Official information cast in lead

One of the most popular employees at the government printing press when this was located at the Grandmasters Palace in Valletta and later at St James Cavalier, also in the capital city, was Guzeppi Farrugia, endearingly known as Zeppi tac-Comb.

His job was to ferry the "slugs" up to the roof of the palace. Each line of copy was made of lead and after use these slugs were melted to be used again by linotypists.

On the palace roof, Mr Farrugia fired a forge in which he melted the slugs and poured the molten lead in moulds shaped like ingots for the lead to be re-used. A linotype (a trade name) was a typesetting machine operated by a keyboard and cast an entire line of text as one solid slug of lead. The lead was melted in a sizeable pot forming part of the linotype machine.

The government printing press changed over from letterpress and the use of lead to offset in the early 1990s.

"The government printing press was the last press on the island to hang on to linotype," Mr Sammut recalled.

When he joined the civil service as an apprentice, Mr Sammut received a salary of £13 a month. In 1971, after applications were issued for the post of printer, Mr Sammut sat for the exam and placed first. At that time, the staff complement at the press was about 110; today it amounts to 60.

"We were responsible for big print jobs such as the national lottery tickets, the results of that lottery and the applications for tickets because tickets were sold world-wide.

"At that time there were many agents selling national lottery tickets to punters in other countries.

"We used wooden fonts to print posters.

"In the case of the weekly lotto, we used to print 1.25 million tickets a week in quadruplicate. This job was so extensive that two employees from the now defunct Lotto Department spent almost all of their time at the press."

In 1975, the press migrated to St James Cavalier and spent 20 years there. It is now at the Marsa industrial estate.

"The Cavalier was not an ideal place for a press because the machines was laid out on several floors. There was only one lift which when out of order meant hardship for the workers because they had to carry each page containing so many slugs of lead.

"This was particularly tiring especially when we were preparing voluminous works such as the electoral register.

"The same applied to the printing of the national budget which meant printed copies of the English and Maltese versions of the speech by the Minister of Finance, the estimates and the economic survey."

When printing the budget, the telephones at the press were disconnected to avoid leaks to the media and to importers, especially details about the price of food and alcoholic beverages that could have changed.

"We were ferried home by charabanc, at times getting home two hours after one left the press because the driver had so many stops to offload passengers along the way!

"It was not unusual for a policeman to call for you at home to get back to the press in order to tackle an urgent job."

Another big job faces the government printing press later this year. It will be responsible for the printing of all letterheads and most of the stationery for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting to be held in Malta in late November.

The population census will also be a challenge to the printing press, having to print about 250,000 questionnaires with each questionnaire consisting of 20 pages.

The printing press has a formidable history going back to June 28, 1756 when the Order of the Knights of St John set it up.

The first copy of the Government Gazette was printed in 1813 and, although Malta was then under British rule, the gazette was printed in Italian, the language of the courts and of the government for so many centuries.

"At that time, the gazette was completely hand set letter by letter. Today's gazette has more or less kept to the original layout. Although computers have taken over many of the manual tasks, there will always be the need for hard copies.

"It is true, though, that lotto tickets, the Gozo Channel ferry tickets, bus tickets and museum tickets are now printed on the spot by specialised machines.

"Also, before the advent of computers, the Government Gazette had a print run of 3,000 copies but the demand has now gone down to 1,000 copies, most probably because the information is available online.

"Alas, computers have taken away the joy and pride of the master printers of the pre-digital world.

"One of toughest tests for a printer in those days was to print a court of arms of Malta in a four colour letterpress process and then add gold and silver. If you were capable of printing such a crest, you were capable of printing anything."

Reminiscing about the good old days, Mr Sammut explained that each apprentice used to be assigned to one of the master printers who was paid an extra shilling (the equivalent of today's 5c) daily for having an understudy.

"Also because of the amount of lead in the air emanating from the linotype machines, printers were given half a bottle of milk everyday and we had our blood tested for lead content every three months.

"There were times when the three months turned into six. At the time the level of awareness about health hazards at work was nothing like it is today," Mr Sammut recalled.