Marvel Comics's former typesetter (and editor and technical artist and all-around production guy) Eliot R. Brown maintains a blog where he posts a number of pictures and stories from his time at Marvel in the '70s, '80s, and '90s.
> The miracle of type that you could do in your own office was quite a while in coming. But for Marvel, it took place in 1982. There was a first “digital” typesetting computer, but you wouldn’t believe how it worked. To really appreciate it, I would have to draw diagrams. You still might not really believe it—such a wild contraption. But then Marvel got a Mergenthaller Linotype Print Maker and paid a low $15,000 if I remember correctly. Mergenthaller used to make the hot type monstrosities and were probably sighing in relief when cold type came to be. There's a picture in the article
> ‘Cold’ here means, simple black type on white paper. You do a little typing, press the ‘go’ button and remove the paper cassette from the machine, put the cassette in the light-tight chemical processor and bang, in as little as 3-4 minutes, cool, calm and collected—there’s your type.
> There were several “tricks” here. There was a high-resolution CRT tube (just like a TV set, but about an inch across and able to resolve 2400 lines per inch) and a primitive digital computer. It ran on DOS. The machine was an inert piece of junk until you loaded in the “operating system” via a disk. Disk Operating System meant the whole shootin’ match of a program was on a 5.25” floppy disk.
> And you had to load that program every time you turned the machine on. It forgot how to be a typesetting machine every power-down.
> I kid you not. No “hard drive.”
> This was an early computer. It had a green monochrome monitor that was a whole 9” across! No mouse. Only arrow buttons to move the cursor around. It also used a series of commands that would make font changes, from regular to bold or italic. But don’t forget to change it back—because you did not see a representation of that type style. In fact, you really had to pay attention. For one thing, the monitor displayed letters in a grid. Very simple. All the same size, from periods to the letter “M.” I used to quip, “Every letterspace counted.”
Marvel Comics's former typesetter (and editor and technical artist and all-around production guy) Eliot R. Brown maintains a blog where he posts a number of pictures and stories from his time at Marvel in the '70s, '80s, and '90s.
One of his articles concerns the typesetting computer he used at the time... it's well worth a read: https://www.eliotrbrown.com/wp/one-shot-erbs-custom-typesett... (there's a picture of it in the article)
> The miracle of type that you could do in your own office was quite a while in coming. But for Marvel, it took place in 1982. There was a first “digital” typesetting computer, but you wouldn’t believe how it worked. To really appreciate it, I would have to draw diagrams. You still might not really believe it—such a wild contraption. But then Marvel got a Mergenthaller Linotype Print Maker and paid a low $15,000 if I remember correctly. Mergenthaller used to make the hot type monstrosities and were probably sighing in relief when cold type came to be. There's a picture in the article
> ‘Cold’ here means, simple black type on white paper. You do a little typing, press the ‘go’ button and remove the paper cassette from the machine, put the cassette in the light-tight chemical processor and bang, in as little as 3-4 minutes, cool, calm and collected—there’s your type.
> There were several “tricks” here. There was a high-resolution CRT tube (just like a TV set, but about an inch across and able to resolve 2400 lines per inch) and a primitive digital computer. It ran on DOS. The machine was an inert piece of junk until you loaded in the “operating system” via a disk. Disk Operating System meant the whole shootin’ match of a program was on a 5.25” floppy disk.
> And you had to load that program every time you turned the machine on. It forgot how to be a typesetting machine every power-down.
> I kid you not. No “hard drive.”
> This was an early computer. It had a green monochrome monitor that was a whole 9” across! No mouse. Only arrow buttons to move the cursor around. It also used a series of commands that would make font changes, from regular to bold or italic. But don’t forget to change it back—because you did not see a representation of that type style. In fact, you really had to pay attention. For one thing, the monitor displayed letters in a grid. Very simple. All the same size, from periods to the letter “M.” I used to quip, “Every letterspace counted.”