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00:04G'day, I'm Dr Karl. Now over my long and varied career I seem to have picked up quite a bit
00:09of
00:09knowledge. I certainly get asked a lot of questions but don't let that fool you. I do not have all
00:17the
00:18answers. There are plenty of things that I have yet to investigate. Like how regular items are
00:29made. Ah, I missed. I've gone too far. And that's the idea of this series. What an absolutely
00:37amazing arc. I've been incredible. Ah, I did it. Oh look, there it is. A perfect oval.
00:46I want to find out how things work. Oh, this time. Oh look at that. They have the power
00:54to stir the soul. To make us laugh and cry. Find adventure or even love.
01:03Bibliosnia. The love of the soul. Oh, smell of a book. We buy almost 70 million of them each year.
01:11So it's been on both sides of the place at the same time.
01:15Being curious about how the world works leads me to ask all sorts of questions.
01:20This machine is a century old. Yeah. And now I want to know, how do they make books?
01:39Whether it's the nostalgia of that childhood bedtime story snuggled up with mum and dad.
01:48Or a romping, bodice-ripping romance. Or, in my case, a great science fiction, a good book
01:55can be like a warm hug. Despite the rise in digital books, for me, nothing can replace
02:03holding an actual book in my hands. Oh my God.
02:08This is Lagarde Book Printers in South West Sydney.
02:13So this is where it begins. This is where you turn paper into books. You are the light
02:17in the darkness. You are the light of knowledge.
02:19Exactly. Thank you.
02:20I'm seeing a big roll of paper over there. Is that where we start?
02:23That's one of them. Yes.
02:24You're not doing little pages like this?
02:25No, it's 720 millimetres wider.
02:27Wow. So you've printed a whole bunch of pages at once.
02:29That's right. 32 pages at a time. 16 pages on each side of the street.
02:34How big is this place and how many people are there?
02:38We're around 60 employees.
02:39The factory director is Richard, and his love of books started with comics. But today, he
02:46oversees book production from cover to cover.
02:49We produce around 5,000 copies a day soft cover.
02:53Yeah, 5,000 a day?
02:55A day soft cover.
02:55Soft cover and?
02:56And 1,000 a day hard cover.
02:58That is just huge, man.
02:59Nearly all of our books are bespoke.
03:01So you really are an important part of Australian society.
03:11The book has taken thousands of years and clever minds around the globe to make it happen.
03:17It all began about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia when they had the clay tablet, but each clay
03:23tablet had to be written by hand.
03:25The next big jump was the Chinese, around 800 AD or so, and they came up with the idea
03:31of wood blocks, and you put some ink on it, and you press it onto a page, and you've printed,
03:36but there were thousands of characters.
03:38It could take months to prepare a book.
03:41The really big jump was Germany, around 1440, when they realised that you could have movable
03:48metal, metal type, like this, and make a printing press.
03:53In 50 years, they went from thousands of books to over 9 million, and today we have printing
03:59presses that can pump out thousands of pages every minute with nary a movable type, nor
04:05a pen anywhere in sight.
04:11So, how do our ideas make it all the way to the printed page?
04:18This is Digital Command, with Christine at the controls.
04:23She is a lover of modern Australian fiction, but today she's making a 1920s Jazz Age classic.
04:30What we're doing today, we're doing a book called The Great Gatsby.
04:33Okay, all files that go to print come through here.
04:37We're checking to make sure that all the fonts are embedded, all the images that are good
04:41quality, to be suitable and sharp on press.
04:43So, I'm guessing that the numbers refer to the page numbers.
04:46Correct.
04:47How come they're in this sort of almost chaotic, but I'm sure it's not, order?
04:51If we numbered it one to four across, once it's folded out of the press, it would not be
04:57in order.
04:59To understand the strange layout of these numbered pages, Christine has printed off a
05:04dummy page just for me.
05:07So, would you like to have a go at replicating what comes out of the back of the press?
05:11Sure.
05:13Although, I do remember when I was a kid in Wollongong.
05:15Yes.
05:16They had this weird book where there were just these unnumbered pages in a box.
05:21Right.
05:22And I tried to read it, but I couldn't make sense of it.
05:23Okay.
05:24I spent a lot of time trying to get it in order.
05:26It was the only time I ever read a book that didn't have any page numbering on it.
05:29Well, see what you can do.
05:33There's one, and on the other side is two.
