You know you're old when . . .

...When you were the last employee at Klimsch....! Came to work one day in München to find we had been abandoned by the higher ups and with creditors knocking the doors down. I was the guy who turned the lights out in München. :-(
 
" when you can remember opening the new tube of rubylith and enjoying the smell . . . ."

workin' the rubylith was the most enjoyable … bendin' over those damned light-tables with a piercing migraine was the most debilitating. small wonder i went through so many cases of bacardi-select back then.
 
Lol, I'm not that old but then I do not know what Quark really means. I only have to research it and found out a particle in a matter? Other meaning is a software or an Apple II utility for a floppy disk.
 
Lol, I'm not that old but then I do not know what Quark really means. I only have to research it and found out a particle in a matter? Other meaning is a software or an Apple II utility for a floppy disk.

You young whippersnapper, you have no idea how good you have it these days, back in our day we used to have to share the company pencil and draw our layouts on paper, we worked 22 hours a day, ate stale bread and drank the residue water from the developer, printing presses were hand-cranked and the overseer whipped us mercilessly us if we lost rhythm.
 
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You young whippersnapper, you have no idea how good you have it these days, back in our day we used to have to share the company pencil and draw our layouts on paper, we worked 22 hours a day, ate stale bread and drank the residue water from the developer, printing presses were hand-cranked and the overseer whipped us mercilessly us if we lost rhythm.

Where I worked there was a gardening glove in the washroom to use in place of toilet paper. Etiquette was to rinse it out when done, but that didn't always happen.
 
Where I worked there was a gardening glove in the washroom to use in place of toilet paper. Etiquette was to rinse it out when done, but that didn't always happen.

Gardening glove? Made out of Latex? Luxury, we had a sponge on a stick and no water.
 
Gardening glove? Made out of Latex? Luxury, we had a sponge on a stick and no water.

Wow, that sounds like heaven! Every month the overseers would give us 1 sheet of 60grit sandpaper for the whole company to share.
 
You know you're old when you're the only person in the shop who knows what a makeup rule is. Extra points if you know the difference between a makeup rule and a compositor's rule.

You also know you're old when you bemoan the fact that you can't find ANY twine in the shop and everyone else wonders (a) what twine is, and (b) what would you use it for.
 
Wow, that sounds like heaven! Every month the overseers would give us 1 sheet of 60grit sandpaper for the whole company to share.

Ouch, I´ll bet that made you sweat...!
Slammer did a three year apprenticeship as a typesetter in Augsburg, and believe me all joking aside it was tough, the toughest part was at the school, in the company where I was learning CRT typesetting I was seeing the future and in the school I was learning how to set type in lead. But in retrospect these three years was the last time lead composing was taught in a typesetting school, so at least I was able to see the end of lead as a medium and depending on how you see it I am either the last of an bygone era or the first of a new one.
And I can still use a composing stick.
 
Hello Slammer,

I'm not that Old !!!!!!! ..........

Beautilful city Augsburg, I spent sometime at M A N during the late 1980's - fabulous Beer as well


Regards, Alois
 
when you can remember opening the new tube of rubylith and enjoying the smell . . . .

When I was a kid, I would open the tube of rubylith and smell it. Maybe that's what's wrong with me now......

When I started running a press we had color keys where you could overlay the colors on your printed sheet, since we ran 4-color work 1-color at a time. That way it wasn't too surprising what you would end up with.

I remember getting our first Linotronic back in '89, and my parents went to see a demonstration of Quark. My mom, who was our typesetter, was so amazed by it. She had been doing typesetting on our Itek Quadritek, where you could only see one line at a time, and each font was on a plastic card. We still have it in back, wrapped in plastic.

We also have a couple of Linotypes upstairs, but we haven't used them for about 6 years. Before that we had a single customer who would come in weekly and get some lead slugs for a machine he used to stamp dates on a product.

I am only 42, so not THAT old.
 
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Hello Slammer,

I'm not that Old !!!!!!! ..........

Beautilful city Augsburg, I spent sometime at M A N during the late 1980's - fabulous Beer as well


Regards, Alois

You would hardly recognise the place now that it has become more or less a suburban sleep town of Munich, the railway is now four track and the S-Bahn goes from Munich to Augsburg, also the town is getting a U-Bahn system. The Beer is still great though.
 
If you can remember hand developing a 3M "R" plate with the red lacquer . . . Oh it smelled so good . . . .

loved the smell of the red lacquer. Also remember how important it was to know when to stop developing the plate. One too many figure 8 wipes with the sponge would start wiping the image off.
 

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