SALAMANCA — Along with changes to the way people obtain their news, the way the newspaper is printed has changed dramatically in the last 150 years, including The Salamanca Press.

Perhaps most notably in recent memory is the change in location of The Press’ production. Although its ads and editorial content are generated in Salamanca, pages are printed at The Bradford (Pa.) Era.

But those familiar with the time when The Press was printed in Salamanca may just be able to walk into the backroom of its 36 River St. office and recall the beehive of activity with dozens of people, a din of noise and the air filled with pungent smells of inks and solvents, paper and photo chemicals.

With a bit of imagination, they might even be able to feel the floor rumble beneath their feet the way it used to when the presses were running.

Recalling the time the paper was printed would include remembering the spot where the printed papers would roll down a conveyor to be collected by a man who would stack them in counted bundles for delivery. This chore, called “catching fly,” called for strong arms and an even stronger back.

In most cases, this was the end of the line for the day’s activities in the building unless there were multiple sections of the paper. In that case, an addition step of “stuffing’ one section into another began. When the stuffing machine failed to cooperate, as it often did, it was “all hands to the pump,” and every able-bodied man and woman, including the paper’s editor in the 1960s and 1970s, Latham Weber, would pitch in.

Weber would be in line with the rest of the Press employees for tasks like these, the sleeves of his white shirt caught up in garters. The work was boring and dirty but had to be accomplished as quickly as possible because, by this time, there were delivery boys lined up at the back door.

BEFORE PRODUCTION WORK could begin on any issue, a “dummy” of the paper was created, outlining the placement of ads, stories and pictures. Both ads and stories had to be drawn — or “laid out” — and the type given specifications for the typesetters to follow.

On old Compugraphic machines there were no display screens, and operators typed blindly. To make it possible for them to make the words look a certain way, every word of type was assigned an equation — like f10 8/9 flx12p. In that example, the font was 10-point (a chart on the wall indicated which ones were which) 8-point over 9-point leading, flush left in a 12-pica width.

All of the type and leading sizes were measured in points, the horizontal measurements in picas and the vertical measurements in inches. Computer and desktop publishing software have made this task significantly easier today.

Even though the presses themselves had been replaced by modern “offset machinery” and “photo typesetters” generating what was then called “cold type,” the production of an issue of The Salamanca Press in the 1970s still called for an army of workers doing specific jobs, working very hard and in complete cooperation with one another.

It was all about teamwork — if reporters didn’t submit a story on time, typesetters couldn’t hand over their text to the paste up department, which couldn’t give completed page flats to the camera department, which couldn’t supply negatives to those who made the metal printing plates that went on the press.

The photo typesetters, for instance, generated the body copy for stories on one machine and the headlines on another. As the person typed, a beam of light passed through one of two plastic strips of type styles, or “families,” inside of the machine, onto photosensitive paper, which then had to be chemically processed. These strips of text were cut apart and arranged on a “flat,” or large sheet of paper, the exact size of the newspaper page. They were all glued together with a wax coating applied to the back by a special “waxing machine,” like a big collage. This was called “pasteup.”

Perhaps those who wonder why newspapers in the 1970s used very few type styles can understand why. If a different type style was desired other than the ones that were installed on the machine, the operator had to turn the machine off and replace it with a different type strip.

The same “pasteup” process was true of the ads on each page, with various illustrations added separately. Each page could be made up of hundreds of bits of paper and tape all stuck together. Corrections had to be carefully sliced into place with an exacto knife, using the skill of a surgeon.

PHOTOGRAPHS COULD took hours to prepare. Before the invention of digital photography, the black and white film had to be processed, prints needed to be made and sized, and “halftones” — that’s a print made of little dots that make a photo printable — had to be made on yet another camera. Since these were all chemical processes, there were drying times factored into each one of these steps.

Adding color to any given page was another whole ball of wax. In the 1970s it wasn’t produced often and, when an advertiser requested it it was often very costly. Full-color presentation in the paper only became routine as technology improved.

The production of the newspaper today, especially the process of getting a page to the pressroom, has changed dramatically. The process of developing photos can be replaced with a cellphone and a quick email, and pages are designed entirely in a single program suite.

But whether it’s typesetting letters or dragging a new text box on a design software program, The Salamanca Press always goes out, just as it has for 150 years.