50th: Long Road to Automation — From High Touch to Hi Tech

FIFTY YEARS would constitute a long career, but it's just a flash of time for an industry that traces its roots at least back to the introduction of the Gutenberg press, circa the early 1400s. While each generation probably thinks it has seen more changes than any other, this has been a dizzying half century for the printing process.

Letterpress has given way to offset and now digital printing. Composition has gone from hot metal and manual paste-up through phototypesetting, color scanning, color electronic prepress systems and desktop publishing, then on to computer-to-plate and Web-to-print. Bindery equipment now boosts more computer power than Apollo 11.

Along the way, once venerable names have faded from the scene even as some of the technology persists. Gone are Harris, Hell, Linotype, Royal Zenith, Polychrome, Crosfield, Scitex and Compugraphic, to name just a few.

From a technology standpoint, there's an added touch of symmetry in June 2008 being the 50th anniversary edition of Printing Impressions. Volume 1 carried a story titled "Drupa (1958) Exhibit Is Successful." By the time this anniversary edition is in print, Drupa should have completed yet another successful run, the 14th in a series that was launched in 1951.

The report noted that the show featured a number of American manufacturers, but mostly European vendors. "Selling features stressed by equipment manufacturers were automation, quality and time-saving methods. American visitors discovered that the industry in Europe is moving into high-speed printing equipment at a more advanced rate, perhaps, than in the United States."

Among the products said to have grabbed the attention of visitors were:

o A line of high-speed letterpress equipment showing a new 15.5x22.5? format with extension high-pile truck delivery exhibited by Albert Frankenthal.

o The new Rotor-Binder for perfect binding from the Mueller Bindery that increases in speed from 3,000 to 3,500 books per hour.