Monophoto
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- Title
- Modules Make Sense
- Date
- Circa 1968
- Length
- 25:40
- Topics
- Description
Monotype made this film to showcase their newer, computer technologies that were finally coming to the market in the late 1960s. Based on the idea of modules which could be interchanged as needed for printers’ and typesetters’ specific needs, Monotype is desperate to show they are using modern circuit boards and tape-reading “computers” and are not behind the times.
Even though they are doing their best to talk about computers and modern technology, this film still has a great deal about their mechanical keyboards, composition casters, and non-digital machinery. At the very end of the film, they literally walk over to their R&D department to show a preview of their Monophoto 600 Film Setter, which is their first truly-electronic typesetting machine.
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- Date
- Circa 1958
- Length
- 22:54
- Topics
- Description
This film showcases Monotype’s answer to the upcoming phototypesetting revolution. They take great pains to show how little has changed from the old, hot-metal Monotype machines by replacing the hot-metal pot with a light source and the brass matrices with individual, photo negative matrices for exposure on paper or film. This cautious approach was in order to assuage the fears of printers who did not want to change.
Throughout this film, you see what is new (including a session in the red-light darkroom) along with everything that has stayed the same (same keyboard and punched paper tape). Watch a woman “stripping” in new lines of text using techniques that would have seemed futuristic and fanciful in the late 1950s.