The Gender of the Machine

Abstract

In the 19th century, the “typographical Ancien Régime” gave way to the era of industrial print production. Though printing changed rapidly in the first half of the 19th century, the typesetter's task of assembling lead characters changed but little before the introduction of linotypes at the turn of the 20th century. Such stability of the technical system, generally explained by the imperfection of mechanical typesetting methods, is actually rooted in the complexity of social relationships and cultural issues raised by the new processes. In France, as in England, the first typesetting machines developed during the 1840s were associated early on with women's work. Manufacturers played on this identification to promote machines that allowed them to use a cheap workforce. From their side, printing workers harnessed the sexuated dimension of technical artifacts to preserve their work space. Neither an inexorable transformation nor technical impossibility, the change in typesetting methods finally emerged from a slow process of acclimatization and negotiation between the different actors of the print world.

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