A few months ago, the local print shop I've worked at for almost 11 years now had their annual Christmas party and because we've grown so much, JP Cheney (aka boss man), told the story of how 3 generations ago, Roswell Printing began. I'll attach the video at the end for anyone who wants to watch the full story but the overview of it is:
Leonard E. Cheney was apart of a barbershop quartet and they needed posters. He went to one of the printshops to get pricing for the flyers and became fascinated with how the letterpress worked. On January 1, 1951, L.E. Cheney purchased some equipment and Roswell Printing Company was established as a "one man" shop. Since then, it's gone through 3 generations, grown to 12 workers, and in 2012, JP purchased the business from his dad, Len Cheney and we became Southwest Printers, LLC running almost 500 print jobs a month.
You can also read more of that history here.
I love watching the presses work and digging through all the old wooden letters. When we switched our company over to SWP, it was time for many of the old jobs to be thrown out. We found business cards from the 70s, letterheads from the 80s, and I even found my grandfathers business papers for his veterinarian company.
Random fun fact: Back in the 1880s, there was only a certain amount of people that could hired to work at the newspaper and time became an important factor to typesetting the articles. And because of this, rapid typesetters aka the "Swifts" would hold typesetting races that became entertainment to the people. William C. Barnes, one of the last of the champion racers before technology took over and hand setting was superseded, managed 2000 ems (letters) an hour for the 1886 national typesetting championship in Chicago. He would also set blindfolded and with his type cases reversed. The average was about 700 letters per hour. Typesetting really is a lost art. If you want to read more about the swifts, click here.