sides of these, tie -ups with steel coins, which turns with a key, which expands the coin, where we get to which gives us our pressure to make these forms lift,

and be intact and be firm. Bill, can we walk over here a little bit closer? Now with this finished form here, would that be a page or something? That is a complete telephone page. Oh, that's what that is. A telephone page. That's a Phoenix alphabetical telephone page. Phoenix Arizona. This is the first time I guess, Bill, and so far that we've seen an operation which is actually done by hand. Everything else seems to be done by machine. Can you get a machine to do this? Well, it's in the process now. There's been a lot of research and they think they're coming up with something in the near future. But still done by hand. Same as it was years ago. Same as it was, yeah, 100 years ago. Is that right? That's right. Okay, Bill. I think that just about tells us the story of lock -up. We want to thank you very much. We also want to thank you, friends, for taking us through your composition department. It's been a pleasure, I assure you. Now we go back to Hugh Sipharth and find out what our next step is. Well, let's go down to the press room now. We'll take a look at some

flatbed printing. We've come down to the flatbed printing department. We want to talk to the foreman down here, Mr. Foy. Mr. Foy, it's kind of noisy, right, at this particular point. Suppose we step back here a little ways and talk about this particular piece of equipment. This is a two -color, number 56 melee press. Mr. Foy, suppose you start from the beginning and tell us just exactly what happens now. If so happens that today, your printing inserts for a Bible, is that correct? That is right. Which I have here in my hand. Now tell us about this. Well, this is a four -color job and it's printing in four -color process. On this press that you're looking at, we have the yellow process color on the first cylinder, and we have the gold and the second cylinder. They will be followed by the black and red process colors on the other press adjacent to

this one. And we will come back to this press for the next two colors, which will be blue and an imprint of the black type. That's a total of five colors. That is a total of five colors, plus the special imprint of the black type. Now, which we could walk right up close to that printer, but it's a little bit too noisy over there to talk. But I'd like for you to start back here where the paper is fit. How has that done? I see it by air hoses or something. This is a suction pile feeder, delivering from a sheet of flat load of stock. And it is separated individually by sucker fingers, and forwarded by sucker fingers, into our drop guides on a feed board. It goes around the first cylinder and then it transfers from the first cylinder to the second cylinder. By means of grippers, that guide the sheet through the entire operation. First cylinder, it gets

yellow. Yellow prints. I miss a particular press, that's right. We're printing the yellow on a first cylinder. Then it transfers to the transverse cylinder, and feeds into the second cylinder and registers with the gold that is printing on the second cylinder. Now of course the first question that comes to mind, to most people as they see that go through there, it starts back here about 20 feet away with wet ink. When it gets finished up here about 10 or 15 seconds later, it's dry. Now how does that happen so quickly? Well it isn't entirely dry. What we say is that by the time the sheet deposits itself in the load, the ink is set. Now we aid that setting to some extent by chemicals in the ink and the running the sheet over our gas flame, which you can see right in front of you. Now that sheet remains in a wet form, pulled for maybe four to five hours before

it's completely dry. We do not try to dry the colors too firmly because we have other colors to go on top. Well that's certainly an amazing operation. How many does that turn out in a certain length of time? Well let's press that you're looking at right now, it's running 2 ,200 revolutions an hour. Now we're going to go back to Hugh Cipherth. Well we'll pass over the folding machines and get into a combination operation of gathering and binding. Al Enderby can tell you what goes on from here. Now it's a foreman, right? Well Al we're standing right in front of a giant of a machine, one of the largest that I've ever seen, in which the famous red book of Chicago is passing through. And as I understand it being bound and gathered, covered, and so on.

Tell us about this machine and take it from the beginning to the end, would you? Well the end that we're on right now is a gathering machine and where we gather the individual signatures into the completed book as they come to us from the press room. Now signature, what is that? The signature is a group of pages, full it together into making one single group, maybe a 48 -page group or a 32 -page group, or any other combination of pages. These come to us direct from the press room, right come into this galling machine. I fed into it by girls, and then I mechanically picked up and grouped into the complete Chicago red book. These pages move along. They pick up as he says signatures, which may contain 48 pages. And then these 48 pages of course are numbered consecutively, and then by the time it gets to the very end of the pile, it's got the red book put together in the correct order of pages, right?

That's right. And the loose signatures, the signatures then have to go into another machine to be bound. Now this is a long line up here. How many signatures, how many piles of signatures do you have? Well on this particular job we have 51 groups of individual signatures, 51 combinations, most of them are 48 -page six, so that we do have a few that are 32 -page. All right, now and all together. Now they're finally grouped together to make the red book, and they go down the line, and the back of the red book is pasted. What happens down there? Well they go into what we call our binding machine. The binding machine, the back is cut off first, with a rotary knife in order to cut the full off, so that each individual page can be, get at the glue, the book is held together mainly with glue. And then what happens? Then the book goes to the trimming machine, which is another operation, and the three sides of the books are trimmed, smooth, all the

edges are then even. Well now we've come over here now to the, is this the trimming machine? That's right. Suppose you tell us how this operates. The books are fed in on one end of the machine. They pass through a series of knives, and in a single operation, the book is trimmed by three different knives on three sides. Come out and finish the finished product, ready to be distributed. We trim various telephone books. We've Manhattan, telephone, Ohio Detroit, books, Denver, all over the country, books are trimmed on this particular machine. Does the almond work, doesn't it? Yes, it does a lot of work. You mean to tell me it cuts every red book in the city of Chicago? Brightly sold, that's right. Is that right? Maybe a year and a half. Let's go through this machine. Okay, Al,

thank you very much. Now here is Mr. Gaylord Donnelly, president of the company. Well Mr. Hill, you've heard many strange sounds during your visit and seen a few of my many different operations. I assure you that there are a lot more for there is a great deal to the printing industry. You have talked with a few people but also seen many more at work, both on machines and hand operations. I'd like to stress the point that there is a great deal of individual skill and craftsmanship involved, whether it is a hand operation or the largest printing press. All the craftsmen you saw served apprenticeships right here in our plant, and many of them have developed their skill to a very high degree over a number of years. Of our 7 ,800 employees, over 1 ,000 have been with us 25 years or more.

Over its 500 year history in the Western world, the printing industry has been a tremendous service to the advance of civilization. By bringing books and other reading matter, within the reach of virtually all the people, it has changed the world. Here in America, it helped to bring about our widely shared material wealth. By making people literate, it paved the way for self -government, and forms one of the strongest foundations of our freedoms.