Printer's devil

"Printer's Devil" is episode 111 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. The title comes from the expression “printer's devil”, an apprentice in the industry. The initial plot set-up is based in part on the well-known deal with the devil motif: a mysterious, seemingly eccentric man (played by frequent Twilight Zone actor Burgess Meredith) brings success to a local newspaper by working as its reporter and linotype operator, eventually revealing that he wants the editor's soul in exchange. This hour-long episode was written by Charles Beaumont, and based on his 1951 short story "The Devil, You Say".

A printer's devil was a young apprentice in a printing establishment who performed a number of tasks, such as mixing tubs of ink and fetching type. Writers including Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Ambrose Bierce, Bret Harte, Sherwood Anderson, and Mark Twain served as printer's devils in their youth along with indentured servants. There are religious, literary, and linguistic hypotheses for the etymology. Printers blamed the mischievous devil Titivillus or confused a name with the legend Faust. Other theories include racism, Gallicisms, or misspellings. ==Etymology== ]] The term "printer's devil" has been ascribed to the apprentices' hands and skin getting stained black with ink when removing sheets of paper from the tympan. In 1683, English printer Joseph Moxon wrote that "devil" was a humorous term for boys who were covered in ink: "whence the Workmen do Jocosely call them Devils; and sometimes Spirits, and sometimes Flies." Once cast metal type was used, worn, or broken, it was thrown into a "hellbox", after which it was the printer's devil's job to either put it back in the job case, or take it to the furnace to be melted down and recast. Many explanations have been given for the religious or supernatural connotations of the term. From the Middle Ages onward, particularly in Catholic countries, technological inventions such as the printing press were often regarded with suspicion, and associated with Satan and the "Dark Arts". Some have suggested that the term was coined as an epithet by scribes who feared that the printing press would make the hand-copying of manuscripts obsolete. Several theories of the term's origins are included below. ==Famous devils== A number of famous persons served as printer's devils in their youth, including Ambrose Bierce, William Dean Howells, James Printer, Benjamin Franklin, Raymond C. Hoiles, Samuel Fuller, Thomas Jefferson, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Joel Chandler Harris, Warren Harding, Harry Burleigh, Lawrence Tibbett, John Kellogg, Lyndon Johnson, Hoodoo Brown, James Hogg, Geoff Lloyd, Harry Pace, Joseph Lyons, Ezra Meeker, Albert Parsons, Adolph Ochs, and Lázaro Cárdenas. Cole Younger worked as a printer's devil on a prison newspaper while he was incarcerated. One famous fictional printer's devil is the title character of Charles Sughroe's comic strip Mickie, the Printer's Devil and its associated single-panel version, Mickie Says. These were syndicated to US newspapers from 1918 into the 1930s. ==References==

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