I just want to add that photo offset and "hot lead" printing aren't
the same technologies and having a shop set up for one does't mean you
can do the other.

On Fri, Sep 22, 2023 at 10:01 AM Nick Walker - cnw at globalnet.co.uk
(via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>  I want to say Lettraset is the name you are looking for,
>
>
>
> Off-topic: Early compositing technology by Jeff Zeitlin (21 Sep 2023 22:42 UTC)
> Reply to list
>
> Ok, the younger members of the list won't have a clue on this one, unless
> they've a specific interest in early commercial printing technology.
>
> For those of you who are my age or older...
>
> Back before compositing pages for printing using a computer and software
> like PageMaker was A Thing, you'd go into a print shop and you'd see the
> compositors making up camera-ready master pages by taking sheets of ... not
> cellophane, but... that had letters, numbers, punctuation, etc., on them,
> and they'd carefully position and then rub the letters onto the master
> page. Once that was done, the page would be "camera ready", and they'd
> really take a picture of it to etch onto the plates that were used to
> actually print the bulk run on the big-as-a-room printing press. The body
> text was generally done with "hot lead", with the main manufacturer of the
> machines in question (and the "default" name for the general idea of such
> machines) being LinoType, but if you-the-customer provided camera-ready
> pages except for things like titles and logos, the cost was less, and you
> probably made up your "master" pages using an IBM Selectric typewriter
> (because they were widely available, and you could actually change the type
> ball element, to any of about _two dozen_ type styles ("fonts", today)!).
>
> OK, enough digression.
>
> That bit about taking the sheets of letters, and pressing them onto the
> master page... There was a name for that "technology", and it was the name
> of the company that was more-or-less the standard/definition of it, just
> like "LinoType" was the "default" name for the "hot lead" text setup. What
> was that name?
>
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