Photocomposition
The term phototypesetting or phototypesetting was used for a process for typesetting in which the characters to be set were transferred to a carrier film by exposing the characters using an optical (and later optoelectronic ) process with visible light.
The light fell through a stencil with a negative character through an optical system onto a film or onto photo paper. The photo typesetting process is also called "cold" or "weightless" typesetting, since no lines of text were cast, such as B. Linotype and there are fewer mechanical restrictions than in lead type . You could z. B. Put characters into one another or distort writing. The exposure through a stencil was done photomechanically. Photoelectronic variants were called light typesetting and laser typesetting, in which the characters are not generated using a template, but rather a cathode ray tube or a laser beam transferred the characters onto the photo material.
In the phototypesetting, reproduction templates were generated that z. B. could be used after assembly for printing in offset or gravure printing.
history
As early as 1893, Arthur Ferguson was one of the first to receive a patent for a photographic typesetting system. However, the further development of his system is unknown. In the following years, numerous other patents were granted, but almost always without a market-ready result.
The first generation of photo typesetting machines, which actually hit the market in the 1950s, were developed from the existing metal typesetting models. Examples are the Intertype photo setter and the Monophoto . They were technically based on their relatives Intertype typesetting machine and Monotype and retained their basic construction. The difference was that instead of casting equipment, an exposure chamber was installed, in which the matrices with negative characters were exposed one after the other on film. The first photo typesetting machine, a Monophoto, was installed in Germany in 1959.
Second-generation machines were completely independently developed, but worked according to the same optical principle. In 1960, the brass line and font manufacturer Berthold from Berlin presented the two-handed slide type for commercial typesetting . Here the letters were optically transferred from a writing disk made of glass to photographic material with very hard gradation (line film) by means of fluoroscopy . Above all, shorter texts and headings were used, which were then put together in the subsequent assembly - often combined with metal type flags - on the full page. Devices for the quantity set came on the market from 1962 with the Linofilm or the Photon (formerly Lumitype ). Especially with the Linofilm photo typesetting system from the former company Linotype GmbH, the leap to a previously unknown level of performance was achieved.
As a result, the devices were mechanically developed and, above all, supplemented with early electronic components, which soon resulted in a significant increase in speed. Well-known here are the Linotron and Linotronic machines from the Eschborn manufacturer Linotype, as well as the ADS (Akzidenz Dialog System) from Berthold. There were also manufacturers such as Addressograph-Multigraph , Bobst , Dr. Böger (Scangraphic), CG (Compugraphic), Güttinger, Harris, Monotype or Stempel .
Third generation machines were available from 1967. In the case of electronic devices, the characters were no longer transferred to the film using negative font templates. In the light set or laser set now used, the characters were stored digitally in the machine and were exposed onto the film by a cathode ray tube or a laser. The photographic principle was transferred to more powerful, digitally working EDP systems and, above all, the exposure, i.e. the generation of the artwork, was decoupled from the text capture. The ability to generate justified justification in a sentence flag (of any length) made work much easier . From now on, both pagination and spacing to a full line length and word separation could be carried out automatically with the software of the devices. The typesetting quality generated in this way is also not surpassed by today's desktop publishing systems (DTP). The Linotronic 300 from Linotype, the imagesetter that first opened the way for DTP on the basis of the PostScript page description language , and the mechanical precision imagesetter from Berthold (e.g. apu), which are still based on writing disks, are important here.
At the end of the phototypesetting era (towards the end of the 1980s), for example, systems were running on the basis of the then current Sun workstations that could deliver PostScript output. The first approaches to (computer) graphics and EBV (electronic image processing) can also be found here. The fundamentally open architecture and the - even if only rudimentary - text-image integration paved the way for desktop publishing.
The digitization of fonts, i.e. the breaking down of a single letter into individually controllable pixels, already happened in electronic photo typesetting. More precisely, one then spoke of the light set or laser set . The first digital machine came from the engineer Rudolf Hell from Kiel, whose company HELL developed the Digiset .
At the end, the curve shapes of the letters were already described using vectors , which were only finally replaced by the Bézier curves in PostScript. Photo typesetting has been replaced by DTP across the industry today.
Types of phototypesetting machines
After the first generation of the redesigned lead typesetting machines had been replaced, there were different types of devices of newly developed photo typesetting machines. They each specialized in their area of application.
