| Show THE OFFSET REVOLUTION one did the other had to do Jack Gallivan and Pat Hession are labelled by NAC observers as being in the forefront of the changing technology Mike Brennan not only watched the revolt take place at NAC -he participated in it Hejoined the organization ascomputer programmer in 1964 and had become Director of Development by the time offset newspapering reached reality The first step he remembers came in 1964 when an IBM 1620 computer was employed to justify type for the hot metal linecasting machines The installation of this computer seemed to set in motionwhole set of changes that would take place over the next 25 years and end up with us using all offset printing techniques Brennan remembers Understandably concerned about their job security NACunionized compositors had little enthusiasm for the changes they could already envision But as Brennan explains it American dailies had become labor intensive over many years of union controlled hot lead typesetting in the composing room Many in the industry including the staff at NAC viewed photo-composition as the beginning ofrevolution to bring control of production costs and the characteristics of the print ed product back to the publisheroffice The next step wasMergenthaler LinoFilm typesetter installed in 1968 Its 18 line-per-minute speed was an improvement but hardly satisfied the production requirements ofhefty metropolitan daily That gradually increased though and equipment made by both Mergenthaler and Harris Intertype was used to bring about multi-hundred line production by the mid-1970s All of which set the stage for improved press output though it was slow to come NAC moved first to thin metal backed plates withphoto sensitive coating asreplacement for those stereotyped in lead This made it possible to utilize the speedier photo composition The procedure was somewhat similar to that used for offset printing but the plates hadraised image rather than the flat surface of offset ones And 239 Digital image 2005 Marriott Library University of Utah Al rights reserved |
