Plastic card with ‘Photon’ written on it. Along each long edge are ‘pica’ and ‘cicero’ markings and there is a picture of a dial on it too. On the back is a table of compositor’s instructions. Believed to belong to John O’Brien
After the demise of Letterpress the printing industry tended to change to Lithography in most cases. So from movable lead type one of the first introductions to photocomposition was 7-level punch tape and one of the companies who produced that was Photon. The picture in the archive shows the gauge the company produced to help the operator read the 7-level tape. The tape was then fed into a phototypesetting machine, producing bromide (photographic paper), The keyboard operator became very proficient and could read the perforated tape which included both data and coding.
Comments about this page
After the demise of Letterpress the printing industry tended to change to Lithography in most cases. So from movable lead type one of the first introductions to photocomposition was 7-level punch tape and one of the companies who produced that was Photon. The picture in the archive shows the gauge the company produced to help the operator read the 7-level tape. The tape was then fed into a phototypesetting machine, producing bromide (photographic paper), The keyboard operator became very proficient and could read the perforated tape which included both data and coding.
Add a comment about this page