There’s one advantage about a Linotype you may not know if you’re not a printer. You can always make a correction in a line if you make it before you push the lever that sends in the line of matrices to cast the slug. You just drop the mats you need for the correction and put them in the right place by hand.
So I pushed the d key to get another d matrix to correct the misspelled word “weding”—and nothing happened. The keycam was going around all right and the click sounded O.K., but no d mat dropped. I looked up top to see if there was a distributor stop and there wasn’t.
I stood up. “The d channel’s jammed,” I said. To be sure before I started to work on it, I held the d key down a minute and listened to the series of clicks while the keyboard cam went round.
But no d matrix dropped, so I reached for the…
“Skip it, Walter,” said George Ronson quietly. “Send in the line and keep on going.”
I sat down again and decided to humor him. If I did, I’d probably find out what he was leading up to quicker than if I argued. I finished the first line and started the second and came to the word “Margorie” on copy. I hit the M key, the a, r, j, o—and happened to glance at the assembly slide. The matrices there read “Margo—”
I said, “Damn,” and hit the j key again to get a j mat to substitute for the g, and nothing happened. The j channel must be jammed. I held the j key down and no mat dropped. I said, “Damn,” again and stood up to look over the escapement mechanism.
“Never mind, Walter,” said George. There was a funny blend of a lot of things in his voice; a sort of triumph over me, I guess; and a bit of fear and a lot of bewilderment and a touch of resignation. ” Don’t you see? It follows copy! ”
“ It—what?”
“That’s why I wanted you to try it out, Walter,” he said. “Just to make sure it was the machine and not me. Lookit; that copy in the clipboard has w-e-d-i-n-g for wedding, and M-a-r-g-o-r-i-e- for Marjorie—and no matter what keys you hit, that ’ s the way the mats drop. ”