The final flowering of the linecaster
By: BRUCE ANDERTON
AT the start of the 1960s hot metal composition was still the major source of typesetting in many branches of the printing industry, and though much thought and effort was being expended in developing replacements using photographic techniques, the old order still reigned supreme in many areas and the major manufacturers—Linotype, Intertype, Monotype and Ludlow—were still introducing new machines and typefaces and providing spares for their hot metal systems.
In America Mergenthaler Linotype and Harris-Intertype had introduced new linecasters which were designed to be driven from tape and were thus faster-running—normally operating at around 12 lines per minute on newspaper measures of 11½ems or thereabouts. Anyone who has seen such machines in operation will have been impressed by the speeded-up production rates compared to manually-operated equivalents.
