"Etaoin Shardlu"

As is so often the case, the obit page is the most interesting section of the paper today.

Made in collaboration with Carl Schlesinger, then a Linotype operator at The Times, the film followed the issue of July 2, 1978, as it was "put to bed," as the nightly ritual of typesetting, composing and printing was known.

Shot at the newspaper's offices on West 43rd Street, the 28-minute documentary captured a process that was largely unchanged since 1886, when Ottmar Mergenthaler invented the Linotype machine. The invention revolutionized printing, allowing metal type to be set a line at a time from a keyboard instead of painstakingly by hand, one letter at a time.

"Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu" caught the din of the composing room, where dozens of Linotype machines clattered away, spitting out lines of type - printed backward - that were locked into metal page forms. The forms were used in making the 40-pound page plates, or stereotypes, from which the paper was printed.

The film's title represents the "words" formed by striking the first 12 keys, in two vertical rows, at the left of the Linotype keyboard. A compositor would strike those keys to fill out a garbled line of type, indicating that it should be discarded. On occasion, the offending line found its way into the paper, "etaoin shrdlu" and all. With the advent of computerized typesetting, "etaoin shrdlu" disappeared from the paper forever.