Printing presses
![](images/now-to-press/Making plates in Portage 2.jpg)
come in many sizes and shapes.
The Mountaineer-Herald was originally printed on a big flatbed letterpress, with lead type and a lot of brute force and sweat.
In my day, the printing was outsourced to Sedloff Publications just down the road in Portage.
I do not intend to make this a primer on offset printing, but those full-page negatives were used t o burn plates for the big web-offset press.
![](images/now-to-press/Coming off the press blurred wide.jpg)
![](images/now-to-press/Coming off the press long.jpg)
I forget how many heads that press had, but each head made 4 pages, and the press run completely filled my full-size Ford wagon, and collapsed the suspension pretty much right down on the rubber bumpers, headlights blinding low flying planes.
![](images/now-to-press/Coming off the press 2.jpg)
I (or Paul) hauled it back to Ebensburg after midnight and bright and early Wednesday morning, it was all hands on deck to finish the job of actual piublishing.