Carleton’s Printing Press

A few weeks ago, we actually got to visit the printing press at Carleton! While we didn’t do any of the typesetting ourselves, we did get to operate the machine that rolled cut rectangles of cotton paper over the forms, which created lettering very different from what you get with wood-pulp paper and an inkjet printer.

We typed two different messages, excerpts from Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats, but where we used an authentic copy of a Bodini typeface for one, a photographic method was used to create an impression that would print in a modern sans-serif font for the other. It was striking just how much doing so changed the perceived age of the printed material.

It was also wonderful to feel the impression the printing process physically left on the paper, and it felt rather different to the flat pages of today’s printing systems. We also tried using an engraving of Scoville Hall from back when the printing press at Carleton was used to send out newsletters and small publications, but the print didn’t transfer very well since we didn’t want to completely ink up the machine only to clean it up immediately afterwards.