David Frenchism

It wouldn't be fair to post a typeface and expect anyone but an expert to get it. But when I first got into the business, the CompuWriter IV in the shop had this typeface as one of the filmstrips you could load into it.





An enlarged view of part of the keyboard.

These were typesetters. You would load a filmstrip that had about 8 “fonts” on it. The strip was about 3-1/2” x 24”. It wrapped around a disk inside the machine.

You would also load your choice of light-sensitive receiving material. This was a plastic cartridge with a roll of light-sensitive paper inside. Cartridge widths ranged from about 3” to 12”. This paper cost money, so you would in theory use only the size you would need.

Each line (a single line of text) was exposed when you basically hit “return” and then you moved onto the other line. You would eventually have a long strip of black-and-white characters on a white sheet of paper after you developed it in a small machine.

You would then put wax on the back of the paper and then “paste-up” your text, likely along with other photographs and graphic elements on a pice of white pasteboard.

If you found a typo in your work (which might be several paragraphs of text), you would most likely not reset the entire thing but reset one line and the paste that over the top. Suffice it to say, this could be difficult to do and make look good.

What people do (including graphic designers) with text today is basically accept the output from the software in regards to how text appears. And good software will allow you a myriad of settings. Really good software might not require you to fuss with it much. But mostly these days graphic designers learn next to nothing about the various aspects of text, especially how to make it look good. Many probably have no idea what those optional setting for text are. Believe me. I see the results all the time.

With the CompuWriter IV, you had completely control over all aspects. It was as much a process of programming a computer as it was typing at a keyboard. And this thing was indeed a complex (for the time) computer. It was very easy to open up and look inside. This thing must have had several hundred chips, and a dozen or so small circuit boards in it.

Later, I did gain some experience on an EditWriter which allowed you to compose the text more like a world process on a multi-line screen. You could save files, etc.. Most importantly, you moved beyond the “expose one line at a time” as with the CompuWriter IV which also had no means to store text on disk as with the EditWriter.



Why did I put quotation marks around the word, “font,” above? It’s because “font” is not actually synonymous with “typeface.” A “font,” very technically speaking meant: 12 point Helvetica Italics.

Another “font” would be 12 point Helvetica Italic. A different font would be 12 point Helvetica Regular. Another would be 8 point Times Bold. Etc.

“Type Family” is now what we typically mean by “font.” I want, say, Times instead of Arial.

These distinctions matter less today because they can matter less. But in the old days, you might have a filmstrip with Helvetica Regular, Helvetica Bold, Helvetica Condensed, and a couple other fonts. If memory serves, there were only 8 to a strip. Things were usually organized in a convenient way. But you could certainly find it possible that for some more obscure typeface, you might have to load a different filmstrip if you wanted the italic version of the typeface.