Number of words: 241

SCHLESINGER WAS THE PRODUCER and narrator of Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu, a documentary made about the last night of “hot type” typesetting at the Times. He also composed a poem and song of the same name. The film is a snapshot of July 2, 1978, the very day when computers killed off the Linotype operators and proofreaders at one of the world’s largest newspapers. After that, Schlesinger stayed on and would eventually train roughly 125 former Linotype operators and others to use the new computerized systems before he retired in 1990. “During that period there was a great sense of loneliness and blues,” he told me. “People felt as if they were missing their favourite pet.”

The film was directed by David Loeb Weiss, a long time Proofreader at the paper, and found its title from a structure of letters unique to the Linotype machine. “Etaoin shrdlu” are “the ‘words’ formed by striking the first 12 keys, in two vertical rows, at the left of the Linotype keyboard,” explained the Times obituary of Weiss, after he passed away in 2005. “A compositor would strike those keys to fill out a garbled line of type, indicating that it should be discarded. On occasion, the offending line found its way into the paper, ‘etaoin shrdlu’ and all. With the advent of computerized typesetting, ‘etaoin shrdlu’ disappeared from the paper forever.”So did the proofreaders.

Excerpted from page 266-267  of ‘Regret the Error’ by Craig Silverman