05:38I can either fold it, I'll try a longitudinal for fun, keeping the one on the top side.
05:44You know, I did study physics and mathematics, but I wasn't that good at topology, which
05:49is the maths of shapes.
05:52I kind of did badly there.
05:54No.
05:55This whole folding thing is kind of like a literature origami.
05:58I guess so.
05:59Oh, one at the front and 32 at the back.
06:01That's right.
06:02Last fold.
06:03Well, I had to cut that off.
06:04Of course.
06:05Oh, wow.
06:06There you go.
06:06Do that.
06:07Okay.
06:08Well, these are nice scissors.
06:09Are they?
06:09Okay, so I've got one.
06:11You can flick through those.
06:12Oh, my gosh.
06:14Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
06:17So it's in the right order.
06:19Correct.
06:22So, I've got the idea about setting the pages on the computer, but what about the printing?
06:30Unlike the old days, when the lettering was mechanically stamped onto paper, now it's done
06:37chemically, using lasered metal plates and special inks.
06:44So, in the guts of the machine, those 16 pages that we saw on the screen are now being written
06:50on this large lump of aluminium.
06:52Yep.
06:52And they're being written into that blue side.
06:55Yes.
06:55By a powerful infrared laser.
06:57Yes.
06:58Then materials chemistry does its thing.
07:02The first part of this is the developer bath.
07:05Yep.
07:05Like traditional photographic developing, the plates are washed through a chemical compound,
07:11leaving only the text in blue visible.
07:14Oh, well, here it comes.
07:16That's right.
07:16Oh, look at that.
07:17Oh.
07:19It's print.
07:19Yes.
07:20It's print.
07:20The developer's works.
07:21Oh, gosh.
07:22Yeah.
07:27Can't feel anything.
07:29There's no bumpers.
07:30It's dead smooth.
07:30No, it's dead smooth.
07:31And what happens next is ink gets stuck where?
07:35So, where you see the blue on the plate, that is the part of the plate that's receptive
07:41to the black ink.
07:42So, the black ink will stick to that.
07:44So, there's some sort of fancy chemistry that makes it stick?
07:47That's right.
07:48Now, we're ready to print.
07:54I'm going to push it on in.
07:56While proofing and plate making guide the process, printing does the heavy lifting in bringing
08:04the story to the page.
08:07I'm actually going to splice that half-tonne roll of paper into the paper that's already
08:12running while it's running.
08:13Yes, while running.
08:15Wow.
08:15When Min isn't rereading his favourite book, Gone with the Wind, he's the printing press
08:21operator, in charge of feeding this beast with paper, plates and ink.
08:29So, the ink is attracted only to the polymer, where the print is, and nowhere else.
08:34Nowhere else.
08:35I'd love to see how you do it.
08:36How do you do it?
08:36Okay.
08:37I will put it on.
08:39Yeah.
08:42Oh, so it just hooks in there.
08:43Yeah.
08:44Very easy.
08:44Very simple.
08:45Oh.
08:46While so much of bookmaking is automated...
08:50That's the ink.
08:51Surprisingly, inking the plates is not.
08:54It's the weirdest thing.
08:56It's like a really thick, sludgy, honeysol ring.
08:58Yeah.
08:58Man, you've got to work this stuff.
09:00Oh!
09:01This is called offset printing.
09:04It's a century-old technique and involves slathering ink onto rollers.
09:11And then it goes onto the aluminium plate, which has the polyester printed ink, and then it
09:16goes to...
09:17Oh, you see a blue drum over there.
09:18Yes.
09:19What's a blue drum?
09:20Yes.
09:20The blue drum is what we call the blanket.
09:23Yes.
09:23It's difficult to fathom, but the rubber blanket is the key to getting the ink from plate to paper.
09:30It works like a stamp pad, rotating and inverting the text to face the right way up for printing.
09:39What I'm finding hard to believe is that a rubber roller has enough structural integrity to have the fine, tiny
09:46details of, like, the letter A and the tiny dot and the little serifs on the T.
09:51Yep.
09:52So it transfers accurately.
09:53I had no idea that you could do that with rubber.
09:56Yes.
09:57Wow.
10:15This old tech wizardry is whirling out 60 to 70 pages each second.
10:22It's going through so fast, you hardly see it moving at all.
10:26I mean, it's just a blur.
10:29A quick blow dry and the ink is set.
10:34It's beautiful.
10:36I know how tricky folding large form sheets can be, but fortunately, with one simple press of a button, the
10:43machine does it all.
