Chapter 3
Photocomposition: Towards Immaterial Type
Beginnings of a New Technological Era
Soon after the Second World War two events marked the beginning of a tech-
nological revolution that fundamentally altered the way type was made and
composed. In 1946 the first experimental model of the Intertype Fotosetter was
demonstrated at the US Government Printing Office, and the two French en-
gineers René A. Higonnet and Louis Moyroud came to an agreement with the
Lithomat Company that eventually led to the development of the Lumitype-
Photon typesetter.1 Whereas the Intertype Fotosetter was a direct adaptation
of hot-metal principles to a photographic process (a so-called first-generation
machine) the revolutionary approach to composition embodied in the Lumi-
type-Photon was ahead of its time. It boasted features that were only adopted
by the competition years later and thus pointed the way ahead for typesetting
technology. Such parallel developments of machines of different evolution-
ary stages remained a characteristic of the photocomposition era, when often
radically new inventions confronted the established practices of the trade.2
From the late nineteenth century, attempts were made to develop a ma-
chine for photographic composition of text, but, with the exception of Ja-
pan where photocomposition gained traction before the Second World War,
no device found commercial acceptance.3 By the 1950s, the potential of the
new composition technique was apparent as a large proportion of printing
1 Seybold, The World of Digital Typesetting, 72. Seybold gives a good overview of different
machine generations. The principal source for the development of the Lumitype-Photon
is Alan Marshall, Du plomb à la lumière : La Lumitype-Photon et la naissance des industries
graphiques modernes (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2003).
2 For a discussion of the Lumitype-Photon see “Arabic Type by the Photon Company” on page
261.
3 For a number of early machines based on photographic principles see Wallis, Typomania, 21.
On Uhertype see Christopher Burke, Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography,
(London: Hyphen Press, 2007), 222–46; and Roger Muench, “The origins of modern filmset-
ting: the Uhertype: a research report”, Journal of the Printing Historical Society 3, New Series
(2001): 21–40. For an overview of typographical history in East Asia see Martin J. Heijdra,
“The Development of Modern Typography in East Asia, 1850-2000”, The East Asian Library
Journal 11, no. 2 (2004): 100–168, accessed 16 May 2017, https://library.princeton.edu/easta-
sian/EALJ/heijdra_martin_j.EALJ.v11.n02.p100.pdf.
206 Chapter 3
was already done by offset lithography, instead of letterpress. Cast type, with
its raised printing surface, was not directly usable for the planographic offset
printing process, while, conversely, photocomposition could also be employed
in letterpress printing through the introduction of flexible raised plates created
photographically.4 In addition to its adaptability to newer printing processes,
photocomposition eliminated some of the complications inherent in letter-
press printing: storage of type and composed matter, a considerable problem
with any form of metal type, became effortless with film.5 Page make-up was
fundamentally altered as pieces of film, adhesive tape and cutters replaced
the formes, galleys and furniture previously employed. Also the expensive and
slow process of reproducing images by engraving, a necessity in letterpress
printing, was done away with in the composition of pages for offset printing,
another factor contributing to its increasing popularity. For Arabic typography,
the flexibility of film offered additional benefits, as directionality played a
smaller role in a medium that could easily be mirrored, a feature that rendered
the special equipment for right-to-left composition obsolete.6 Indeed, the
change from a rigid, three-dimensional object to a two-dimensional image on
a flexible medium was at the centre of this new technology. Not only was the
material light-weight, pliable, and redefined the process of page make-up, it
also rendered questionable long-standing typographical terms. Measurement
of type size had been a controversial question in the trade since the eighteenth
century, and numerous attempts to devise a consistent system that would be
acceptable across borders failed.7 By the middle of the twentieth century there
were two principal systems in use: the Anglo-American point in the English-
speaking world, and the Didot point in continental Europe.8 But irrespective
of the system, measurement always related to the type body – the height of
4 James Moran, “Filmsetting, Bibliographical Implications,” The Library XV, no. 4, Fifth Series
(1960): 232.
5 “A drawer 2 feet by 4 feet will hold film equivalent to 8,000 lb. of metal”. Ibid., 236.
6 This advantage was recognised and advertised in The Monotype Recorder: “Absent too, and
cheerfully forgettable, is any special equipment for setting languages such as Hebrew or Ar-
abic which require reverse delivery to the galley”. The Monotype Corporation Ltd, “Metal to
Film: What Is Involved in the Transition?,” The Monotype Recorder 42, no. 2 (Spring 1961): 1.
7 For a concise summary of the historical developments see Tracy, Letters of Credit, 21, and
Andrew Boag, “Typographic measurement: a chronology,” Typography Papers no.1 (1996):
105–22.
8 Use of the two systems extended into the countries that were formerly in the zones of influ-
ence of the respective powers, but most regions using the Arabic script employed the conti-
nental Didot point.
