Things No One Will Ever Do Again: Set Type (4)

I have scoured the Internet, and cannot for the life of me find the actual name and model number of the Compugraphic headline typesetting machine.

There were a number of font strips (hung on a wire above the machine) representing various type fonts and sizes. An editor would specify a headline as “36 point.” You’d grab the 36 point font and place it in the back of the machine. As I recall, it exposed a strip of film that was advanced by hand between each letter.

They were called heds. The word was one letter shorter than heads. It was probably the eternal human desire to cover specialized skill with pointless jargon. Calling lead paragraphs ledes made a little sense, since it was a homonym with the lead that was melted to make type. But heds? Go figure.

If you developed the film and the hed was too long, you could reduce the space between letters (kerning) by backspacing a quarter space or half space between letters. Quarter and half were not marked, so it was by feel. A good touch on the Compugraphic was a marketable skill, now as valued as good buggy whips. I was good, but not great.

The headline rule at The Tech (as I am sure elsewhere) was: 9 pm it must be good and fit. 10pm: OK and fit. 11pm: fit.

The whole series: Things No One Will Ever Do Again: Set Type.

Comments

[Robert E. Malchman]

"All the news that fits, we print."

We had Dymo Pacesetter Mark I's when I arrived in February 1982, but I don't know how far back the went. They looked pretty ancient. Did you get the Pacesetters while you were at The Tech? Could you have been using a Compuserve 2900/4900?

[Paul Schindler]

Turns out it was a cvg typositor