Knowledge explosion

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33779, 27 February 1975, Page 9

Knowledge explosion

An army, it was once said, marches on its stomach. At the University of Canterbury a well-equipped printing department produces the material on which a university marches: printed paper.

The annual output of printed pages, placed end to end, would stretch from North Cape to Bluff. The knowledge explosion of the last quarter-century caused an enormous increase in the demand for printed material. It was met at Canterbury by replacing duplicators with a centralised printing department equipped with small offset Multilith presses, each with a capacity of printing up to 9000 sheets of paper an hour. The presses, two of them automatic, produce most of the university's printed requirements — from examination papers (nearly 750 different papers are set each year in addition to tests) to lecture notes, laboratory manuals, brochures and booklets, computer stationery, papers for almost daily meetings of committees, letterheads and forms and cards for a wide variety of uses. For composing the department has an electronic direct impression typesetting system which enables it to produce material comparable with traditional hot

metal type in print quality. The system also provides for variable type size, multiple format capability, proportional spacing and line justification at high speed. The normal input unit is a typewriter, which sets the copy on to a magnetic tape together with coded instructions on type font and size, line length and spacing. The tape is then transferred to the output unit, which is capable of reading the instructions and setting the copy in the style required at a speed of 14 characters a second, about the equivalent of a line of newspaper type every two seconds. An ingenious adaptation of the system enables the department to set the catalogue cards — up to 600 a day — for the University Library, a task formerly undertaken by typists. Information about the Library’s acquisitions is held in the University’s computer and is transferred to the setting system by a paper tape, enabling the cards to be produced automatically. Installation of a collator

overcame the chore, often shared by secretaries, technicians and lecturers, of walking round tables picking up single sheets in order to collate a report or booklet. The department is

also equipped with two process cameras, a guillotine, stapler, folder and .drill as well as a Heidelberg platen for the production *of cards and for numbering and perforating.