Keeping a printing tradition alive
More and more train tickets are printed by computers; the traditional card ticket is today rarely used. The Aeschbacher company in Worb near Bern still cuts these and prints them with lead type.
Once upon a time card tickets were one of most popular collector’s items for children, travelling by train or bus with their parents. Today, most tickets are printed by computer or appear digitally on a Smartphone or Tablet.
The smell of printing ink fills the air at Aeschbacher, where visitors travel back in time to when lead type was still set by hand. Up to three million of these tickets, named after their British inventor, Thomas Edmondson (1792-1851), are cut and printed in Worb every year. Customers are mainly special tourist railways or shipping companies in Switzerland or abroad. (Images: Gaetan Bally, Keystone)
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