4 ms·

I guess this is one generation before my own experience, I worked in the late 1970s and early 1980s with CompuGraphic 7500 machines[1]. This is an integrated u

I guess this is one generation before my own experience, I worked in the late 1970s and early 1980s with CompuGraphic 7500 machines[1]. This is an integrated unit that accepts the keyboard input, shows the marked-up input on the display (not WSYWIG, of course, but you can see the layout commands and check the spelling), can save and load files onto 8-inch floppies (to the left of the screen), and uses the same photo-typesetting scheme that's described in the article to produce the actual output, the big box to the left of the screen/keyboard contains a drum with filmstrips on it, and has the strobe system that flashes the letters one at a time onto photosensitive paper that gets fed into a light-tight cassette that you pull out of the little door there and then run through a developer/fixer machine. The CG 7500 could load two font families at a time (one on each of two filmstrips), and could mix and match font sizes, also, which sounds like it's also an advance over the 2961 unit in the article. This was in a graphic-arts company mostly focused on advertising, although we also did a bit of legal work from time to time. We occasionally had rush orders, but we didn't have the constant relentless deadline pressure that newspapers have. [1] http://www.forgottenartsupplies.com/?what=artifacts&image_id=828 http://www.forgottenartsupplies.com/?what=artifacts&image_id...

bane 9y ago
I grew up in a family printing business and remember machines much more like the CompuGraphic 7500 in their production process than what's here. By that point they loaded off of 5.25" floppies (two drives IIR) and had two screens, a green command screen and a vertical preview screen that could render a font or two and some text before committing it to photographic paper printout. They kept it until well into the late 90s even though they had generally moved on to a PC-based workflow in prepress much earlier. Doing odd typesetting jobs when their department guy was out was how I got my start in computers. The next page on the site showing the platemaking process is also incredibly familiar: http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/woverbeck/dtr6.htm http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/woverbeck/dtr6.htm I can still smell and feel the industrial soap they used to get to wash up after prepping the plates. There's a lot of work that's gone into preserving early printing, but I think that this era really deserves some more love as well. So many creative ideas went into the process that gave us cheap consumer ready mass printing.

bane 9y ago

I grew up in a family printing business and remember machines much more like the CompuGraphic 7500 in their production process than what's here. By that point they loaded off of 5.25" floppies (two drives IIR) and had two screens, a green command screen and a vertical preview screen that could render a font or two and some text before committing it to photographic paper printout. They kept it until well into the late 90s even though they had generally moved on to a PC-based workflow in prepress much earlier. Doing odd typesetting jobs when their department guy was out was how I got my start in computers. The next page on the site showing the platemaking process is also incredibly familiar: http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/woverbeck/dtr6.htm http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/woverbeck/dtr6.htm I can still smell and feel the industrial soap they used to get to wash up after prepping the plates. There's a lot of work that's gone into preserving early printing, but I think that this era really deserves some more love as well. So many creative ideas went into the process that gave us cheap consumer ready mass printing.