The so-called title setting devices were used when large font sizes were required for headings or posters. These devices were also used in commercial typesetting . With special accessories, you could use it to produce rounds or to distort the font. The title setting devices all worked according to the optomechanical principle. The rays of a light source initially fell through the typeface carrier. The negative characters could be on a writing disk, a type plate or a strip of plastic film. With the help of an optical lens system, the size of the character could then be adjusted before it was exposed on film or photo paper. Most of the systems allowed a visual inspection of the sentence. Either a luminescent film showed the characters last set or they immediately appeared in black on a pre-activated film. The correct character spacing was set manually with the help of thick bars, which had to be lined up to match the optimal spacing; there was rarely an automatic for this. Most of the systems had to be operated in a darkroom , as the photo material was open under the device. However, a few devices could be operated in daylight, with them the film was in a special cassette (e.g. the Typomatic from Stempel). Other bibliographic devices for operation in the darkroom were called e.g. B. Letterphot from Diversum Letterphot, Ministar and Staromat from Berthold.
The photo typesetting machines that were mainly used for typesetting paragraph text were called compact systems or compound systems. With the compact systems , all processing elements from entering the text to exposure were combined in one housing. A central component was an integrated microcomputer for controlling the system (computing, storage, exposure process). The software also ran on the control computer, including, for example, hyphenation and aesthetics programs (exclude, kerning ), font markups or font mixes. The user had a keyboard for text entry and command control of the machine. A viewing window or a screen showed the typed text, formatting and control commands were displayed in a separate line. The lines, italic or bold font and lines could be displayed on a second, separate design screen, but there was no real display of the font actually used ( WYSIWYG ). Only a few network systems were able to do this. Texts could be saved on floppy disk or magnetic tape on an integrated drive. Examples of compact systems are: Cps from Berthold, Linotronic or the CRTronic from Linotype.
The sentence design terminal (SGT) was a special development in connection with Linotype photo typesetting machines . It was developed by the Austrian company Grafotron under its chief developer Hannes Schöllauf. With the help of the SGT, pages could be created directly on a graphical screen. These pages were then converted by the SGT's computer into typesetting commands for a Linotype CRTronic or Linotronic photosetting machine and transferred to the Linotronic or CRTronic for exposure either online or via a data carrier. The device represented an enormous step forward, as laborious and time-consuming coding work could be saved. The SGT was sold throughout Europe by the Grafotron company from 1983 and was also produced and distributed under license by the Linotype company in the late 1980s.
The network systems also had a central processing unit. It could be expanded with several input terminals , punched tape readers, OCR capture or devices for remote data transmission (EDI) through which texts could be fed. The data could then either be prepared for the connected exposure station or output to an external storage drive. The individual parts of the network system could be connected to one another, material data carriers were then not necessary for the exchange of information. One spoke of an "online system". The imagesetters of a composite system mostly worked with cathode ray or laser technology. Examples of composite systems are: Digiset from Hell, Tps from Berthold or Monophoto Lasercomp from Monotype.
Further processing of the sentence product
Typesetting produced using the phototypesetting technique is on film material or photographic paper. In order to produce a printable template, it must be processed further. The individual steps are:
- Corrections: the text exposed on film or paper could no longer be changed. B. cut out a line and glue in a new one,
- Assembly or full-page assembly: individual parts of the text were put together to form a full-page layout,
- Copying over to so-called smooth-page films, with cut edges being covered,
- Sheet assembly or panel assembly with insertion of images.
Various cutting tools and assembly adhesives were used during further processing, for example to insert corrections. The work took place over a millimeter film on assembly films. The workplace was a so-called light table , which illuminated the work surface from below. The job description at that time was officially called the printing form manufacturer, but there was also talk of the photo typesetting / offset assembler.
literature
- Sepp Dußler, Fritz Kolling: Modern typesetting . 4th edition. Verlag Documentation Saur KG, Pullach 1974, ISBN 3-7940-8703-8 .
- Rudolf Schmidbauer: Technical terms photo typesetting and EDP . Verlag Beruf + Schule, Itzehoe 1978, ISBN 3-88013-131-7 .
- Dieter Fiebig: Tables in photo typesetting. Programmed instructions for the sentence makers and work planners . Profession + Schule, Itzehoe 1984, ISBN 3-88013-312-3 .
- Dieter Fiebig, Karl-Heinz Beck: Photo typesetting practice. Programmed instructions for typesetting, printing template and printing form manufacturers . Profession + Schule, Itzehoe 1978, ISBN 3-88013-129-5 .
- Lothar Heise: Photo typesetting - modern text production . VEB Fachbuchverlag, Leipzig 1988, ISBN 3-343-00377-8 .
- Manfred Raether: Linotype - Chronicle of a company name . e-book (PDF); Schöneck 2009.
- Hans Wenck: Photo typesetting techniques . Profession + Schule, Itzehoe 1983, ISBN 3-88013-204-6 .