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263 THE PHOTOTYPESETTING ERA AND CORPORATE MERGERS 15 Linotype would introduce 16 major models of photographic typesetter between 1958 and 1995. After 1995, the market eliminated typesetting as a separate step in the pre-press process with desktop publishing and Computer-To-Plate (CTP) technology. The roots of photographic typesetting go back to the earliest developments of offset printing. Linotype’s competitor, Intertype, introduced the Fotosetter, the first photographic typesetter. It was basically a linecaster (think Linotype) and used brass matrices, but instead of little molds for the glyphs embedded on the side, it had a piece of film in its belly. As the matrices fell from the magazine, they passed a camera that flashed light through the film negative and exposed the image on photographic film. The patents on the Fotosetter go back to the 1930s when offset lithography was coming into more widespread use. Walter Soderstrom wrote the Lithographer’s Manual (Waltwin Publishing Co., 1940) and formed the National Association of Photo Lithographers (NAPL) because the main trade association was letterpress oriented. Offset lithography needed film, and it was the great efficiency of film for pre-press that doomed the all-metal world of letterpress. Intertype’s Fotosetter was formally introduced in the late 1940s, and the first customer was the U.S. Government Printing Office in 1950. The Fotosetter forced the Linotype Company to speed up its development of phototypesetting. Only about 700 Fotosetters were ever sold, the last one in 1973 to a typesetting company, named Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall in Dallas, TX. However, its impact was much bigger than these numbers. Like Intertype, Linotype’s first approach also attempted to modify the hot-metal machine. The reference side of the matrices was painted white and the glyph was black. After assembly and justification, the line was photographed. Linotype’s 1954 Annual Report1 stated: Linotype also displayed in April a new machine for automatically inserting film corrections. This aroused substantial interest in the trade because of the difficulty now experienced in making corrections on film by hand methods. That device, along with certain other machines which will form a part of the whole system of taking the uncomposed EARLY PHOTOCOMPOSITION Photographic composition methods were known in the period but demonstrated no practical application for newspapers until the late 1940s. An early patent for a phototypesetter had been granted to William FrieseGreene in 1898. Among early devices were the Thothmic (1925), Uhertype (1925) and Photo-Linotype (1936). U.S. newspapers in this period remained committed almost exclusively to traditional letterpress methods. Offset lithographic printing was utilized by only a few weeklies in the late 1930s and by one daily, the Opelousas (LA) Daily World. They were the precursors of the revolution that took root in the 1950s. By using cold-type composition methods and the preparation of the smooth and flexible offset plate mounted on an offset press, these publishers could bypass both the hot-metal composition process and the stereotype process used by metropolitan dailies. An Intertype Fotosetter Fotomat 264 work to the press in printable and legible form, will be ready for the market with the Linofilm. In our Annual Reports and public statements over the past six years we have attempted to place photographic typesetting in its perspective in relation to the Linotype and the whole process of composing the written word for printing. We have consistently pointed out that photographic devices would not revolutionize the industry, and the development of a satisfactory phototypesetting machine and its related processes would follow an evolutionary pattern and result only from patient and long-term research. We have also stressed the fact that, after the development phase was completed , the industry would be face to face with a costly indoctrination and training program of long duration. It remains our firm conviction that phototypesetting devices, when perfected, will not replace the Linotype, but will find a place for themselves in certain parts of the graphic arts industry side-by-side with the classic machines. Events since the introduction of the first phototypesetting devices some six years ago have confirmed our position. Despite widespread publicity not more than 85 phototypesetting devices have been sold or leased during that period. In that same span your Company introduced its high-speed Comet Linotype for operation either manually or automatically by perforated tape. It immediately became and remains the fastest selling typesetting machine in the world. Linofilm, in both its Mark I and Mark II versions , will be ready for the trade when...

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