Photo Type Setting

Phototypesetting is a method of setting type, rendered obsolete with the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing software that uses a photographic process to generate columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper. Typesetters used a machine called a phototypesetter, which would quickly project light through a film negative image of an individual character in a font, through a lens that would magnify or reduce the size of the character onto film, which would collect on a spool in a light-tight canister.

The film would then be fed into a processor, a machine that would pull the film through two or three baths of chemicals, where it would emerge ready for paste up. Bert hold successfully developed its Diatype (1960), Diatronic (1967), and ads (1977) machines, which led the European high-end typesetting market for decades.