View from S showing part of WSW and SSE fronts from yard

Description View from S showing part of WSW and SSE fronts from yard

Date 8/12/1970

Collection Papers of Professor John R Hume, economic and industrial historian, Glasgow, Scotland

Catalogue Number SC 772462

Category On-line Digital Images

Scope and Content Foundry, Potterrow, Edinburgh This shows the back of Miller & Richard's type foundry, seen from Chapel Street. The buildings seen here were built in the late 19th century. Note the external hoists, used for handling the heavy type, which is made from a lead alloy. The scale of the foundry shows the level of demand for the product. Miller & Richard were by 1945 the only type founders in Scotland, and had a high reputation for the quality of their type. The letterpress printing industry virtually disappeared in the 1960s and 1970s with the perfection of offset lithography, and with it Miller & Richard as a business. For many years letterpress printing was one of Edinburgh's largest and most distinctive industries. Latterly much of the typesetting was done on monotype machines, in which the type to form individual characters is cast in the sequence of the text, but pre-cast type was also much used. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

External Reference H35/70/69/41

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/772462

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap