American Type Founders - Photocomposition

Photocomposition

A venture was made into photocomposition with the ATF Hadego Typesetter. Introduced in 1958, the first model was the "A". Not many were produced because the character fit left much to be desired. The most common model was the "B". Character fit was improved by employing the Friden Flexowriter "Justowriter" escape mechanism to six units. The last and most advanced model based on the Friden mechanism was the "B-8", where an eighth unit was added to the escape mechanism by means of a series of electro-mechanical relays that could add the eighth unit to some wider characters, like capital "M", without changing the basic mechanical escape mechanism of the model "B". The last phototypesetter designed and produced by ATF was the Photocomp 20, so named because of its rated speed of twenty 11-pica newspaper lines per minute. It featured four stepper motors (1) to move the film across, (2) to move the type disk, (3) to advance the film to the next line, and (4) to set the size of one unit of escapement. Type disks contained four fonts, each including 17 pi characters. Its controller was the first ATF controller utilizing integrated circuits in place of relays. Circuitry was based on Motorola DTL integrated circuits. Machine styling of the Photocomp 20 was by Richard Arbib. Only 17 machines were sold: one in Vienna Austria, and the remainder in North America.

ATF produced type disks with all their popular type faces. These disks were concentric rings of fonts on a transparent plastic material in negative form. Usually these disks contained roman, italic and bold versions of the same face. There was even a disk with the only Canadian type design at the time, called "Cartier". The ATF Phototypesetter was sold world wide—in Canada, Germany, Italy, Denmark, France, Belgium, England, etc. In Denmark, several newspapers were produced on ATF Phototypesetters by a company named "Reprodan". As technology improved, ATF failed to keep pace and eventually the line was discontinued.