[Marxism] Times obit for David Weiss

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http://nytimes.com/2005/08/16/movies/16WEISS.html?pagewanted=print
 The New York Times
August 16, 2005
David Weiss, Who Filmed Hot Type's Last Days, Dies
By MARGALIT FOX

David Loeb Weiss, a retired proofreader at The New York Times who
directed the award-winning 1980 documentary film "Farewell, Etaoin
Shrdlu," which chronicled the last, clangorous night that the paper
was put out using hot-metal type, died on Thursday at his home in San
Diego. He was in his early 90's.

Mr. Weiss's companion, Vivian Gilbert-Strell, confirmed the death.

Made in collaboration with Carl Schlesinger, then a Linotype operator
at The Times, the film followed the issue of July 2, 1978, as it
was "put to bed," as the nightly ritual of typesetting, composing and
printing was known.

Shot at the newspaper's offices on West 43rd Street, the 28-minute
documentary captured a process that was largely unchanged since 1886,
when Ottmar Mergenthaler invented the Linotype machine. The invention
revolutionized printing, allowing metal type to be set a line at a
time from a keyboard instead of painstakingly by hand, one letter at a
time.

"Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu" caught the din of the composing room, where
dozens of Linotype machines clattered away, spitting out lines of
type - printed backward - that were locked into metal page forms. The
forms were used in making the 40-pound page plates, or stereotypes,
from which the paper was printed.

The film's title represents the "words" formed by striking the first
12 keys, in two vertical rows, at the left of the Linotype keyboard. A
compositor would strike those keys to fill out a garbled line of type,
indicating that it should be discarded. On occasion, the offending
line found its way into the paper, "etaoin shrdlu" and all. With the
advent of computerized typesetting, "etaoin shrdlu" disappeared from
the paper forever.

David Loeb Weiss was born in Warsaw in either 1911 or 1912, and came
to the United States with his family as a child. He earned a
bachelor's degree from New York University and a master's in political
science from the New School for Social Research. He rode the rails a
hobo and had a variety of jobs, among them dishwasher, busboy, waiter,
union organizer, merchant seaman and teacher.

Mr. Weiss, who was married three times, was divorced once and widowed
twice. Ms. Gilbert-Strell is his only immediate survivor.

Mr. Weiss's other documentary films include "Profile of a Peace
Parade" (1967) and "No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger" (1968), about
Muhammad Ali.

    * Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company



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