BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – For the first time in more than 100 years, the classic mechanical presses at Cather Publishing are silent.

Owner Bill Cather, 70, is retiring, ending three generations of a printing business that had already become a rarity and is made rarer still with one less operator who refused to give in to the digital revolution.

A walk through Cather Publishing at 3109 Seventh Ave. South in Birmingham's Lakeview District is like a visit to a museum.

A Linotype machine once used by The Birmingham News was saved when the newspaper modernized decades ago and is still operational at Cather Publishing. It is now bound for the Birmingham History Center.

On Wednesday, the largest of the old presses and what is believed to be the oldest working press in the state was loaded on a truck, bound for a printing operation in Montgomery which plans to keep it to use.

Cather finds something satisfying in the open gears and the sounds, smells and rhythm of the mechanical printing presses. There is a sort of symbiotic connection between man and machine working together to produce what a customer wants. There is the tactile nature, a craftsmanship experience in the process.

Digital printers may be more efficient, sharp and quiet but they can also seem cold and soulless in comparison.

“I didn’t want to get into digital,” Cather said. “That’s just not my cup of tea.”

Cather does take print projects digitally since more and more customers are bringing projects to him that way, either in person or via email. But the printing is still done the old fashion way.

Cather misses the interaction with customers and working with them on the design and development or projects.

“Now it’s just given to you to print,” he said. “There’s no collaboration.”

Some of the work Cather Publishing gets is because of things the old equipment can do digital printers can’t. For instance, younger customers want printed words or images actually engraved into the paper with the hard strike of a mechanical printer.

“It goes against what we’ve always tried to do – to not print so hard that it made an indentation on the paper – but that’s what they’re wanting now,” Cather said. “In the past, this would be seen as poor quality. Now it’s considered high-end work.”

Most of the people who still use the old equipment are hobbyist or specialty printers, Cather said, doing similar stylistic things with the presses and not going after large-scale jobs.

While customers have changed, employees haven’t as much.

Cather Publishing may be one of the last union print shops left in the state or even the Southeast and Cather is proud of the fact he has always paid his employees way above the industry average. That has contributed to great loyalty from those employees.

Earlier this week, before Cather started moving equipment out of the building, he hosted a handful of former employees who worked with Cather Publishing for decades.

“They all wanted to go around and look at the equipment and visit with it one last time,” Cather said.

Cather estimates that between all of them, they had combined printing experience of more than 300 years.

As is always the case with old workers get together, stories get swapped.

“We talked about the tough jobs,” Cather said. “You don’t seem to remember the easy ones.”

One tough project that gets brought up often is a last-minute job for George Wallace during one of his early runs for governor of Alabama.

He needed thousands of flyers printed within a couple of days. Cather said they kept the giant press running almost three days straight, swapping out workers to keep it running.

He does have children, but Cather had a rule that his kids had to go find some other work for five years before they could consider returning to the family business. They found good jobs elsewhere and Cather said he couldn’t be more proud or pleased with their career paths.

In 1985, Cather decided to get into printing projects for the federal government. It turned out to be one of the best moves in the company’s long history.

Everything from culture awareness and rules of engagement cards that soldiers carry with them in Iraq and Afghanistan to military manuals, awards and official letterheads were printed here in Birmingham at Cather Publishing.

White House press passes, U.S. Senate gallery and floor passes and other specialty projects are among the thousands of print jobs Cather estimates he has done for the government.

Cather knows other print shops have tried to get government contracts and even did get them, but were unable to stay on the list for long. Cather likes to think the quality and reliability of Cather Publishing’s printing has kept it a U.S. government supplier for nearly three decades.

Cather has a photo of his father running an old Washington press that is now on loan to the University of Alabama. He keeps the photo alongside a list of dozens of printing shops that operated in Birmingham in the 1940s. He said only a few of them are still in business today.

Throughout the shop, there is plenty of memorabilia from past print jobs and Cather's work with Rickwood Field. Cabinets hold old metal dyes and even some very old wooden ones that collectors have tried to buy but Cather has held onto.

Cather Publishing set up in Birmingham in 1913 after Cather’s grandfather moved here from Ashville in St. Clair County, where he had operated the St. Clair News-Aegis newspaper. The company moved to its current building in 1973-1974.

Cather doesn’t know what he’ll do with the building, which is between Brasfield & Gorrie’s corporate headquarters and BBVA Compass’ operations center in the popular Lakeview District. He imagines the property is worth quite a bit more than he paid for it when he moved there four decades ago.

“I live in Forest Park a mile away,” he said. “I just wanted to have the business closer to home.”

For now, Cather Publishing is working with another print shop in town to continue doing some long-term contract work the company is still fulfilling. Cather said he may even teach the new company how to get into government printing since he knows how successful it can be.

Beyond that, Cather will take some significant items and lots of memories when he leaves the business.

“The good people we had working here and how much fun it was to build a project, those are the things I’ll remember most,” he said.

There is one old piece of equipment – an antique proof press more than a century old – that Cather expects will go with him when he moves out of the Lakeview building.

It predates electricity and uses the simplest of mechanics with a big heavy roller on a small table. It is a piece of equipment that would be useless without the hands of a craftsman who knows how to work it.

With Cather’s retirement, there is one fewer craftsman today.