Black and white television turned into colour and then satellite. Music went from 78s that smashed if you dropped them, onto 45s and Vinyl LPs and then CDs and now downloads and MP3s. I could go on and on (and probably will do at some point).
The world of printing has changed so much since I started as a journalist back in the early 1970s. Today a single person can do what it took an army to do a few decades ago.
Looking back I can't remember whether I was a journalist at the time of hot metal production. Can you envisage today using hot metal letters on what was called a galley? How messy and potentially dangerous that was. I do remember typesetters and huge machines and things flying on shuttles above their heads.
Then this all changed into bromides which were pieces of typed paper cut up and pasted onto pages. Much cleaner and easier to use. Then came desk top publishing. That's a very simplistic explanation of the changes but it does show how things have changed.
On a personal level I remember how things developed. When I started as a young reporter on the Lowestoft Journal, I would type my copy (stories) onto small offcut slips of paper. These would then go to the sub editor a few desks away. He would raise any queries, change grammar and spelling if necessary and then put the corrected copy into an envelope. Late afternoon all the copy would be picked up by a van which was delivering the evening papers. The stories would then be driven to head office in Norwich where typesetters would type them up. They would then go to "readers" who would check everything for mistakes and then onto the compositors who would place them into pages according to designs put forward on paper by sub editors. It's a wonder that newspapers ever came out with all that process.
When I became a sub editor and then sports editor in Norwich I would have a mountain full of copy on my desk which came in from all parts of Norfolk and North Suffolk. This I would work through, correcting and putting type directions on as I went. We would then roll it up and stuff it in a tube that was placed into a strange contraption that took it across the ceilings of a number of rooms and out into the printing room. Page layouts went by the same process.
Fast forward more than a few years and now everyone in the industry uses desk top publishing to create well designed lay-outs and pages.
Six years ago I decided to start my own e-magazine Hethersett Herald. I was able to do this because of desk top publishing. I now research stories, write them and copy them onto a page template and then do the design work. This is something 50 years ago I would never have dreamed about being able to do. And I haven't even mentioned the possibilities that the internet has brought us. Perhaps I will touch on this another time.
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Pulled out of a heritage talk in Norwich yesterday citing cultural fatigue which was partly true. I had an early hospital appointment to have a spot on my nose looked at. I have had it for some time and it just won't totally go away. No need to panic. It has a fancy name and is technically cancerous but can be easily cut out under local anaesthetic, which will happen sometime in the future.
I hate hospitals -it's an irrational fear but some people are scared of spiders which is something I can't understand. Anyway I was asked if I minded having my nose photographed to help with the training of doctors and nurses. So now I may not be famous but very soon my nose will be! As you know I take all kinds of photographs - portrait, landscape, abstract. But to date I haven't photographed any noses! I have to say all the staff at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital were very friendly.
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Am looking forward to a heritage event later today. My friend Phyllida Scrivens will be giving a presentation in Norwich Forum on her new book which looks at a rail disaster that took place just outside Norwich in 1874.
I am sure that I will be writing more about The Great Thorpe Rail Disaster in the coming days.