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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

photo of Doug Wilson

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, November 19, 2012 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Doug Wilson

"The Linotype Machine"

ABSTRACT -- Doug Wilson will share about the story of the greatest invention you have probably never heard about: the Linotype typecasting machine. At the end of the 19th century, thousands of people were trying to speed up the composition of printable type. No one could figure it out until a German immigrant in Baltimore, Maryland had a stoke of genius.

Using clips from his recently released documentary film, Doug will share the struggles and achievements of an inventor who was a peer of Edison, Ford, and Firestone, and a competitor with Twain. The Linotype was the Twitter of the early 20th century and revolutionized the way the world communicated.

SPEAKER -- Doug Wilson is a designer, filmmaker, art director and teacher that has a passion for letterpress. Born and raised in the Midwest, he has travel in his blood and has visited five continents. With a love of hand-painted signs and a Polaroid camera, he has documented vernacular typography all across the United States.

He is proprietor of The Scarlet Letter Press - printing posters on his Vandercook SP-20 Proof Press. He has taught typography as an adjunct professor and worked at an advertising agency. Doug directed the feature-length documentary, Linotype: The Film.

He has a BFA in Graphic Design and Art History from Missouri State University and has received a Type Design Workshop Certificate from the Basel School of Design. He also spent a summer as a letterpress artist in residence at L'Association pour le Patrimoine Industriel in Geneva, Switzerland.

Doug currently lives in Springfield, Missouri with his wife and an ever-expanding collection of books.


Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov