The beautiful mechanics of words

Yesterday I visited the Melbourne Museum of Printing.

It was an open day to raise funds.

Laurie spoke to us about how the skilled job of hand compositors was superceded by compositing machines.

And how then the job of compositing machines was superceded by computerisation.

We watched Laurie put together a line of print. He selected each tiny letter to go onto the edge of a small metal plate. Then he pushed buttons. The tiny letters went to all sorts of amazing places on this gigantic machine and at the end popped out the plate - with the sentence (or LINE OF TYPE) that Laurie had just created on its side.

This plate could then be used again and again for printing that LINE OF TYPE.

And once it was no longer needed, the metal goes back into the gigantic machine and is melted down and recycled to be used again.

Laurie and the machine showed a love for letters and words that is physical, mechanical, meticulous and careful.

The museum has many such people and machines. It smells like ink and paper and metal and carries the history of news and stories and information and specially printed party invitations and political posters and drawers and shelves filled with intricate, concrete, tiny pieces of mechanical beauty.

It is a potent place. Technology and digitisation makes it no longer an essential place of business.

But story and character make it an essential place for so many more varied and everlasting reasons.