fport's picture
fport from Canada is reading The World Until Yesterday - Jared Diamond December 5, 2012 - 10:31pm

I am constantly surfing about in my quest for knowledge and information about how and why things work or not as the case may be.

Has anybody ever throught about why a bridge is where it is?

What the threshold for forgetting that something was ever done?

Here's a factoid that goes to a historical perspective on something everyone just knows:

"In printing, a cliché was a plate cast from movable type, also known as stereotype. When letters were set one at a time, it made sense to cast a phrase used repeatedly as a single slug of metal."

Neat huh?

JonnyGibbings's picture
JonnyGibbings December 6, 2012 - 10:27am

The printing thing is well known if you have studied design and typography. Similar to upper and lower case. In that there were fewer 'upper case' letters then lower case. Because lower case has letters with cedillas, umlauts, theists and numerals. So the lower case sat in the larger, bottom of the case, hence lower and upper case. Fonts came in cases, that were looked like suitcases – hence the term 'suitcases' in typography. There are also reasons for terms like leading, kerning etc.

 

fport's picture
fport from Canada is reading The World Until Yesterday - Jared Diamond December 6, 2012 - 11:34am

I had a relationship with a small printing house, the main guy was a German fellow who because he was the youngest left of the printing tribe he was part of had all the older masters bequeathing him the moveable type sets that they had for their letterset machines. He ended up with a couple of those tall wheeled industrial mechanic tool cases filled with ancient type faces sitting next to his own huge, to my eyes, press which he used for that custom work.