Category: Historical

From the late Dave Bowles’ collection of London Fleet Street compositors items comes this great collection of trade union membership cards from 1946 right through to the 1990s.

This page was updated in 2023 with additional cards from the collection of Joseph Henry Davis. Read the Full Article . . .

It would appear to be one of the Whittaker company’s early photosetters.

Steve Robertshaw, Ex Whittaker & Compugraphic UK Engineer, updated this page with the following: Read the Full Article . . .

It is an early photosetter that used mainly linecaster technology to produce photoset output.

Interested in early photosetting technology? Check out the Early Photosetting Chat section of the Forum. Read the Full Article . . .

This is an early, computerised typesetting machine. The operator selects a character on the keyboard, which triggers a stroboscopic flash to set the type.

Four type styles, each with 105 characters, were available to the operator through filmstrips held on a drum. Read the Full Article . . .

S.A.M stood for ‘Sets All Matrices.’ It was a hot-metal linecaster made by M.H. Whittaker & Son.

This would then be cast in the machine. S.A.M. could use matrices from Ludlow, Linotype, Intertype and Nebitype companies. Read the Full Article . . .

The Intertype Monarch was designed without a manual keyboard. It relied totally on Teletypesetting (TTS) for setting type, using instructions from perforated tape.

It had an output of 14 lines per minute. A suction manifold held the matrices to the delivery belt as they were delivered at high speed to the assembler. Read the Full Article . . .

On its introduction in 1962, the Electron was said to be the fastest linecaster in the world.

It used Teletypesetting to automatically select matrices through a keyboard operated via perforated tape. Read the Full Article . . .

Launched as one of a range of ’70’ series linecasters, the model 79 was specifically designed for use with Teletypesetting (TTS). During TTS a perforated tape was passed through a special attachment on the linecaster. The perforation activated a keyboard and selected the appropriate matrices.

A keyboard operator perforated the tape, encrypting the original text in a series of dots. The tape could be transmitted by telegraph to a reperforator in the printer’s office, which replicated the perforated tape. It was then passed to the linecaster operator. Read the Full Article . . .