



1947 film about how a book is made. It starts with the writer — "This man in an author. He writes stories. He's just finished writing a story. He thinks many people will like to read it. So, he must have the story made into a book." — and ends with a finished, bound book.

Along the way, we are taken on a tour through the printing and bindery process. In a factory full of machinery that would give an OSHA inspector a heart attack, we see a typesetter making lines of type from molten metal, a composer laying out the lines of type, a workman fitting the lines into metal frames, an operator converting the soft metal plates into wax plates, another worker dipping the wax plates into a tank filled with copper to form a solid plate, another worker cutting the plates into individual page plates with a sharp saw, another workman (he's called the "ready man") preparing the plates for printing by placing 64 pages at a time in the printing press bed, a workman examining the printed sheets, another worker inserting the sheets into a folding machine, another man to check the folder to make sure the pages are folded in the right order, a room filled with "girls" in the gathering room stacking the folders in piles and sorting them in bins, another group of girls taking the assembled folders to a machine that sews them together with thread, other workers trimming the sewed folders with sharp knives, An operator over seeing a machine making covers from paperboard, a machine that gluing cloth to the paperboard, a machine stamping the title of the book on the cover, and a machine gluing covers to the book. Whew!

(via Hang Fire Books)