10:44Oh, yeah.
10:45That's the button there.
10:46Press one.
10:48Oh, now it's going through here.
10:49Yes.
10:52Oh, look, it's folding it.
10:54So you've printed them in batches.
10:56Yes.
11:05The great Gatsby.
11:06The quality is so high.
11:08You must know Gatsby, and before I could reply that he was my neighbor, dinner was announced.
11:17In an hour, how many sections can it print?
11:20By hour, as you can see, that's 6,100.
11:26So that means one hour we produce 6,000 books.
11:37For me, there's something about physically holding a book that invites me into the story.
11:47I think that this sensory bond stems from the unique qualities of the paper, paper made from wood pulp is
11:56one of the most widely used human-made materials on the globe.
12:00Over the millennia, there have been a few inferior substitutes, papyrus in ancient Egypt, wax tablets in ancient Greece, even
12:08elephant dung.
12:09But the big breakthrough came in China in the second century when they mushed together bark, hemp and rags to
12:16pave the way for modern paper.
12:19Today, we make over 400 million tonnes of paper each year.
12:23But how do you make the jump from pulp to page?
12:37You need wood, and lots of it.
12:41Here at the Boyer Mill in Tasmania's Derwent Valley, they make up to 20,000 tonnes of book paper each
12:50year.
12:53Paper problem solver, Megan, explains how they turn a log into the finished product.
13:01The wood chips are made from Pinus radiata.
13:05Pinus radiata is a softwood tree species that's grown locally in Tasmania.
13:10Now, while papermaking is known to negatively impact the environment, it remains the accepted production method across the world.
13:22We source our chips from a variety of plantations across the state.
13:31More than 50 trucks arrive every day, each carrying about 36 tonnes of cut trees from sustainably grown forests.
13:47Logs are stripped of bark by tumbling them around in a huge tube before heading to the wood chipper, and
13:54from there, they're taken to be pulped.
14:03We're now in the pulp plant, and we are going to take these and pre-steam them, so to soften
14:10them, and then we're going to use mechanical forces to spread these chips into much finer, finer particles.
14:16So we will end up with lovely, fluffy pulp like this.
14:21The pulping process is designed in such a way as to enhance the strength properties of this fibre, and to
14:28make the paper as strong as possible when we produce our final product.
14:35When we treat this further, we add processed water to this that's been recirculated throughout the process, and we then
14:44can take it to a consistency where we have this lovely porridge-like pulp flurry.
14:52This then goes into our bleaching tower, where we add chemicals to adjust the brightness of the pulp that makes
15:02it suitable for the grade of paper that we're going to produce later on in the process.
15:07The processed pulp is then pumped through huge tubes to the paper machine.
15:16This is the pulp flurry that comes over from the pulp mill.
15:20This is at 1% solid, almost like water, so it's 99% liquid going onto the paper machine.
15:30This watery sludge is sprayed onto two conveyor belts of moving mesh, which act like a sieve to drain the
15:38water.
15:39So this is at 16%. We originally started at 1%.
15:43The main purpose or the main outcome of making the paper is to remove the water.
15:51The soggy fibres are pressed and dried over 52 heated rollers before being smoothed out and flattened until it begins
16:01to look like paper.
16:10From these jumbo rolls, they're cut into smaller ones, ready to be dispatched.
16:28This is the final product.
16:30It's wound onto these rolls at around about 1,000 metres a minute.
16:34At this stage, it is about 94%, 95% fibre.
16:39This ends up as our final product.
16:42Which is later transported to destinations around the country, including our book factory in New South Wales.
17:06Back in the printers, I'm on the binding line to see how these sections, which are collections of pages, are
17:13bound to become a story.
17:18This book has six sections of 32 pages, so six times 32 is 192 pages.
17:24Right, okay.
17:25So we're going to collate them or gather them, and then they're going to feed into our sewing machine.
17:30So you have to have them stacked in section one, then two, then three and four in the right order.
17:35So that's what this machine does, assembles that block correctly?
17:39Yes, that's correct.
17:40Ah!
17:42Once all six sections are collated in order, it's sent for sewing.
17:48And all it takes is an experienced hand.
17:51Finger on the right button, hold it down.
17:53Hold it down.
17:53Or finger.
17:54Here we go.
17:55Holding it down.
17:57The guards have gone up.
17:58Okay.
17:58Yep.
