Chapter 7- Melissa Roels

Chapter 7 explains how type has been set ranging from hand composition to electronically generated typography. I feel this is a paramount chapter in our text book because knowing how type was first laid gives us a better understanding of why we use certain vocabulary and standards in typography today.

The chapter starts with hand composition which were closer to the methods of Gutenberg. Typesetters would individually place letters form each line of type into a composing stick. They would then go back and space each letter adding additional space between lines using strips of lead, which is where the typographic term leading is derived from. The type was then locked up into the chase and was tightened by the quoins. This method was very tedious and time consuming, an issue which lead to the invention of the linotype, the first mechanical typesetting machine. The linotype would individually cast lines of type, and after being used would melt them down again. It was faster and more accurate because the user would actually type the lines into the machine. Similarly the next major typesetting machine, the monotype, would also have the user type lines of type into a keyboard. Instead of casting entire lines of type, which would have to be recast for error, the monotype would cast each character individually. The montype also held more characters than the linotype because of its revolutionary matrix design.

Machine typesetters dominated the typography world until phototypesetting became the preferred technique during the 1960's. Phototypesetting gave designers much more felxibility in spacing and font sizes. There were two major types of phototypesetting systems: photo-optical and photo-scanning. Photo-optical systems would have type drums which spun with a computer that controlled the amount of light exposure. The user would simply have to type into a keyboard and the system would flight light through the film onto photo paper which would result in type on a page. Photo-scanning systems differed by having fonts stored as electronic data. The characters were projected as text onto a CRT screen and  a lens would focus that type onto the photo paper.  Phototypesetters led typography into the digital age and eventually to typesetting software. Innovations before the type control we are so familiar with in digital design, allowed designers the flexibility of setting type that had not yet been achieved. They had more control over spacing, interletter and interline, kerning, and could produce unprecidented effects such as overlapping or runarounds. By reading about the evolution of typesetting machines and systems, I feel I have a greater connection with how to arrange type on a apge and how to be respectul to its past.