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Forum The Pub 1970s Typesetting

1970s Typesetting
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1:45 am
February 22, 2011


Eugene Tyson

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http://commfaculty.fullerton.e…..k/dtr5.htm


I'm a little too young to remember this but I thought I'd share anyway. I have seen all this in the Print Museum, but have never seen it working. I've worked with some people that did use this and they had some stories to tell.


And I just learned where "Galley" view comes in InCopy :)


"Ingenious, isn't it, Mr. Bunt? "

3:46 am
February 22, 2011


Jongware

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Gosh — it's just one generation of apparatus before I started. At least I got a proper display and could correct "on-screen"!

My first job in the typesetting dept. was to switch the photographic discs that each contained a single font, i.e.,

1. instruct the Compugraphic to image only Times New Roman

2. insert Times Roman disc

3. run job

4. rewind photographic paper

5. Repeat 1-5 for each of Bold, Italics, Bold Italics, and for any other font.

6. Do Not Make Any Mistake in The Above, or You Have To Start All Over.


It was great fun — nevertheless, Thank you Adobe for InDesign!

3:58 am
February 22, 2011


Jongware

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BTW. These "font discs" weren't anything like this one: http://www.flickr.com/photos/s…..217486415/ (I used those 8″ disks later — they stored about 288K of data). No, they were quite literally "a disc with a font on it": http://www.flickr.com/photos/s…..217486482/


It worked like this: the imagesetter (physically!) moved the disc closer to or further away from the photographic paper to make the image smaller and larger. (Of course there were upper and lower limits to the font size, also in a quite physical sense.)  Then it rotated the disc to the correct character and flashed once or possible multiple times (we could do that to mimick Poor Man's Bold).

It went like "ricketytickety" for several minutes (typically, about 15 min. per would-be page), then rewind and beep for the operator's (me) attention, either to swop disks and re-do for the next font, or declare the job finished and develop and fixate the paper.

6:19 am
February 22, 2011


Eugene Tyson

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Sounds like a blast Jongware lol.


I was just inbetween the camera, film and CPU era. Shooting film and making plates was a lot of fun, gumming plates with a cloth etc.

Then we had computer to film with postscript, then computer to plate with postscript, then eventually computer to plate with PDF, which just made the whole process about 10 times easier.


A guy I worked with used to talk a lot about punching type and how he had no screen and bascially typed blind.


Then again told me how he got free pints of milk every day as he stood over the molting lead everyday too.

"Ingenious, isn't it, Mr. Bunt? "

10:52 am
February 22, 2011


David Blatner

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Amazing! But I remember chiseling plates out of granite that we had to quarry ourselves! Using only our teeth! :)


No, actually, my background is all digital. But because my stepfather worked at Xerox PARC, I had access to laser printers and Alto computers. So I started "typesetting" around 1979. I remember my 7th grade teachers would never write edits on my school papers because they looked like they had all been professionally typeset. Old software such as Gryphon (color vector drawing program) and early color laser printers… amazing.

But later, I started collecting type paraphanalia. I have a small collection of wood type, metal type, photo type, and other fun things.

co-host, InDesignSecrets.com

11:58 am
February 22, 2011


jealdridge

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I worked in typesetting roughly during this period. I used to set type using a PhotoTypositor manufactured by Visual Graphics Corp. Does anyone else remember this machine? <a href="http://frugal-living-way.com">frugal living</a>

2:43 pm
March 4, 2011


Larry Miller

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> using a PhotoTypositor manufactured by Visual Graphics Corp. Does anyone else remember this machine?


I remember the results. Usually a strip of paper with type, black on white. The better typesetting shops would do line breaks and proof those on paper, often reeking of ammonia. No fun when you opened the envelope and took an unintended whiff, delivered by a foot or bike messenger (some say courier), containing a bunch of proofs. The Typositor provided type in many sizes, mostly used for display, and had the advantage that a good typographer could space it all properly. Or come fairly close. Problem was they did not all space characters well. But it was fun pasting down a proof, cutting as necessary to correct the spacing, then send it out, via foot or bike messenger, for a photostat, earlier first a negative then a positive, later a DP (direct positive) delivered hours later or next morning, again by a foot or bike messenger.

Given that history, when people complain about a computer's speed, I chuckle.

