OLD manual Typesetting Machine for early forms of newsprint and design


Typesetting involves the presentation of textual material in graphic form on paper or some other medium. Before the advent of desktop publishing, typesetting of printed material was produced in print shops by compositors working by hand, and later with machines. The general principle of typesetting remains the same: the composition of glyphs into lines to form body matter, headings, captions and other pieces of text to make up a page image, and the printing or transfer of the page image onto paper and other media. The two disciplines are closely related. For example, in letterpress printing, ink spreads under the pressure of the press, and typesetters take this dynamic factor into account to achieve clean and legible results. Letterpress era During the letterpress era, moveable type was composited by hand for each page. Cast metal sorts were composited into words and lines of text and tightly bound together to make up a page image called a forme, with all letter faces exactly the same height to form an even surface of type. The forme was inked and mounted in a press, and an impression made on paper. The diagram at right illustrates a cast metal sort: a face, b body or shank, c point size, 1 shoulder, 2 nick, 3 groove, 4 foot. Wooden printing sorts were in use for centuries in combination with metal type. Hand compositing was rendered obsolete by continuous casting or hot-metal typesetting machines such as the Linotype machine and Monotype at the end of the 19th century. The Linotype, invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler, enabled one machine operator to do the work of ten hand compositors. Hand-compositing and letterpress printing did not fall completely out of use, and has undergone a revival since the introduction of digital typesetting. However, it is a very small niche within the larger typesetting market.


Size: 3420px × 5130px
Photo credit: © MOB IMAGES / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No

Keywords: abstract, alphabet, art, atomic, background, blocks, blue, bluish, capital, caps, characteristic, chemical, chemistry, cmyk, cold, color, colorless, colours, compositor, compound, concept, concepts, craft, dense, depth, design, device, ductile, element, elements, fashioned, form, graphic, gray, hand, handle, hard, heavy, held, high, hot, hydrogen, images, implement, impression, industrial, industry, information, installation, italic, layout, lead, learning, letter, letters, light, machine, metal, mob75, monotype, news, number, page, paper, photo, photograph, photographic, photography, pic, picture, plates, pointed, press, print, printed, printing, publishing, roman, serif, set, shape, sharp, soft, straight, surface, tech, techniques, technological, text, texture, tool, tools, type, typeface, typeset, typesetting, typography, weight, word, words