On July 29, 1974 The New York Times, The New York Daily News, and other newspapers reached an agreement with the Typographical Union No. 6 to allow the introduction of automation of typesetting. The new contract freed the publishers to introduce automation while effectively guaranteeing job security to 1,785 employees and full-time substitutes, 810 of whom were at The Times.
Remarkably, the last issue of The New York Times typeset by Linotype was almost exactly four years later, July 2, 1978, an event captured in the documentary, Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu:
On the following day the The Times converted to photocomposition. Before the conversion The New York Times operated 160 Linotype machines.
