Doonesbury May 1978 stereotype
This metal plate is a “stereotype” (or “stereo”) created from a paper mold or matrix known as a “flong” or a “mat” (short for matrix). Cartoonists’ art (or any art or photo) would be photographically exposed onto a plate that would be etched. That plate would be put under pressure with a fresh piece of dry flong to produce the first mold.
For syndication of newspaper photos, comics, ads, and other material, many flongs would be produced from a plate—sometimes many hundreds or even more. The flongs were then sent to newspapers, which first cast them as flat stereos. These flat plates were locked up in a page form with other elements, including slugs of type, headlines, ads, and other material.
The page form was then fed into a flong-making apparatus. That flong was finally put into a cylindrical casting machine to produce a metal hemisphere of a printing plate that would be locked onto a rotary press for high-speed newspaper printing.
Doonesbury May 1978 stereotype
This metal plate is a “stereotype” (or “stereo”) created from a paper mold or matrix known as a “flong” or a “mat” (short for matrix). Cartoonists’ art (or any art or photo) would be photographically exposed onto a plate that would be etched. That plate would be put under pressure with a fresh piece of dry flong to produce the first mold.
For syndication of newspaper photos, comics, ads, and other material, many flongs would be produced from a plate—sometimes many hundreds or even more. The flongs were then sent to newspapers, which first cast them as flat stereos. These flat plates were locked up in a page form with other elements, including slugs of type, headlines, ads, and other material.
The page form was then fed into a flong-making apparatus. That flong was finally put into a cylindrical casting machine to produce a metal hemisphere of a printing plate that would be locked onto a rotary press for high-speed newspaper printing.