[TUHS] Graphic Systems C/A/T phototypesetter

Brian S Walden tuhs at cuzuco.com
Tue Dec 10 16:21:14 AEST 2013


Look at United States Patent 4074285
http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US4074285.pdf

Figure 1 is identical to the machine I ran at Whippany Bell Labs
in the early to mid 80s. It was about 4 1/2 feet tall

Figure 4 is the font wheel (seen as 16 in Fig 1) there were 4 distinct
sectors, each with a different font. One with Times Roman, one with
Times Roman Bold, one with Times Roman Italic and the last was the
symbol fonts (math, greek chars, left hand (\lh right hand \(rh etc. and
this one was made specifically for the Labs as it had a Bell Logo \(bs on it)

The paper was a roll of photo paper, glossy on the text side, rough on
the reverse, it was thick.  It would end up going into the cassette
(20 in Fig 1) and would need to be developed. Not shown in the patent
figures was the developing and drying apparatus.  At the end of 
a job the exposed paper was in the cassette you'd remove
it from the typesetter and put into a device with rollers that would pull
it out and run it thru developer and fixer liquid chemicals.  Exiting
that it would go into a dryer drum.

After it was completly dry, as it was still a continuous roll, you
would need to cut all the pages apart by hand (that is why there was
the cut mark macro (.CM) is -ms so you could tell where to cut)
As it came from a roll, no pages ever layed completely flat.

The checmical baths were nasty smelling and it gummed up the rollers.
You'd needed to regularly take the developer roller and gear guts into
the janitor's closet and scrub it with a toothbrush in the slop sink
under running water.

By the second half of the 80s it was replaced by QMS PostScript
laser printers.

> From: "Jacob Goense" <dugo at xs4all.nl>
> All, I'm looking for images of the cat device as mentioned several
> times in the 7th edition manual, see e.g. TROFF(1)and CAT(4).
> 
> From what I gathered during my digs is that it should look like a
> GSI 8400, but that didn't help. Anyone here who can help me find out
> what these machines looked like? A picture would be the best, but
> information on what to look for in images of unnamed typesetters will
> do as well.
> 
> /Jacob
> 
> 



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