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A REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
A History of the Edinburgh Printing Industry
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As
materials became more readily available, business began to prosper
and by the early 1950’s, Edinburgh appeared to have re-established
itself as the country’s main book printing centre. It was not
appreciated then, that the change in ownership in 1946 of one of
Scotland’s leading book printers, R & R Clark Ltd., was
but a forerunner of many during the next few decades which would
contribute to the decline of the Edinburgh book printing trade.
Regrettably, the revival of trade and the relative economic boom
were seriously disrupted by a major strike in 1959. In the late
spring of that year, the ten British print unions submitted claims
for a ten per cent wage increase and a 40-hour week but these were
firmly rejected by the employers. As members of the Printing and
Kindred Trades Association, the Scottish print unions representing
14,000 workers in some 350 companies were involved and after protracted
but unfruitful negotiations the industry closed down on 18th June.
It took all the wisdom and skill of Lord Birkett, acting as independent
chairman, to even-tually guide the negotiations towards a final
agree-ment between the two sides and work was resumed on Thursday
6th August.
The first signs of major technological change came with the introduction
of the first photo-composition machines. Those early models were
largely adaptations of existing hot metal Monotype and Linotype
units but as new manufacturers entered this field and competition
intensified those first generation machines became quickly out-dated.
In the early 1960’s the SCWS printing department in Glasgow
and Skinners in Edinburgh were probably the first companies in Scotland
to install those early models. By the mid-60’s many firms had
installed second generation machines (electromechanical, matrix
fonts) but rapid developments were taking place and 1968 saw the
introduction of third generation machines (electronic escapement,
CRT, and digitised fonts). Research and development in this field
continued and by the mid-70’s book houses had available dedicated
front-end systems using computers for automatic page make-up. More
recent has been the deve1opment and implementation of direct-input
keying and keying on to floppy disks on PC’s for supplying
formatted text from author direct to phototypesetters.
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Volume 1, published 1990
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