17:59And then?
17:59Okay, finger off.
18:00Off.
18:00There we go.
18:02Off!
18:04Look at that!
18:05The guards are being opened up here, put on the saddle, across here, and the thread's going in.
18:13Why do you sew them?
18:15We sew them for strength.
18:17Oh, yeah?
18:17So section sewing it's called, or thread sewing.
18:19It's actually a cotton thread that we insert into the spine of each section.
18:24So each section has thread through it.
18:25Ah!
18:26With section sewing or thread sewing, the cover can come off the book.
18:30The pages will never ever fall apart.
18:34Now it's starting to resemble a book.
18:41Ah!
18:44Bibliosmia.
18:45The love of the smell of a book.
18:47The smell of a book.
18:47Yeah, so you've got the inks, you've got the lignin in the paper, and I can see, is that the
18:52stitching there?
18:53That's right.
18:53That's right.
18:53The thread goes into the middle of the sections.
18:55They're tiny holes.
18:56Yes.
18:57So I can hang it by this, and it won't come apart.
19:00That's right.
19:00That's right.
19:02Once we put glue on there, it becomes even double strong.
19:07Then, with more twists and turns and a good thriller, the book block weaves its way through
19:13the binding line, where the spine is glued and secured with a strong paper tape strip.
19:20And then it's off to the giant guillotine's for a trim.
19:26But next door is where we start the process by which books are often judged.
19:31The cover.
19:39Commissioned artwork is sent to the factory's humongous colour offset printer.
19:45Using just four ink colours, cyan, magenta, yellow and black, millions of tiny dots are
19:52printed in patterned layers to create a veritable rainbow of different shades.
20:02Now, to make their ink, the ancient Egyptians got the carbon black, literally from a burning
20:08fire, the soot, the black carbon, and then mix it with the gum of a tree to bind it.
20:13Today, we get our carbon black by burning fossil fuels, overwhelmingly petroleum-based products
20:20like oil.
20:21But what if there was a greener alternative?
20:32In Denver, Colorado, a team of scientists is rethinking ink and making it from an unlikely
20:40source.
20:41This is really our big innovation and this is a replacement to carbon black right here.
20:47Molecular biologist Scott and his team are turning algae waste into a renewable replacement
20:54for petrochemical inks.
20:56So, when I look around the world right now, I can say, like, this is coloured with carbon
21:00black, the calculator keyboard's covered in carbon black, tyres, watches, batteries, cosmetics.
21:08Even when I look at the cameras, like this whole thing is black, that's all coloured in carbon
21:12black from the coatings to the plastics.
21:16The natural pigments in algal cells are similar in size to traditional ink pigments, which
21:23makes them an excellent substitute.
21:28So, what we do, instead of using petroleum, we use algae as our starting material.
21:33And we turn algae into a black colourant.
21:36And so, that black colourant that we make can do everything from colouring plastics, to
21:41dyeing your shirt, to making inks that can be printed in a book, for example.
21:47And so, this is a flask of living algae.
21:50This is green algae that has chlorophyll, that uses sunlight to grow.
21:53And this is representative of what it looks like in the algae ponds, where it's grown
21:58at large scale.
22:02More than just pond scum, algae is actually a green powerhouse.
22:07It absorbs carbon dioxide and sunlight to produce oxygen, so we can breathe.
22:18What happens after this is the algae's harvested, so that water is removed, so it basically
22:23becomes kind of like a paste or a cake.
22:26And then we can actually dry that material into a really nice black powder.
22:31And then we can even mill it down, doing dry milling technologies, so basically hitting
22:37those particles against each other to make them, like, even smaller.
22:44So, we're in the second to last stage of making finished ink.
22:48This is a liquid dispersion.
22:50So, it's water with a little bit of additives, and about 30% pigment load.
22:55So, that means it's a lot of pigment, a lot of colourant, and we're mixing it here.
22:59So, it's very similar to, like, baking, right?
23:02So, we have all the ingredients that we add into there.
23:05And so, water, pigment, defomers, very standard ink ingredients.
23:14And then it's pumped through this tube into this bead mill.
23:18And then there's beads that will disrupt and mix together that dispersion even more, so that
23:24all the pigments are mixed in really well and consistent, so you don't see chunks of material
23:29or some pigments that maybe haven't been mixed in as well.
23:34Last year, the team produced around 3,000 kilograms of algae ink, and are now hoping to partner with
23:41other industries to use their algal waste.
