By TomL
I said many years ago there would be a shortage of careers with apprenticeships. I served as a pressman apprentice / Typographical apprentice / Linotype operator / All what they called Hot Type. I went into offset printing knowing things were changing. I learned to run an offset press and never looked back. I remember when the Hollywood SunTattler was in business, they were strictly Hot Type and the old timers did not believe that offset was here to stay. Heavily Unionize, the production manager came to me one day and said I here you are an offset pressman. I said I have run some offset presses. He said well I hear that they mix water and ink together to run the offset press? I said not exactly true, here is how it works.
You take a photo sensitive thin polished plate. You expose the image you want on it. Then you apply lacquer to the p[late and the lacquer sticks to the image of the exposed plate. You then put it on the press. This is where the name offset comes in. The press has a maze of rollers some distributing alumni water solution which goes on the plate as the press runs. the alqueline wet the plate and the lacquer repel’s the water so the ink takes it’s place. As the press run the image transfers to a rubber blanket and the rubber blanket transfers it to the paper, (Offset printing).
The Production manger said I have never heard of such a thing. I said well it works because I have done it. The Production manager went back to the owner and reported offset printing will never work in his pressroom.
They chose an experimental method called letterflex where you have a plastic plate instead of lead which had to be etched by lasers. The employees making the plates were getting burned and harm by the process, so they had to do something. They soon sold it to Scripts Howard, I had some friends telling me about the changes I was long gone. Hollywood SunTattler was in between the Ft. Lauderdale News and the Miami Herald, they could not expand, so they had very little growth. It was a little late to recover from the losses. They are no longer there. What a shame for the decision of one man who could not make the change a great newspaper went of existence.
