13 Oct
2015
13 Oct
'15
12:28 p.m.
On 2015-10-13 12:06 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
the 1970s in high end phototypesetting machines, such as the Autologic
APS-5 and the Linotron 202. I think the idea was to make high resolution
CRT display feasible by having to worry only about accuracy in one
coordinate, not two. The film movement (actually paper, essentially a
roll of photo-print paper) would provide the other coordinate. Unlike
the Tektronix machine you describe, phototypesetter output was developed
in essentially the same manner as photographic print, with developer and
fixer chemicals, in a machine that would take the paper casette as input
and produce the developed/fixed/dried roll of finished material coming
out the other end. The roll of paper would then be cut to separate the
individual columns and articles, and pasted onto cardboard page size
boards to produce the finished layout.
Excellent description. I spent a few years running a Linotronic L100,
one of the first PostScript imagesetters, capstan feed. It worked on the
same principle but instead of a CRT it used a laser and a fast rotating
mirror to scan the paper in 1 dimension. It could, at a pinch, expose
film directly, but struggled to get proper density. If I recall
correctly the bromide paper roll was about 12" wide.
A friend in Sydney, Australia, has this hardware now, but if there are
serious collectors in that region who really want it, I think he could
be persuaded to part with it.
On Oct 13, 2015, at 11:52 AM, tony duell <ard
at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I've never seen that printer. But the tube you describe was common
in The only other terminal I worked
with that could do that was a Tektronix storage scope terminal (4010
or 4014, IIRC). The Tek printer wasn't built-in, but it did take a
scan of the live screen, so that was similar. The paper was
silver-grey and I remember it coming out wet too. Everything else I
worked with was either thermal or dot-matrix impact, and could only
capture text as it arrived at the terminal, not a screen image.
The tektronix printer (or 'copier' as they called it) was photographic. The
paper was light-sensitive, and went past the screen of a 'flat' CRT (I think
it only had deflection plates for one axis, the 'deflection' in the other
direction coming from the paper movement). It really was an odd-looking
tube.
At some point, there were machines that could produce page-width
paper, but those
were rather expensive and useful only once you got
software to do the page layout on the computer instead of manually in
the composing room.
I believe that phototypesetting is obsolete now, though it hung on
surprisingly
long, certainly into the 1990s -- because laser printout
was high enough resolution to read, but not good enough to use as the
master for offset printing. I think phototypesetters were good to 1000
dpi or thereabouts, unlike the 300-600 dpi of the first decade or so of
laser printers.
The Linotronic series launched with PostScript by 1987 and produced
"camera ready artwork" from the Macintosh printing system over AppleTalk
(PageMaker, etc, or even MacWrite with its horrendous typography) or
anything else over serial (FrameMaker, TeX, what-have-you).
I just found an Australian Dollar price list from 1987 -
* L100 AUD $69,250
* L300 AUD $96,000
The L100 had switchable resolutions up to 1270dpi and the L300 went up
to 2540dpi - more than sufficient for offset.
The subsequent generation of imagesetters exposed film (requiring higher
exposure and allowing the re-photography step to be eliminated) and
secured the film on a spinning drum, allowing industrial standard
registration. The capstan feed setters could not offer very high
registration accuracy. The first imagesetter I used of this type was the
Scangraphic circa 1992 - apparently the first PostScript drum imported
to Australia - and it was superb.
--Toby
paul