Larry Raid has set well over one hundred thousand names on the Linotype. Over the years at engine shows, threshers’ reunions and fairs in five states he has sent the mats keyed from little slips of paper, each one with another name.

Each name tells a story. The careful or careless lettering, the hesitant gesture, the taking up the copy, the keystrokes and mats jingling down into the assembler, tumbling cams and casting, a quick lock-up and another name in print. Larry is intrigued with the kids and the kids are intrigued with him; a strange summer Santa and his machine. Larry greets each of them and he really knows each of their names.

Larry began working at age eight. He helped his father cut down scrap iron. At times they were working from piles of fifteen thousand tons cutting down iron into eighteen inch pieces with a huge scissor shear. When he started off on his own Larry set up a die making and injection molding business. There he produced his first millions; fly swatters, chair brackets, dispenser nozzles and hat hooks.

Plastics injection molding has some of the same elements as type line casting but Larry really got started with letterpress equipment because he writes books of his own. Being self-reliant, he probably imagined that every writer must make his own books so he tried a mimeograph. Then he heard of a Linotype in Kirkville, Missouri. “I knew Kirkville and the print shop. When I was in school there I would watch the Linotype operator through the basement window and I would wave to him. One night I saw him there showing his girl friend how it works.” Larry returned in 1971 to pick up the Linotype machine.

He set up the Linotype in his factory in Denmark, Iowa. Larry sent his first line and ran to the other side of the building. The machine stopped and he returned to find a cast line of type in the galley tray. He sent a second line and only ran half the distance. Again a slug dropped out. He picked it up and threw it away; “It was hot!”

Over the years Larry continued his adventures with type setting and line casting. Because of his magnificent mechanical understanding he developed a deep appreciation of the Linotype and its inventor. This fascination inspired him. He hit the road in his pick-up and old trailer and began collecting Linotypes. Now his collection includes dozens of machines in thirteen different models. Today in Denmark you will discover an early 1904 model five (probably the oldest operating Linotype in the country), the most recently produced Electron that survives (serial number 76,027), and everything in between. Larry’s collection and its accessories is a commemoration of a whole century of the reliable machine that enabled daily news and much else of print production.

Larry and Mary constructed buildings, not just to keep equipment, but also to start an active type casting school. Linotype University has an excellent classroom with three identical model 31 machines for tutorials. Each year the Raids with the assistance of Bud and Sue Lang offer a one-week, intensive training course in Linotype operation, maintenance and repair. Linotype University has now completed its seventh year. This year’s class included ten students from seven states.

Typical Linotype University students are already well experienced and expert operators come to Denmark to work with Larry. The all day sessions are well organized including daily maintenance, keyboarding and copy composition, quick adjustments and change-out operations. Of necessity, the tutorials also include machine rigging and transport, refurbishing, major repair and work around methods. Larry also teaches relevant machinist theory and practice. Bud, with his forty years experience, teaches Linotype and letterpress productivity.

Larry Raid has kept the lure of Linotype alive and helped to keep the light of letterpress lit. Every day he helps beginners on-line and he also provides regular tutorial and seminar sessions at the University of Iowa Center for the Book program. His print shop demonstrations at the Iowa State Fair should be in the record books. There he has been on-duty at Pioneer Hall ten hours a day, every day of the Fair, for the last fifteen years!

So how will letterpress be practiced and projected in the present century? Will letterpress practice and analog technologies in general remain relevant or become irrelevant? Larry’s Linotype University exemplifies the work needed to assure a continuing role for letterpress in a context of digital communications. The Linotype, along with the typewriter, pioneered keyboard texting that finally separated the compositor from the case and opened the pathway to word processing.

The Linotype is also an ingenious computer hybrid with its analog cam set automated cycles and over-rides as well as its seven bit, binary mat redistribution. Perhaps an analog nature, exemplified by the Linotype’s infinitely adjustable cams, jaws, trimmers, space bands, mat measures and channel paths, will contribute to post-binary programming, but even more strategically, print and print production may prove itself critical to screen based reading. A continuing interdependence between print books and on-line books; one self-authenticating and another self-indexing, could glance back at the role of the Linotype.

As Larry says; “People are still thrilled to see their name in print.” This expression sums up Larry’s mission to bring real thrills to a world that increasingly provides simulations and electronic relationships. In the Linotype era expressions such as your name “in print” and even your name “in lights” meant what you saw was really your own name and not your “screen name”. Sign up now and put your own name in for Linotype University eight.