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When the Story Can't Change
Sep. 23rd, 2011 05:32 pmOnce upon a time, if you wanted something printed you'd have it hand-set, with movable type clamped into flat devices called forms. This took a lot of work, so it was expensive, especially for something as long as a book.
There was only a limited amount of type and a limited number of forms. You'd typeset your book (or just one section of it, I suspect) and print it, then knock it down and reuse the type for the next job. If your book was a hit you'd need to have the type hand-set all over again, maybe two or three times.
There was a way to "save" your hand-set type to avoid this. You would make a bed of wet clay and press the type into it, making a mold. You would then pour molten type metal over the mold, to make a page's worth of text in one solid block.
The only problem with this approach was that you could never change your page, once you'd set it. But if you wanted to print the same thing over and over again, without change, this was the way to do it.
The process was called stereotyping.
French printers had a word for one individual stereotype plate out of a set of them. My dictionaries differ on where the name comes from- might be a mangled version of the German for a mass of clay, such as you'd use to make the page mold, or it might be imitating the sound of the type form being pressed into the clay, or the type metal being poured onto the mold. In any case, they had a special word for that single plate. It was known as a cliche'.
There was only a limited amount of type and a limited number of forms. You'd typeset your book (or just one section of it, I suspect) and print it, then knock it down and reuse the type for the next job. If your book was a hit you'd need to have the type hand-set all over again, maybe two or three times.
There was a way to "save" your hand-set type to avoid this. You would make a bed of wet clay and press the type into it, making a mold. You would then pour molten type metal over the mold, to make a page's worth of text in one solid block.
The only problem with this approach was that you could never change your page, once you'd set it. But if you wanted to print the same thing over and over again, without change, this was the way to do it.
The process was called stereotyping.
French printers had a word for one individual stereotype plate out of a set of them. My dictionaries differ on where the name comes from- might be a mangled version of the German for a mass of clay, such as you'd use to make the page mold, or it might be imitating the sound of the type form being pressed into the clay, or the type metal being poured onto the mold. In any case, they had a special word for that single plate. It was known as a cliche'.
