Curious. What's a nick? Is it a piece of broken type?

It's the notch at the base of an individual piece of type that lets allows a compositor to know (by touch alone) whether it's facing "up" or "down".

Yes! Keep type alive! When I first started working, it was in printing and publishing operations that used the old Linotypes augmented with handset display type, etc. Everything about it fascinated me and does to this day. I stumbled onto your blog by accident, but it was sweet to find color photos of students TODAY still learning how it was done sans computer.