Another Pre-Press Blast from the Past

[Frog]

Anyone remember this?

[T Shirt Farmer]

So funny Andy,

My art guy was cleaning up old packets and we found type from strip printer and hand cut rubylith.... he had absolutely not a clue what he was looking at... then I explained myh first apple computer was $3900 and it cost me almost $3000 for a couple hundred MB of ram

[GaryG]

Do you sit on it?

[mimosatexas]

I think it's just a fancy one of these http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/11.gif

right?

[Frog]

It actually cranked out a lot of film positive or photo paper text (one letter at a time). I guess at one letter at a time, it didn't "crank" out as much as "ground" out.

Different rolls of negative film for different fonts.

Another in the ""you youngsters have it so easy" category.

[T Shirt Farmer]

the master fonts were imaged on 35mm film each having upper/lower case and numbers along with a series of hash marks used to kern letters. You then had to tray develop the exposed paper in a dark room or dark box. Once dry the paper was cut into words or sentences as needed and pasted onto a layout board...

Good stuff Andy

[Sbrem]

Andy, most of the young-uns aren't going to know this. And yes, I do for sure, set plenty of type on a similar unit, a FotoFox if I remember correctly.

Steve

[3Deep]

Funny that you show that, I was cleaning out some cabinets a few months back and found one of those machines and I didn't have a clue of what it was..we bought a bunch of stuff in a sell and it was in there.

[Frog]

Funny that you show that, I was cleaning out some cabinets a few months back and found one of those machines and I didn't have a clue of what it was..we bought a bunch of stuff in a sell and it was in there.

I help where I can 

[Atownsend]

Wow! Thats some ancient technology. I think I get the concept, but I think I would need to have messed with one to really grasp it. I suppose these became obsolete when laser / inkjet printers became affordable?

[Frog]

I last used one of these in the late '70's.
The silver thing houses the exposure light, and there were controls to advance or reverse the font film roll to the desired letter, then zap, expose, and move on.
Then like Robert explained, developed the paper, cut, and paste, then shoot for film, then, make a screen.

Getting my timeline down, this was in a flat stock screen shop in the mid '70's.
around 1978, changed to an embossing and engraving shop running a die stamping press. That lasted until about '86, when I spent some time with family in Los Angeles, and re-honed my skills on small offset presses in a friend of my dad's shop.
I remember he had a typesetting service that was pretty much using what we use now. Computers weren't an everyday thing in every shop yet.

For further perspective on type and the times, in "real" print shops, and newspapers, during this same time in the '70's, my wife was running a Ludlow type- casting machine.

[StinkyDaddy]

When I was in art school we had something similar, but alot bigger. I think it was a Linographics or Linotype machine.

[Sbrem]

I last used one of these in the late '70's.
The silver thing houses the exposure light, and there were controls to advance or reverse the font film roll to the desired letter, then zap, expose, and move on.
Then like Robert explained, developed the paper, cut, and paste, then shoot for film, then, make a screen.

Getting my timeline down, this was in a flat stock screen shop in the mid '70's.
around 1978, changed to an embossing and engraving shop running a die stamping press. That lasted until about '86, when I spent some time with family in Los Angeles, and re-honed my skills on small offset presses in a friend of my dad's shop.
I remember he had a typesetting service that was pretty much using what we use now. Computers weren't an everyday thing in every shop yet.

For further perspective on type and the times, in "real" print shops, and newspapers, during this same time in the '70's, my wife was running a Ludlow type- casting machine.

We used ours until we got our first laserprinter, an Apple LaserWriter, hooked up to a MacPlus, which had a screaming 1 MB or RAM. Setting type on a curve with a program that was not WYSIWYG, completely blew away setting one character at a time...

Steve

[UltraSeps]

I spent many years with a Strip Printer and rub-on lettering sheets.  In the early days, I would basically live in the dark room and on the light table.  I'd buy glue sticks by the case to do art paste-ups.  Before the computers came along I also used a Kroy lettering machine which was okay for smaller text.  It sort of worked like a typewriter with a carbon film ribbon.  Pic posted of a Kroy for those who have not seen one.

Like Sbrem, I also remember the first Mac I had, probably around 1985-1986 and some very early program to set stylized text where you entered info about the text, size, arc radius, bounding box, etc without seeing the effect on the monitor.  When Letraset launched a program called Letra Studio where all the text effects were WYSIWYG, it was like heaven.  Then later on TypeStyler popped up and blew that away.

[Frog]

My first introduction to setting type on a computer was also on a Mac, but in a funny way.
Like so many, I used rub-off letters for much of my art when I re-entered screen printing in the late '80's.
One day, suddenly, that changed. My source, a Kinko's I passed on my way to work at Andy's T's early each morning, suddenly discontinued them.

The dude running that early morning shift told me not to panic, but I could always rent a few hours on one of their Mac machines and do even better.
Being the slow time for him, he said he'd be able to get me started.
So, each morning, I'd leave a little earlier, and at 5:30 or so,  this nice fellow, was able to show me just enough to get me going, and of course, get me in trouble, LOL!
My first issues were as simple as losing my page when I moved the cursor past the screen boundary, and sheer panic would set in while I waited for him to help a client while my valuable rental minutes ticked by! LOL!