Comments on: Hammering the pixels by hand… http://www.stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/ Feisty fresh rants from a Wyoming libertarian Republican Sun, 01 Aug 2010 05:28:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: SkipLunch http://www.stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/#comment-52 SkipLunch Sun, 26 Aug 2007 04:46:25 +0000 http://stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/#comment-52 TRS-80 color computer! (trash-eighty) I used to sell them at radio shack. http://oldcomputers.net/coco.html TRS-80 color computer! (trash-eighty)

I used to sell them at radio shack.

http://oldcomputers.net/coco.html

]]> By: Shawn http://www.stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/#comment-36 Shawn Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:31:45 +0000 http://stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/#comment-36 My first computer was a Commodore 64. My dad bought it in '84. It had 64k RAM, one 5.25" floppy drive, a CASSETTE TAPE drive and a slot on the back of the CPU that accepted game cartridges (like an Atari). I remember writing a few small programs with it, but mostly, I used it for video games. Lots and lots of video games. The 64 had nice 8-bit color and sound, and was connected to a regular TV set. It was actually pretty high-tech for the time. First Internet experience was rather haphazard. I was interning for a small radio station, and had some time to kill. (This was 1995.) I decided to fire up the station's Compuserve account. Had no idea what I was doing, or how it worked. Somehow, I wound up chatting with a woman in the U.K. About a year later, I got online at home, and never looked back. I posted my first site also in '97, and around the same time, I figured out how to do live audio streaming with RealAudio. Real broadband wasn't available for me until 2001, and it sucked waiting that long to get it. No way I could live without it now. My first computer was a Commodore 64. My dad bought it in ‘84. It had 64k RAM, one 5.25″ floppy drive, a CASSETTE TAPE drive and a slot on the back of the CPU that accepted game cartridges (like an Atari). I remember writing a few small programs with it, but mostly, I used it for video games. Lots and lots of video games. The 64 had nice 8-bit color and sound, and was connected to a regular TV set. It was actually pretty high-tech for the time.

First Internet experience was rather haphazard. I was interning for a small radio station, and had some time to kill. (This was 1995.) I decided to fire up the station’s Compuserve account. Had no idea what I was doing, or how it worked. Somehow, I wound up chatting with a woman in the U.K. About a year later, I got online at home, and never looked back. I posted my first site also in ‘97, and around the same time, I figured out how to do live audio streaming with RealAudio. Real broadband wasn’t available for me until 2001, and it sucked waiting that long to get it. No way I could live without it now.

]]> By: mwdean http://www.stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/#comment-31 mwdean Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:33:57 +0000 http://stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/#comment-31 Thanks! Wow. The stuff people had to do in the dark ages, before Jobs and Gates stole thunder from someone who stole it from the aliens! MWD Thanks!
Wow. The stuff people had to do in the dark ages, before Jobs and Gates stole thunder from someone who stole it from the aliens!

MWD

]]> By: Lydia http://www.stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/#comment-29 Lydia Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:48:27 +0000 http://stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/#comment-29 I got an email just now about the above photo's model, which I'm sure is the same one as my parents' had. ----------------------------------------------------- :: Re: AM Typesetter The company AM was Addressograph Multilith (and on some nameplates, Addressograph Multigraph). Addressograph was an early technology for doing envelope mailings -- you would make up individual stencils of each address on your mailing list, and then could reuse those stencils in a machine to batch print envelopes. From that they branched into phototypesetting. The original <a>Varityper</a> was perhaps the earliest typewriter that could be used almost like typesetting, and once offset methods of printing, including photonegatives, became possible, the Varityper was used to set type in various fonts. (Just google "varityper"). How or when AM acquired the Varityper brand, I don't know, but they made phototypesetters from I think the '60s until phototypesetting died in the early '90s. At the end, with the company spending a long time in bankruptcy, I know AM was trying to spin off Varityper, whose chief competitor at the time was Compugraphic. Linotype was another competitor, though less prominent as I recall (ironic, given that the Linotype brand survived). The first Varityper I worked on was the Comp/Set 510, a model that let you see the type you were working on in preview on screen -- in the sense that you could see the codes and letters you were going to send to the typesetter. You could see a few lines at a time, but once a line was committed to the typesetter, it was gone. You could not go back and fix mistakes or store large material. The next series was the more sophisticated Comp/Edit series, which allowed you to edit and store materials (on 8" floppy disks). This was a huge advantage, as you could now proofread and go back and fix things without introducing new errors, and produce clean typesetting without pasted-on corrections for the first time. However, even the Comp/Edit 6400, in my picture, couldn't really preview fonts in any way -- it just showed approximate size and placement in a generic screen font. I got an email just now about the above photo’s model, which I’m sure is the same one as my parents’ had.
—————————————————–

:: Re: AM Typesetter

The company AM was Addressograph Multilith (and on some
nameplates, Addressograph Multigraph). Addressograph was an
early technology for doing envelope mailings — you would
make up individual stencils of each address on your mailing
list, and then could reuse those stencils in a machine to
batch print envelopes. From that they branched into
phototypesetting. The original Varityper
was perhaps the earliest typewriter that could be used
almost like typesetting, and once offset methods of
printing, including photonegatives, became possible, the
Varityper was used to set type in various fonts. (Just
google “varityper”). How or when AM acquired the Varityper
brand, I don’t know, but they made phototypesetters from I
think the ’60s until phototypesetting died in the early
’90s. At the end, with the company spending a long time in
bankruptcy, I know AM was trying to spin off Varityper,
whose chief competitor at the time was Compugraphic.
Linotype was another competitor, though less prominent as I
recall (ironic, given that the Linotype brand survived).

The first Varityper I worked on was the Comp/Set 510, a
model that let you see the type you were working on in
preview on screen — in the sense that you could see the
codes and letters you were going to send to the typesetter.
You could see a few lines at a time, but once a line was
committed to the typesetter, it was gone. You could not go
back and fix mistakes or store large material. The next
series was the more sophisticated Comp/Edit series, which
allowed you to edit and store materials (on 8″ floppy
disks). This was a huge advantage, as you could now
proofread and go back and fix things without introducing
new errors, and produce clean typesetting without pasted-on
corrections for the first time. However, even the Comp/Edit
6400, in my picture, couldn’t really preview fonts in any
way — it just showed approximate size and placement in a
generic screen font.

]]> By: Lydia http://www.stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/#comment-28 Lydia Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:44:10 +0000 http://stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/#comment-28 Ey, Michael, you turned off the HTML? Anyway, here's a link to the picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlsoldphotos/232635493/ Ey, Michael, you turned off the HTML? Anyway, here’s a link to the picture:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlsoldphotos/232635493/

]]> By: Lydia http://www.stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/#comment-27 Lydia Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:42:38 +0000 http://stinkfight.com/2007/08/23/hammering-the-pixels-by-hand/#comment-27 Update: This is what the screen looked like: "What the screen on the Comp/Edit 5400 (I think) looked like -- this was our hot modern version of WYSIWYG. All the little indecipherable symbols at the top were the codes we had to type in in order to get to WYSIWYG. " Update: This is what the screen looked like:

“What the screen on the Comp/Edit 5400 (I think) looked like — this was our hot modern version of WYSIWYG. All the little indecipherable symbols at the top were the codes we had to type in in order to get to WYSIWYG. “

]]>