9:10 am
March 22, 2011


David Blatner

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This article by Gene Gable about Letraset really brought back great memories.

http://www.creativepro.com/blo…..t-was-king

The comments that people left are also precious.

co-host, InDesignSecrets.com

4:01 pm
March 22, 2011


Tom B

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Post edited 4:02 pm – March 22, 2011 by Tom B

I remember all of this, when I first started every designer had to learn to spec type, use of "press type" was second nature, as was being well versed in the use of a horizontal camera and knowing your way around a dark room and developers.  Oh, and the Pocket Pal was your best friend (remember those?)  My first experience with a "computerized typesetter (I use that term loosely) was with an IBM compset 500 and then the everpopular Compugraphic where the fonts were on long film strips you would load around a drum.   Man I miss those waxers, non-photo pens and burnishers. Or how about Rapidograh pens, (still use those) those were indespensible.   My first job was to set headline type with press type, enlarge or reduce it on the camera.   Ahhh, good times.  By the way, I started designing in 1975.  :)

10:40 pm
March 22, 2011


Gorillamo

Jackson, Mississippi

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Post edited 10:42 pm – March 22, 2011 by Gorillamo

Hey Jongware,

You should say "It was great fun — nevertheless, Thank you Aldus for PageMaker!" although MacPublisher really started things off a year earlier, in 1984. THOSE were heady days! Talk about riding the crest of a wave.

But let's give 100 points to anyone who has seen a Linotype machine in operation. And not just as a museum demonstration!

Gorillamo

6:09 am
March 23, 2011


David Blatner

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Ah yes, until about 8 or 9 years ago a printer friend of mine ran a hot metal Linotype in his shop. It was just faster for him to knock out small letterpress jobs than it was to do it digitally. It was great fun to see, but after a lifetime of using it, I believe he had significant lead poisoning, which was sad. He has retired now.

My first lintotype was the Linotype 100 imagesetter. It was pretty exciting, trying to pin register color separations by visually lining up the paper between two markers as it came off the roll. (To date myself, one of my first summer jobs during college — in 1986 or 1987 — was working at LaserWrite in Palo Alto, California, one of the first service bureaus in the world. That's where I started learning PostScript, QuarkXPress, PixelPaint, etc.)

co-host, InDesignSecrets.com

8:07 am
March 23, 2011


whirlwind

Colorado

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What a trip down memory lane, and it makes me treasure InDesign even more! I'm old enough to remember using paper punch tape (which made great confetti), and lets not forget rubber cement, border tape, and rubylith. A Pocket Pal still sits on my bookshelf. As a camera operator, I thought I'd died and went to heaven when introduced to PMTs. I did a happy dance the day our headliner went into the dumpster. It's amazing how far we've come, and I'm loving every minute of it!

9:06 am
March 23, 2011


Gorillamo

Jackson, Mississippi

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. . . and if progress is exponential, we ain't seen nothin' yet!

11:14 am
March 23, 2011


Gorillamo

Jackson, Mississippi

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Thought you guys might like to see two of my favorite (and still indispensable) graphics tools. Although I've been designing on computers since 1986, I still turn to these old friends on a daily basis.

9:50 am
March 24, 2011


SueKnopf

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Famous last words. In 1987 or so I was on the advisory board of the graphics department at the local tech school. Somehow I, with my Mac SE and dot-matrix printer, sat at a table with the president of a printing company, the composing department head of the daily newspaper, tech school instructors, and others. When I introduced myself and described my equipment, I could see their somewhat condescending smirks. Someone asked, "What about this new desktop publishing idea? Should we be teaching it?" The answer? "Well, maybe we could teach one class, but we're always going to have the phototypesetters." A year later the phototypesetters sat in the back of the lab, unsellable paperweights.

10:31 am
March 24, 2011


Gorillamo

Jackson, Mississippi

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One has to be very careful what one smirks at!

I've tried numerous times to sell the idea of a web site to one of my clients, but he is still of the mind set that if he doesn't understand something, "It wouldn't be of any use to me," he smirks. (He actually smirks!) He refuses to see the value in this form of marketing. And yet, he bills himself as a marketing consultant!

But then, he also misses the days of cold type (AND hot type, for that matter!)

I've since given up on discussing this technology with him. Of course, one day he'll come bursting into my office, eyes all agleam, raving about this new way to get the information about his consulting business out to prospective clients! "What is this new approach?" I'll innocently ask him. "Why, the World Wide Internet!" he'll announce, proud of his mastery of the lingo. [sigh]
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