New to Site

[Topper]

Hello i am new to the site . I am an Engineer at a Mail Order factory in the North of England (UK) I have been looking after 3 Monarch Intertypes for 11 years now . The machines are in pretty good shape and they all use the  Fairchild Teletypesetter Operating Units connected to the Decitek Floppy Disk Drive Box . I am in contact with Mike Kirby at Linecasting Machinery and also Jerry Spurlok at SOS .We have just got a C4 machine that Mike has reconditioned and fit the telesetter to and decitek box . I look forward to any replies and if i can help anyone i am only too happy to . Chris .

[Dave Hughes]

Hi Chris and welcome to Metal Type.

I'm intrigued as to what the Intertypes are used for - is it a mail order typesetters?

As you may have picked up I'm in the north of England (York) - it would be nice to come along and photograph the machines if that is possible.

I hope you continue to enjoy the Metal Type site.

[Dave Hughes]

Airedale Products in Halifax, as featured on Metal Type here:
http://www.metaltype.co.uk/photos/photo8.shtml
use Intertype C4s for a very similar operation. They must be a rival company.

I can email your boss if you want Chris and make him an offer he can't refuse to get pictures and video up on the site. If your company's got a website I can offer a link from Metal Type in return for a visit and a few photos. I'll bet the company website needs every hit it can get!

[Mechanic]

Hi Chris,
Welcome to Metal Type. Not having worked with Fairchild operating units since the mid 1960's I was interested in your statement that you are driving them with Decitek Floppy Disk Drive Boxes. I've never heard of any one driving these units with anything other than six level papertape. I would appreciate an overview of just how the Decitek Floppy Disk Drive Box interfaces to the Fairchild operating unit. Maybe it is peculiar to the UK as I never ran across the modification in Canada or Australia. Then of course there was no such thing as a floppy disk in the 1960's!

[Dave Hughes]

Does anybody on here know how many other Monarch's there are in the UK ...

There's a nice example here:
http://www.metaltype.co.uk/photos/photo57j.shtml
at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester

[Dave Hughes]

Chris has kindly sent me some pictures (and a video) of the Intertypes he mentioned in this thread.

I'll be putting a few pages up about them on the main body of the site next month. But meanwhile here's a little taster!

UPDATE: I've now completed the Express Gifts page. There are more pics of the Intertypes there.







I never thought I'd see a bank of three Intertypes being used in earnest in the year 2007!

[Dave Hughes]

These machines are going at a fair pace. Thanks to Chris for sending in this video of the Intertype Monarchs working hard in the year 2007!

[Dave Hughes]

Some people look back on the early photosetting machines with a certain amount of nostalgia!

[Dan Williams]

Thanks for the great Monarch posts, Chris & Dave.
My, they have a smooth motion.
Family friends had Monarchs and Elektrons and I remember them  being operated manually. The local papers had several operating on tape, and my understanding was that they required tweaking in the first year in order to get them up to the maximum rated production (14 to 15 line/min). The small shops that had Elektrons evidently had ongoing trouble, apparent by their desire to unload them. I tend to blame that on either a lack of patience OR the early manifestation of phototype plague.
Elektrons and Monarchs were (are) very finely engineered machines.
Hey, no joking about that phototype stuff, Dave. The tape driven VIPs and Photons, and later direct-entry Comp-Edits and Compugraphics required a leap of faith. Great for publishers. But quite a few Comp firms took the leap and crashed with that stuff.

[Dave Hughes]

Dan, when I said:

Some people look back on the early photosetting machines with a certain amount of nostalgia!

There wasn't a hint of sarcasm, honest! 

[Dave Hughes]

I've been contacted by a guy called Tony Shaffstall who says:

My father (Everett G. Shaffstall) was the inventor and patent holder for the Mat Detector used on Linotype Intertype machines.  They were installed and running on the Intertypes in the video

Tony may be submitting an article to the site about his father's invention.