BOB Sharpe is "addicted" to type setting. And the retired teacher of mechanical composition has just found the perfect, place to feed his addiction - the recently opened National Print Museum in Beggars Bush Barracks, Dublin. With the help of FAS workers, Bob restored most of the equipment in the museum to working order to recreate the atmosphere of a printing house of 40 years ago.
The machine and artefacts were donated by companies including The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Leinster Leader, the School of Printing at the Dublin Institute of Technology in Bolton Street and Devlin Typesetting in Drumcondra. Most of the pieces were collected by enthusiasts over the past, 20 years.
While the machinery appears quaintly out dated to museum visitors, many pieces were in use in printing companies and newspaper plants throughout the country just a decade ago.
"In the last 10 years technology took a huge step forward and the equipment became surplus very quickly, requiring it to be discarded," explains the museum spokesman, John Harold, who is managing director of the Colour Books company. "It was urgent for us to collect the machinery at this time. Luckily, none of it has been left out rusting in a field."
Instead, the machinery has found a perfect home in the 1860s built limestone exterior and brick interior building which was a former garrison chapel. A committee of print industry employers, academics, trade union officials and retired craftspeople raised over £300,000 in donations, sponsorship and Government grants for the renovations.
Carried out with assistance from FAS, the renovations included the construction of a new ground floor, a conservatory entrance which houses an airy coffee and gift shop and a mezzanine level. The building's finest features are undoubtedly its large stained glass windows and richly restored pine beamed root.
On a recent tour of the museum, Bob explained that the equipment is arranged largely as it would be found in an old printing house. The caseroom area contains composing frames and supplies of foundry and wood type used for display work, including some rare Gaelic letters.
Across the aisle is Bob's addiction - an Intertype C3-SM3 machine installed in the School of Printing in 1935. Bob who had stored the machine in his garage since it was decommissioned in 1975, demonstrated it for the President, Mrs Robinson, when she opened the museum earlier this month.
This section also contains a 1960 Ludlow type caster and a 1962 Elrod strip caster for making line rules and spacing materials.
In the Monotype section are two Monotype D keyboards from 1956 as well as a composition caster and a supercaster which cast single letter types for high quality book work.
In the letterpress section, there is an Albion manually operated printing press dating back to 1840, an Arab manual feed press from 1910 and a 1951 Heidesiek platen printing machine which was donated by the Little Sisters of the Assumption in Ballyfermot, Dublin.
The highlight of this section is a highly decorative iron Columbian press built in 1830. The counterweight is shaped as an eagle and dolphins form the frame of the machine.
The print finishing area features a 1957 large wooden framed Shaw pen ruling machine which was used by a Waterford company to draw faint blue and red lines on ledgers. It also includes a guillotine for cutting paper, a Brehmer book sewing machine, wire stitchers from the early 1900s, a gold blocking press for printing titles on book covers and an Irish Times late news box which allowed last minute news to be over printed in a box left blank on the back page.
On the museum's mezzanine, level, glass cases tracing the development of printing contain ancient clay tablets inscribed with hieroglyphics, a wax tablet and stylus, papyrus, vellum and quills and a selection of richly textured Irish handmade paper.
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Hanging on an upstairs wall is the front page of The Irish Times from August 18th, 1986 - the first edition of the newspaper printed by a web off set machine capable of producing 50,000 copies of a 40 page paper per hour.
The museum also houses the oldest piece of printing equipment in Ireland - a 1740s mould for hand-casting letters complete with the original ladle for pouring molten lead into it. It is, according to Bob, a replica of the mould used by Johannes Gutenberg when he first cast moveable metallic type in Germany in the 14th century.
Bob stumbled upon one half of this small artefact in 1950 embedded in lead skimmings in a metal bin in the School of Printing. Two years later, he found the second half of the mould in the school. "How they got there we don't know. It's clouded in mystery," he says.
Leaning over the balcony, Bob gestures to a part of the downstairs gallery which will soon house a 11ft by 7ft Wharfedale stop cylinder press recently donated by the Nenagh Guardian.
"That will be lovely when we get that in there and get the sound of that going. It will be like a steam roller," he says.
The museum also plans to make a video of the printing machinery being demonstrated which it will run in the coffee shop.
In the autumn, it will set and print by letterpress two books of poems by Dermot Bolger and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill in both Irish and English which will be sold to raise funds for the museum.
The National Print Museum, open on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday from 2p.m. to 5p.m. Half hour long guided tours are conducted approximately every 15 minutes. The admission charge is £1 per person and £2 for families, with special group rates.