Photo-Composting

Photo-Composing

Frank Ernest Gannett of Rochester, N. Y., spunky publisher of 16 newspapers,* cocked, last week, an eye to the future. In Manhattan, he told the Advertising Club about two machines:

1) The teletypesetter, developed by Publisher Gannett and already demonstrated successfully, is expected to be in use in many a metropolitan daily's plant within a year. This machine, by means of perforated tape, sets type by telegraph.

2)"There is another great revolution," said Mr. Gannett, "coming in the printing industry, although it may be five or ten years before it is perfected. That is the use of photo-composing instead of metal composing. Instead of producing a column of metal type, we will have a machine which produces a strip of film. The offset process will have to be used instead of the present relief process. The Eastman Kodak Co. is one of the concerns interested in abolishing the present costly and wasteful system of printing.

"Advertising men should be particularly interested in this invention, which is inevitable, because along with it will come, I believe, color printing in daily newspapers. "Another printing problem, that of the justifying typewriter by which each line will be filled out to make a full line of type, has been solved. ... It will be of great importance in making photo-composing possible, as the films will be made from typewritten material.

The most advanced form of newspaper color printing today is color rotogravure, which is used in the Sunday supplements of the New York World, Chicago Tribune, Syracuse Herald, Buffalo Times, Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, Omaha World-Herald. This process requires five cylinders: two for rotogravure, three for red, yellow, blue.

*His most recent acquisition is the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (TIME, Jan. 14).