Wigan Album
Printers
4 Comments
Photo: Colin Harlow
Item #: 24223
It represented a dramatic leap forward in speed and cost-efficiency and quickly made hot type technology obsolete. The Wigan Observer being one of the first to use this newspaper technology.
Very technical, even in todays standards.
Compugraphic introduced the 7200 and 2900, prepared by a computer, a tape would be fed into the photoypesetter, which would imprint type from a strip of filmonto Kodak-made Ektamatic (light-sensitive) paper, which would then be used for the paste up. I must say, the Wigan Observer were the forefront in newspaper technology. Linotype typesetting machines which were widely used in the printing industry, which at that time was based entirely on Hot metal type.
And this , I think, is 'young' Howard Lewis mastering the technology.
The Compugraphic 7200 was a phototypesetting machine for display type, it was not used for setting text mostly for headlines in newspapers with type images upto 72pt. As the keys were pressed the 1in photosensitive paper (positioned in the light-tight cassette) would be exposed by a light beamed through a negative film strip of all the alphabet characters etc. There was no second chance, so if the wrong key was pressed, you had to reset the heading.
Oldjourno I don't think that's Howard Lewis. Cheers