PHOTOGRAPHIC TYPESETTING.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 232, 1 October 1925, Page 8

PHOTOGRAPHIC TYPESETTING.

TO REVOLUTIONISE PRINTING. LONDON' INVENTORS. Working secretly for four years in a small workshop in the Walworth Road district, two London men have perfected their invention of typesetting by photography. Their machine, experts claim, will revolutionise principles of printing that have been in use since Caxton's time, 450 years ago. In effect, the- machine does away with metal type by substituting for it a photographic film upon which letters, figures, etc., have been photographed. By means of a keyboard, operated like a typewriter, letters and characters from a "master film" are projected, one by one, in rapid sequence on to a sensitised photographic film base, and pbotograhed, the "exposure" being made in a fraction of a second.

"Setting" by Wireless. This exposed film, when developed, corresponds to the "set up metal" or type-line of a modern composing machine. Having reached this stage, printing may be done in many different ways—by lineblock for letterpress printing, by direct litho, by photographic processes from plate or stone, or by the off-set photolitho throughout. Different sizes of type are obtained by an adjustment of focus of tbe lens of the camera, which projects the "master-film" image, this operation being completely automatic. A single spool of "masterfilm," 2in in diameter, and 3in wide, contains the equivalent of 2700 "founts," or complete sets, of type. Tbe inventors are Mr. J. R. C. August and Mr. K. K. Hunter, lus brother-in-law.

It is claimed that the invention will save millions of pounds to the printing industry ( and that application of wireless telegraphy to it will enable a machine installed in, say. a London printing works, to "set up" the same matter simultaneously in many provincial towns.