Frank Romano has spent his life immersed in the world of print. If you’ve ever handset type, operated a Linotype machine or followed the evolution of desktop publishing, you’ve likely crossed paths — directly or indirectly — with his work. As the founder of the Museum of Printing in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and the author of nearly 80 books on typography and printing history, Romano has made it his mission to ensure the story of print lives on.
“We are now the oldest and largest museum dedicated to the printed word,” Romano explained. “We have the largest collection of equipment, technology and printed material. Back issues of all the magazines, samples of type — we even have the entire Linotype library, all the drawings for every Linotype typeface.”
The museum was born out of an effort in the late 1970s to save what was being cast off. “In 1978, I went to the publisher of The Boston Globe and asked if we could preserve some of the equipment they were getting rid of,” he recalled. “Not only did he say yes, but he also found us free warehouse space to store everything in because we had no money or place to put anything.”
From mailroom to milestone at Mergenthaler
Romano’s journey in print began in 1959 when he landed a job at the famed Mergenthaler Linotype Company straight out of high school. “I started in the shipping department and advanced to the mailroom. I like to say that when I started there, I delivered the mail to the president. When I left, I wrote his speeches,” he said with a smile.
At the time, Mergenthaler was a behemoth of the industry, employing over 6,000 people in Brooklyn, New York. It was created, Romano explained, because the newspaper industry needed a faster way to set type. “It took six people to handset one page of a daily newspaper. The Linotype could do it with one person,” he said. “In 1886, Ottmar Mergenthaler introduced the Linotype. It produced a line of type.”
The company’s success rested on the daily wear of its brass matrices, which needed constant replacement. “We would process a million a day,” Romano said. “The company made money every day.”
Desktop publishing and the end of an era
While the Linotype machine revolutionized print in the 19th century, Romano identifies a different moment as the most disruptive force in the industry — desktop publishing.
“Everyone thought desktop publishing was just for cheap and dirty stuff,” he said. “And suddenly, it started to affect newspapers. Reporters were typing on terminals, and that information was going straight to typesetting.”
This shift redefined who had control of the page. “Before that, the union controlled everything because they controlled the machine,” Romano noted. “But desktop publishing put the control back in the reporter’s and editor’s hands. It just changed the world.”
The innovation came slowly at first, but the transformation was inevitable once the Macintosh, PageMaker and PostScript aligned with laser output. “It changed the world,” Romano said. “It bypassed all the processes that used to be part of the mainstream of a newspaper.”
Capturing the imagination of new generations
Romano still gives personal tours to dozens of school groups each year at the Museum of Printing. What continues to surprise him is how captivated children are by typewriters.
“You know what they’re really interested in? The typewriters,” he said. “I love the young kids, especially the very young ones. They’re excited by all of this.”
The museum’s most iconic artifact sits just inside the front door: “The world's first typewriter — the Sholes Glidden, 1873,” Romano said. He explained its direct link to modern keyboards and the Linotype machine itself. “That's where the QWERTY keyboard came from. And all the letters for the word typewriter are in that line.”
These tangible connections to the past, he says, are precisely what make the museum essential. “Print cannot be changed. That’s the great thing about it; it is the best way to record history,” Romano said.
A call to honor journalism’s legacy
As newspapers today struggle with relevance, Romano believes they must reconnect with foundational principles. “Like Ben Bradlee said, ‘Get the facts,’” he emphasized. “I worked with Ben Bradlee when I helped consult on automating the newsroom at The Washington Post. He was a very dynamic editor.”
Romano doesn’t pull punches about the shift he’s seen. “Editors in those days had an adherence to facts, documentation, getting it right and putting it down in cohesive form. I don’t see that today,” he said. “I see long articles imbued with opinion rather than facts.”
For a man who’s chronicled the entire evolution of print media, Romano remains committed to the essentials. “Print is immortal,” he said. “When you look at a newspaper from the 1700s, no one is going to modify it. You can’t say the same about digital content a hundred years from now.”
And that, perhaps, is the heart of Frank Romano’s legacy: ensuring that the printed word doesn’t just survive but remains an anchor in a media world too often swept up by fleeting trends.
|
|
 |
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here