atex system in Houston

[Paul Koning]

> On Mar 14, 2019, at 2:02 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
>> ...
> 
> Personally, I think it would be really neat if some of these
> computer museums could collect complete end-product systems
> and make them run.  Can you imagine showing a bunch of students
> how a newspaper was produced using a PDP-11 and one of these
> Tek terminals feeding a real printing press.
> 
> bill

I agree it would be really neat.  The odds of pulling it off are slim, unfortunately.  Consider the Typeset-11 system.  There were under 100 sold world-wide, I think.  Each was a custom turnkey system, set up to talk to a particular model phototypesetter with the specific fonts that the customer ordered.  The terminals are application-specific too.  I'm not sure if a VT-61/t can be used as a VT52, it wouldn't surprise me if the answer were "no".  And a VT-71 won't do anything unless it's first loaded with operating firmware from the host, which came packaged with Typeset-11 (or a later VMS typesetting product whose name escapes me).

That said, if anyone were to come across bits & pieces of Typeset-11 (TMS-11) I'd be quite interested in dusting off old brain cells to help bring it back to life.

Phototypesetters of that era were often quite big machines.  At DEC we had an Autologic APS-4, which is a gray box about 6 feet on the sides.  A fair number of customers had its successor the APS-5, which is somewhat smaller but not a whole lot.  The smallest machines I remember were the Mergenthaler Linotron 202, about the size of a large high speed copier.  Later models of that one supported PostScript, I think, but the Typeset-11 I worked on predates all that.  Half a generation earlier and also fairly small would be optical disk based machines, where the letter shapes are kept as shapes on a spinning glass disks, with a flash bulb to expose the chosen letter onto the film via a set of lenses that produces one of a number of font sizes.  And I still remember the very early model CRT based phototypesetter at the San Diego Tribune, from III if memory serves -- it was basically a small room that you'd walk into in order to unload the film.

And yes, those machines produce output on photographic "film" (paper rolls, actually) which has to be developed and fixed, then cut, coated on the back with sticky wax, and pasted onto layout boards.

The whole production process, from film to layout to press, is quite complex and comes in a bunch of variations.  I understand it slightly, but all that was the province of skilled union tradesmen whose trade has long ago vanished into history.

And never mind an actual printing press.  Newspaper presses of course are still around, and probably not changed a whole lot.  They are big, loud, and scary.  Watching them switch from a used-up roll of paper to a new full roll, on the fly without stopping, is quite a spectacle.  Especially because it *usually* works -- but if it doesn't it's rather a mess.

	paul