Chapter 7_Bailey Ciombor

Typographic Technology

The Industrial Revolution is what typography has been called since the beginning. Typographic design has been closely bound has been bound to the evolution of technology. Typography started as handwritten material and has evolved to electronically based typography today. Hand composition is the earliest form of typography and is said as the most traditional method. Type was set letter-by-letter, line-by-line, until the desired setting was achieved. The problem with hand composition was that is was very tedious and time consuming.

            Linotype was the next form of typesetting developments. This linotype machine produced a single line of type to a predetermined length specified by the keyboard operator. The advantages of this were it was faster and more accurate. The problems were type distribution was eliminated, for the cast lines of type were simply melted, and lead was reused. The monotype machine was next that cast one character at a time rather than an entire line. The Ludlow, a semiautomatic linecaster, did not have a keyboard but combined both hand and machine production.

            A display phototypesetting machine, the light is projected through film negatives and a lens to expose letters, numbers, and other symbols onto a strip of photographic paper. Keyboard phototypesetters were developed and there were two kinds. Photo-optical and photo scanning systems were the two and they have the same basic components, but the difference is how the photo paper or film is exposed.

            Scanning and laser systems come in a few forms. Digital scanning systems, the photographic characters were digitally scanned and recorded electronically on magnetic disk or tape. There are many components to these systems. Hardware components consist of the computer and the peripheral devices that connect to it. A central processing unit does what a computer does by retrieving, processing, and storing information. There is input devices, information storage systems, output devices, software, and lastly, the user interface.