.918

Random observations from the first day of our letterpress workshop:

• In Britain and America, the standard vertical distance from the top of a piece of type (i.e., the relief surface for printing) to its foot is .918 inches. This is called “type high.”
  
• Form, case, quoine, key, furniture, bed, roller, nick, groove, point, pica, lead, slug, press, stick, ink—for the most part the vocabulary of letterpress consists of one- or occassionally two-syllable words—short, sharp, and eminently material.
  
• Compare: pixel, layer, keyframe, markup, function, variable, routine, linker, compiler, system, interface.
  
• Twenty years of repetitive work on keyboards does not leave one’s fingers nimble enough to handle 10-point type.
  
• If you mess up and spill what’s in your composing stick you get “pied type.” This is bad.
  
• There is no separate compartment for <angle brackets> in a so-called California Job Case, the most common layout scheme for a drawer of type.
  
• Printing takes patience. Lots of it.