23:45What gets me excited about this is that the more material that's used, the more impact we have
23:50in terms of carbon being removed.
23:52And so, that's fine to see as an entrepreneur that started off making ink in a KitchenAid.
24:05So, this is, you call this a board, and this will be the case?
24:09This is going to become the case?
24:11Only amateurs call it a book cover, but you professionals call it a case.
24:14Yes.
24:14That's correct.
24:15Gotcha.
24:15Okay.
24:16I'm back on the case in the factory, and the soft outer cover is all ready for Peter,
24:23who helps make the bones of the book.
24:26Something he's been doing here for more than 38 years.
24:30Printed paper case.
24:31Printed paper case.
24:32Yep.
24:32But believe it, at Harvard there's a book that's way, way back.
24:36A one off printed from human skin, from unclaimed skin, from a cadaver.
24:41That'd be very uncommon.
24:42Yeah, it would be very uncommon, but I believe that's what used to happen in the old days.
24:47They did use human skin to actually bind books.
24:52Thankfully, there's no appetite for skin these days, but our books still need a spine.
24:58But how do you hold them together?
25:00Well, this is what they call a soft strip.
25:02Right.
25:03Like so.
25:03That goes in the middle, and it's all brought together with this paper here, which is what
25:09we call a printed paper case.
25:11So basically what happens is that all these components are brought together as they pass
25:16through the machine.
25:18Rollers push the hard case along until it's laminated with glue.
25:23And I'm guessing cocktail, glass and bottle.
25:27Yeah, that's the general theme of that case, the great gaps.
25:30Right.
25:31The soft cover page is then suctioned and magically pasted and folded around the cardboard carcass.
25:37The bundle's coming out, and as you can see, the cover.
25:40So, Dr. Peter, this is gorgeous, but there's no title.
25:44Yeah, not yet.
25:45Ah!
25:46So what happens here, after I've finished making all the cases, this will be sent outside
25:51to our foil stamping area, and that's where all the gold foil will be put onto the case.
26:05It's book Bling, courtesy of Sujal.
26:09This is a blocking press, which is 100 years old.
26:12What?
26:13100 years old.
26:14This machine is a century old.
26:16Yeah, it's just made in 1925.
26:18And it's still working?
26:19Yeah, it's still working.
26:20Right.
26:21It's still really good.
26:22Ah!
26:23This is the block we just do for the Great Gatsby.
26:26Ah!
26:27So it's all reversed.
26:28Yeah, reversed.
26:29So you can try.
26:30You are the next one now.
26:31Ah!
26:32Okay, so I'll tell you, hold it like this, slide it in on the left-hand side against the
26:37blocks.
26:38Basically, the block makes a cutout in the gold foil.
26:41Keep my fingers out of the way.
26:43Yep.
26:43Then press on the pedal and hold it down.
26:45And wait for the magic.
26:46And by the application of heat and pressure, we have a title.
26:53Ah!
26:53Almost.
26:54So, you've done a blocking.
26:57Wow.
26:58It looks beautiful.
26:59Yeah, it is.
26:59So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
27:03The Great Gatsby.
27:08Lastly, the case is married to the book block.
27:14And finally, I get it, hot off the press.
27:20Look at this, Ed.
27:21A finished book.
27:22For you.
27:23Oh my God, this is your book.
27:24Yes.
27:27Feel the warmth in the spine where we're still hot blue.
27:31Oh, yeah.
27:32They're nice and warm.
27:34It looks beautiful.
27:35A hardcover book.
27:36With a history going back thousands of years.
27:38And you're keeping that history alive.
27:40We love what we do.
27:54Now, my mind has been well and truly boggled by this paper and ink odyssey.
27:59Yeah, I've written a few books, but I have never experienced reels of paper eight kilometres
28:04long rushing under my feet and over my head at several metres per second.
28:09Or thick black treacly ink being transferred to paper by the sheer force of material science.
28:17It's page turning stuff all coming together just so that you can get lost in a good read.
28:24I guess there's nothing else left for me to say except the end.
28:31I'm going to tell you.
28:32Well, no.
28:34Well.
28:48We're going to tell you about that house.
28:51Well, I bet.
28:52We have a good idea.
28:52I'm going to talk to you next time.
28:52I'm going to talk to you next time.
28:52I'm going to get it.
28:53Well, we'll give it a little bit.
28:53And as well, we'll give it a little bit,
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