Remote Control

One Monday morning ten years ago, John R. White, mechanical superintendent of the Charlotte, N. C. Observer, marched into the office of Publisher Curtis Boyd Johnson. He announced that one of his linotype operators, 36-year-old Buford Leonard Green, had a mechanized linotype invention that worked. Three months later, convinced that Green had something worth backing, Publisher Johnson entered a partnership with him.

Last week, after ten years of backing and inventing, the partners demonstrated their perfected Semagraph in the Manhattan offices of the Associated Press. Seated at an electrically driven typewriter, a girl clicked out a story. The typewriter's type bars carried coded combinations of dots under each character and the "copy" showed these dots. As each page was completed, Inventor Green lovingly inserted it into a Semagraph transmitter. Simultaneously, in the composing room of the Charlotte Observer 611 miles away, a telegraph printer reproduced the copy exactly. This copy, in turn, was fitted into the slots of a Semagraph setter unit attached to an ordinary linotype. With no further aid from human hands, the linotype cast perfect slugs of type ready for the printer's forms.

The heart of "Johnny" Green's invention is his use of a tiny beam of light and a photo-electric cell. Whether in the transmitter or in the linotype activator, the light is focused on the coded dot combinations and reflected into the photocell. The varying combinations cause correspondingly varying pulsations in the photocell. These pulsations actuate the appropriate mechanisms in the telegraph printer and in the linotype (or Intertype). Its inventor claims that the speed of the Semagraph is limited only by the speed of the linotype. The number of teletype printers that can receive Semagraph copy from one transmitter is unlimited. Semagraph copy can be sent in different type sizes and column widths.

This merging of the processes of teletyping and linotyping is not new. A device known as the Teletypesetter was first given a practical demonstration eight years ago. The Teletypesetter performs its operations by the use of a perforated tape rather than a photocell. Not only can either of these devices be used to receive dispatches from long distances quickly convertible into type; their inventors claim that, used to set up local copy within an office, the machines are far more efficient than manual operation of linotypes. Stories are accumulated either on the Semagraph code copy or on the Teletypesetter tape. These stories are then fed to the linotypes which turn out type faster and more steadily than a man can produce it. In the offices of the Newburgh, N. Y. Newburgh News, Teletype-setters have been in use to obtain greater volume of production from the linotypes for five years.

Inventor Green, a lifelong member of the International Typographical Union, prefers not to think about the effect of his labor-saving machine on employment in his craft. Backer Johnson hopes it will mean bigger papers, thus even more jobs. The I. T. U. has already assumed jurisdiction over all workers operating the Teletypesetter.

*But legible copy also comes from the Semagraph.

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