Digiset

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The Digiset is a digital electronic photo typesetting system from Hell for the production of typesetting. It was built from 1965, making it the first system to generate signs electronically. In the digital process, no negative stencils of the characters are illuminated, but a cathode ray tube generates the character and exposes it to the photographic material. The Digiset is a network system that can be expanded with several input terminals and storage drives. More than a million characters per hour can be exposed, which clearly outperforms previous machines with optomechanical principles in terms of typesetting performance.

Working principle

The device consists of four elements: the input unit, the central control part, the recording unit and the photo unit.

Not only are texts read in via the input unit, but the required fonts are also digitized. There are special font cards on which the respective character is depicted by a grid of lines. A special Klischograph (an associated optical scanning device) reads the card and scans the black and white values ​​of the character. It saves the values ​​and creates a punched tape that is read in by the Digiset.

In the central control part , the data are received by a decoder, which stores and manages font data, text and control commands separately from one another. From here, the characters are sent to the recording unit with the correct size and the corresponding control commands.

In the recording unit , the cathode ray tube is controlled with the above data. The tube draws the characters on the photographic material in vertical lines. The black / white values ​​of the digitized writing card are used.

The photo unit consists of the optics, the camera with film cassette and the developing system. An area of ​​130 × 30 mm with several lines can be exposed without having to move the photo material. A two-bath development system is integrated for photo paper. The record material is output ready for further processing. After exposure, films are recorded in a second cassette and developed separately.

development

Later Digiset models were also able to develop films directly on the machine. The internal memory grew and could hold more fonts. The model 50 T 22 could expose the area of ​​a DIN A4 page without moving the material. The Digiset LS 210 uses a helium-neon laser to generate characters. The character is broken down into raster points, a RIP calculates the representation.

swell

  • Sepp Dußler, Fritz Kolling: Modern typesetting . 4th edition. Verlag Documentation Saur KG, Pullach 1974, ISBN 3-7940-8703-8 .
  • Lothar Heise: Photo typesetting-modern text production . VEB Fachbuchverlag, Leipzig 1988, ISBN 3-343-00377-8 .
  • Hans Wenck: Photo typesetting techniques . Profession + Schule, Itzehoe 1983 ISBN 3-88013-204-6 .