EXTRA BITS - Printing and Typesetting History - Computerphile

Typesetting history without mentionig TeX?????

I wrote in Troff back in the 80s for a magazine we published. Then you would go down to some basement at the college and pick up the rolls of beautiful text so you could cut and paste them onto your layout. Still gets people when I say I did cut and paste literally - with an x-acto knife!

Many of the details of moveable type and early typesetters are not completely correct. The blank metal slugs are spaces, not leading. Leading are longer strips of lead or aluminium.

I've never heard about fibre optics in photosetters, moveable lenses, mirrors and prisms were the norm.

When setting by hand not only are the types mirror images, you also read them upside down. You build (compose) the lines, type by type, in a certain tool - a composing stick - that easily holds a few lines of type. Then you move the lines to the galley where the page is build. The pages are put together in the form.

Did he just say 'fiber optic bundle' to transport a single optical letter? Wow - that's the first I've heard of fiber optics in such a (semi-)historical context.

I'm so glad he gets the pronunciation of Univers right.

what's his name ?? where can i find more about him?

The type is probably made from a lead-antimony alloy, which has the peculiar property that when it cools and sets, it expands slightly so that the metal squeezes into all the corners of the mould and makes nice sharp edges.

Most notable by its omision in this video (or the related computerphile videos I have so far seen is TeX.  DEK does get a brief mention in one video but nothing about TeX ir Metafont.  Strange, because I know TeX was in use at Nottingham in the 80s.

Very interesting! Thanks for making this! Its great to not have a video that's rushing to finish!!!

Brady, please hold the camera still if possible or use a tripod. I feel like vomiting watching this!

As a typographer & graphic designer I loved this! Thank you!

Every "Desktop Publisher" needs to see this. I learned some of it through my undergrad, but there's a ton of interesting info toward the end! Thanks Brady!

I wrote my first resume in nroff. But printed it on a laser printer. I didn't know how much history I was jamming together.

Great history lesson!

I wonder if they'll devote a whole episode to LaTeX?

Oooh I feel a video about LaTeX coming on... Can we have a video about LaTeX??

To be fair, most inventors refined existing technology so that it became practical.

Very good recap of the history of typesetting-- only disappointed he didn't get to LaTeX.

Metal movable type printing using bronze was invented in Korea in 1230. Gutenbeg's greatest invention, the hand mould, could rapidly cast letters using a low melting point (~250C°) alloy of lead, tin, and antimony that is used to this day. He was helped along by preexisting inventions like the olive press and the fact that the Latin alphabet needed only around 100 characters. The 3000+ symbols needed for the Chinese language (or even the ~1800 Chinese characters used to represent Korean at the time) continued to make large scale woodblock printing more practical in both countries for centuries.

I could listen to him talk about anything. He has a very soothing delivery :-)

Most people don't know exactly what Gutenberg's invention was. He put a movable frame under a wine press. That's it. He created the first movable printing press, not the first metal type, which was a Korean invention of the 14th Century.

I was training on PDP-11's in the 70s in Massachusetts at DEC, and seem to remember there was a lot of push back from the printing unions about this new typesetting method replacing workers.

I absolutely love listening to this man.

Where does Knuth's TeX system fit in to all this?

Very interesting again, thanks a million!

all theese vids are way too short... i want more indepth discussion.

On the theme of typesetting, is a LaTeX episode in the works? I would like to learn more about LaTeX's history.

"representing data in a " puts on glasses computerphile....

Linotype FTW!

The Caslon italic ampersand is the most beautiful piece of typography in existence.

old people of the future are going to be so cool

This kind of history is so important to remember.  Thanks for making these videos, Brady!

This man is a living Wikipedia!

I don't think this should be relegated to an "Extra Bit", I think it should be up with the other videos on the channel. Fascinating stuff!

What never fails to blow my mind is how utterly fascinating and interesting any imaginable subject becomes when explored in depth, and even more so when beautifully explained by a knowledgeable and intelligent person like Professor Brailsford.
Keep up the good work providing the best entertainment for high(and sober, whatever floats everyone's boats) people!

I think the audio is a bit low on this one, checking your settings and comparing to other episodes might be a good Idea!

I did a bit of type-setting when I was younger. The characters were read upside-down and back-to-front (so you could read left to right). Everything had to fit perfectly, otherwise any loose characters would just fall out. There are still a few printers' terms in use today, such as 'mind your p's and q's'. And apparently, though we never used it, the term 'dog's bollocks' which referred to the dash and colon    :-
A little video on printers would be nice -- daisy-wheel, ink-jet, laser. 3-D  How they work etc. Just a thought.

OMG I GET IT computerphile = computer file

what about MEPS used for printing top 1 and 2 most spread magazines in the world of 2013 in over 100 languages simoulanously?

Thanks a lot :) it was a very interesting tech history lesson

Are you going to cover TeX anytime soon?

hey computerphile, really like the videos, but could you pleeeease work a bit more on your sound? I always have to turn up the volume to almost max, and if I forget to turn it down after your video it blasts my right off my chair..

Very interesting. Thanks Brady.

lol, these seem to be A LOT of extra bits

Great stuff! A related video on the development of TeX and LaTeX would be equally awesome.

Perfect nonetheless again on computerphile :D

Apple and Microsoft?! Hahahaha :P

\TeX
Nothing more to say.