1. Some Photocomposition Systems

Note: Several phototypesetting systems were (or could be) driven by Teletypesetter-compatible 6-level tape. For more on the TTS (which by its nature was a composite technology the material for which is scattered throughout this site), see the CircuitousRoot cross-reference of TTS Literature Locations.

2. On Photocomposition as a Lost Technology

The miscellaneous collection of material here is incomplete primarily because photocomposition is not my main interest (my focus instead is on metal type, and especially the "hot metal" era of composition ). Someone really should try to preserve photocomposition technology, although it is probably too late already. It is likely to become one of the least known eras of the history of type.

As a technology, phototypesetting took longer to arrive than one might have thought. My guess as to why is that it was harder to do layout and, especially, editing. Metal type survived longer than it might have because it was easy to change. It wasn't until the advent of digital systems driving phototypesetting machines that phototypesetting became easy to edit - and of course it was digital that killed both phototypesetting and metal type.

As a historical technology, phototypesetting is apt to disappear for several reasons. First, it is not really maintainable. It depends on other technologies which themselves require large capital investments but which are disappearing (film, and its chemistry). It also coexisted with early electronic technology, and electronics are notoriously difficult to maintain over even short periods of time. By way of contrast, hot metal machinery can be maintained by machine shop technologies which have been established since about 1800 and which continue today as the basis for technical culture.

Moreover, there is nothing that can be achieved with phototypesetting that cannot be achieved with digital typesetting. (This is not true of metal type and letterpress printing.)

More importantly, though, phototypesetting only existed for a single generation (vs. the nine decades of hot metal from 1890 to 1980), and didn't, it seems to me, capture the heart of that generation the way that hot metal became a way of life.

None of this means that phototypesetting was unimportant, of course - just that it will be lost.

In any event, these Notebooks collect some fragments.

3. On Phototypesetting as a Linking Technology

There are several reasons why photocomposition (and especially phototypesetting) are interesting technologies beyond their own details.

To a metal type enthusiast such as myself it is interesting because it was woven into the last years of commercial metal type. Advertising typography shops, in particular, would often work simultaneously in hot metal type, handset metal type, phototypeset type, photolettering, and wood type. The position of phototypesetting also led to some interesting transitional technologies, some of which may now seem quaint, but others of which were important for the (metal) typefounding industry.

On the (apparently) quaint side, there is the Intertype Fotosetter, a machine which might be the textbook example of a transitional technology.

On the industrially significant side, the ability to make easy changes to metal type and the existence in metal type of faces not available in phototypeset type led to interesting combinations. These were typically uses of previous relief type technologies to "feed into" the same photographic platemaking technologies for offset printing that phototypesetting also fed into.

The Ludlow "Brighttype" system, for example, used hot metal type for composition but then did not print it but instead photographed it, producing as output a photographic image for offset printing just as phototypesetting would. Similarly, both typefoundries and advertising typographers would furnish "Reproduction Proofs" of metal (or wood) type set and printed, carefully, just once. The Reproduction Proof, then, would be photographed and used in the same "workflow" (a more modern term) as phototypesetting. (As an aside, the need for "super precision" proof presses for Reproduction Proofs led to the Vandercook SP series, and these in turn have been repurposed as production presses by the now much smaller art letterpress printing community.)

Phototypesetting played a curiously anachronistic role in the later part of the revival of 19th century ornamented typefaces in the 20th century, through the reproduction and re-issuing of material from private collectors such as T. J. Lyons.

Phototypesetting was also a step in the evolution of automated typesetting. Depending on one's preference, this either began around 1900 with the commercial introduction of the Monotype or around 1928 with the Teletypesetter. Through the 1970s, tape control of type led to three things:

• Systems of geographically distributed composition over telecommunications lines
• The gradual introduction of computer-based editing (e.g., the Mergenthaler CorRecTerm)
• The gradual introduction of computer processing of composition (e.g., the Compugraphic JusTape)

This evolutionary development of automated / computer-aided phototypesetting has never even been identified as a part of the history of technology, much less properly documented. It all disappeared overnight with the introduction of cheap computer-aided lettering (Postscript, the Macintosh) in the 1980s.

Finally, phototypesetting was the final phase of the evolution of type. It was a technology created by people who actually understood type, for users who were simultaneously using other type technologies and who demanded real type regardless of the technology (metal or wood or film). The best of these systems produced true analogues of metal or wood type in photographic technologies. As I argue elsewhere, digital type as a true analogue of metal or wood type is in theory quite possible, but in practice does not exist. Because the developers of Postscript did not understand what type was, and were selling to newly minted "designers" who lacked training as printers and didn't know either, we have no digital type today.