Just in time for Christmas shopping, a letter arrived this week from the Harris Corporation, makers of the typesetting equipment we use at the Gazette to produce the words you’re reading now.

An introductory note explained that the Composition and Controls Division at Harris has cut prices on a number of spare parts -- “items which exceed our forecasted requirements.” We think that means nobody’s buying them.

Almost in time for last week’s printing deadlines, the Vineyard Gazette dragged its typesetting technology, kicking and scratching, into the age of high-speed computers. Except for a few pieces of the almanac listings, all the news in the April 16 edition was typeset on a microprocessor-based system manufac­tured by the Harris Corporation.

This morning’s Gazette is the first printed on our new Goss Community offset press. It’s also the first to be printed on the Island in the familiar South Summer street shop since January 31, when we abandoned the hot metal-letterpress printing process in use at the Gazette for half a century. Since then the paper has been printed for us by commercial printers in Arlington.

All of the photographs in this edition of the Gazette and many of those last week were made into halftone engravings right in the Gazette office on a Fairchild Cadet Scan-A-Graver. The machine was installed last Tuesday by Harrison Morgan and Robert Freeman of the Fairchild Graphic Equipment Corp., and Mr. Morgan stayed on the Island through Wednesday to instruct staff members in its use, and Mr. Freeman was back this week to give further instruction.

The process of moving the plant of the Vineyard Gazette to the new office began on Friday, immediately after the issue of last week had come from the press. Only one piece of equipment was moved, the big Duplex press, and the operation of taking it apart, moving the pieces, and setting it up again occupied all working hours until Tuesday. The press was tested on Wednesday, and performed well in its new surroundings.

The moving of other machinery will begin this afternoon, but the plant will not be entirely transplanted for a week or two more.

Purchase of the former Isaiah Mills house at the corner of Davis Lane and South Summer street, Edgartown, by the Vineyard Gazette was completed yesterday. Plans for use of the property are still in a formative stage, but it will be occupied by the Vineyard Gazette as an office some time this fall. The premises are separated by one house from the present Gazette office, owned by Philip S. Pent, which has been occupied for seventeen years.

The linotype machine ranks with the invention of the printing press itself in importance to the printer of today. And now the Vineyard Gazette has bridged the gap from the old era to the new.