Where To From Here?

[Mechanic]

For thousands of years people have been printing and recording thoughts and news in one form or another. Gutenberg, with his movable type made printed matter more practical. With improvement in letterpress printing, four hundred years later Mergenthaler's Linotype made printed mater available to the masses. Ninety years later phototypesetting and computers replaced the Linotype. 30 years later Phototypesetting has been replaced by computer driven direct to plate systems. Ten years later newspapers and books, printed on paper, are being replaced by Electronic Publishing systems. If you have a computer older than five years, it may still work, but like Letterpress and the Linotype, it is obsolete.

I have been retired for 25 years, I have not done any specific research, so my time frames may be off, but the trend is there. Where we go from here beats me. Direct full page imaging on the press is a possibility. Without printing presses it is not a probability.

[John Nixon]

Hi Mechanic:

I too, like you, started many years ago in Hot Metal as a Linotype Operator.

I now work for Fuji Xerox in New Zealand, still enjoying the ongoing challenges of our ever changing industry.

I am also the President of the Printing Museum here in Wellington, NZ. - www.theprintingmuseum.org.nz

Where to from here? The future continues already:

Check out:

http://www.fujixerox.co.nz/catalogue/product.aspx?id=d6e6bd72-57cc-493c-a9c2-22c43bd000e7

We have 3 of these in NZ already and one of them in Auckland has a complete Newspaper finishing line.

Prints 43 double sided A4's per second, high quality inkjet, every page variable.

It's going to take a sea change of attitude to have these implemented in a daily, but whoever thought we would have full colour in a newspaper anyway.

My opinion: Hopefully society will work out that the best way to record history is actually from a PRINTED original, already so much has been lost because of disk failures.

Cheers

John

[listohan]

It may have other uses, but does paper have a future for conveying ideas especially in volume? You still have the delay and distribution problem and these days postmen are having a doubtful future. Paper boys are no more.