Phototypesetting is a method of setting type which uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper.[1][2]
It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing which gave rise to digital typesetting.
The first phototypesetters quickly project light through a film negative of an individual character in a font, then through a lens that magnifies or reduces the size of the character onto photographic paper or film, which is collected on a spool in a light-proof canister. The paper or film is then fed into a processor, a machine that pulls the paper or film strip through two or three baths of chemicals, from which it emerges ready for paste-up or film make-up. Later phototypesetting machines used other methods, such as displaying a digitised character on a CRT screen. The results of this process are then transferred onto printing plates which are used in offset printing.
Phototypesetting offered numerous advantages over the metal type used in letterpress printing, including the lack of need to keep heavy metal type and matrices in stock, the ability to use a much wider range of fonts and graphics and to print them at any desired size, and faster page layout setting.
^"Definition of PHOTOTYPESETTING".
^Boag, Andrew (2000). "Monotype and Phototypesetting" (PDF). Journal of the Printing History Society: 57–77. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 March 2016. Retrieved 22 July 2016.
layout setting. Phototypesetting machines project characters onto film for offset printing. Prior to the advent of phototypesetting, mass-market typesetting...
systems were nearly universal in large newspapers and publishing houses. Phototypesetting or "cold type" systems first appeared in the early 1960s and rapidly...
of Univers was intended to take advantage of the new technology of phototypesetting, in which fonts were stored as glass discs rather than as solid metal...
available for phototypesetting systems, as well as in other formats such as Letraset dry transfers and plastic letters, and many phototypesetting imitations...
1960, the Mergenthaler Linotype Company became a major supplier of phototypesetting equipment which included laser typesetters, typefonts, scanners, typesetting...
mass-market printing from the late nineteenth century until the arrival of phototypesetting and then electronic processes in the 1950s to 1980s. Hot metal typesetting...
fine printers, text figures became rarer still with the advent of phototypesetting and early digital technologies with limited character sets and no support...
Clearface is a serif typeface designed by Morris Fuller Benton with the collaboration of his father Linn Boyd Benton, produced at American Type Founders...
19th century to the 1970s and 1980s, when it was largely replaced by phototypesetting and digital typesetting. The name of the machine comes from producing...
series were capitals-only. Monotype offered Gill Sans on film in the phototypesetting period. The fonts released in 1961 included Light 362, Series 262,...
versions were released during the phototypesetting period under alternate names; for example one unofficial phototypesetting version was named "Biretta" after...
second half of the 20th century. His career spanned the hot metal, phototypesetting and digital typesetting eras. Until his death, he lived in Bremgarten...
(Monotype machine, 1887) and a few decades later the emergence of phototypesetting. The result: Compilation and typographical design of the text could...
the reduction in use of hot metal typesetting and replacement with phototypesetting and lithography in mass-market printing. This offered considerable...
pages become known as camera-ready, "mechanical" or "mechanical art". Phototypesetting was invented in 1945; after keyboard input, characters were shot one-by-one...
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