Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu

[Justin Goldberg]

Kind of OT:

I recall reading on some health forum that in a certain Japanese paint
factory, workers would put dried paint flakes under their tongues and then
spit them out, a-la homeopathically, to make them impervious to the
chemicals. It is believed to work by sending a signal to the gut "to
prepare for this chemical". Not sure if it would have worked on inks but it
may have.

Justin Goldberg

https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinpaulgoldberg


On Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:27 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:

> On 6/17/20 12:25 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
> > https://archive.org/details/FarewellEtaoinShrdlu
> >
> >  28min documentary on the last ever edition of the NY Times to be
> > printed using hot metal -- before they switched to what are now a
> > quite choice assortment of late-'70s minicomputers. I think I spotted
> > a PDP, a Data General and some IBM device, but I am no expert in this
> > era.
> >
>
> When I was in college, I went on a weekend trip with a friend to see
> where he worked during the summer.  It was a print-shop, complete with
> both letterpress and offset--and a Linotype ("pot" heated with natural
> gas).  The local advertising circular was still set with hot type and I
> witnessed the operation of that contraption.  Noisy and wonderful.
>
> See the Twilight Zone episode "Printer's Devil" for another sample.
>
> I was told that most newspaper pressmen were alcoholics, as it blunted
> the effect of the then-toxic inks used in printing.
>
> Anent ETAOIN:  Early on in the formation of the CDC spinoff, ETA
> Systems, I asked Neil Lincoln what "ETA" stood for.  He related the
> story of his son and ETAOIN SHRDLU.  Back then, the name of the
> supercomputer was referred to as the GF-10; later changed to the ETA-10.
>
> (GF standing for GigaFLOP).
>
> --Chuck
>
>
>