Photo-lettering 1938

[Dave Hughes]

Some great pictures from the Canadian Type Archive showing a very early system of photo composition for fancy headlines in advertisements, etc.

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[Mechanic]

Back in the early 1960's one of the many products sold by Canadian Linotype were the Letraset transfer sheets.

I had installed a Linotype at a trade show in Ottawa, and afterwards I was having drinks with a number of Linotype people that included a couple of the sales people. The conversation somehow turned to Letraset. I had never heard of the product.

One salesman produced a sample sheet of Letraset and offered to give me a demo of how easy the product was to use. He picked up the bottle of beer from which he was drinking and transferred some of the text from the sheet onto the bottle's label. Without showing us what he had done he called the waiter over and showed him the bottle and said, "What's this mean?"

The waiter said, "I'm sorry Sir I have no idea, I'll ask the bar manager."

There was a rather animated conversation between the waiter and the bar manager. The bar manager took the bottle from the waiter and came over to the table handed the bottle back to the salesman and said, "I'm sorry Sir I don't know how this could happen, but the drinks are on the house."

The salesman said, "Well thank you."

When the bar manager left the sales rep passed the bottle around the table. Printed clearly at the bottom of the label was
"SAMPLE NOT FOR SALE" the tag line from the Letraset sample page.

I made a point whenever I was in Ottawa to stay clear of that bar.