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The skills required to turn hot lead into letters on a Linotype machine or to position a strip of cold type on a grid board were easily transferrable.

He also worked through a printing technique transition to “cold type,” based on photographic printing that speeded up production and cut costs.

Dr Michael Head, at the University of Southampton, said the development and impact of the novel coronavirus was "clearly very different from the existing 'common cold' type coronaviruses".

They transitioned to cold type, when text on lengths of photographic paper was cut and pasted onto lined boards.

They were doing this in preparation for what turned out to be the glacially-paced change from hot to cold type, tumbling into the … gulp … digital age.