The history of prepress
These pages give an overview of the history of prepress from 1984 onwards. For a more elaborate list of events, click on one of the years in the lists below. This also allows you to go back to the days when phototypesetting took off and machines from Compugraphic, Berthold or Scangraphic ruled the industry. Enjoy your visit to this virtual prepress museum!
The eighties: desktop publishing takes over
In the early 80’s many of the technologies that are still in use today first appear on the market. IBM launches its Personal Computer. The Apple Lisa offers a first glimpse at the graphical user interface that will later be made popular by the Macintosh.
In 1985 the Apple LaserWriter and Aldus PageMaker are thrown in the mix and the desktop publishing revolution can start. A designer now has the possibility to create a full page design using standard computers and off-the-shelf software. Linotype’s Linotronic assures high-quality output on film or paper. Pretty soon other publishing applications appear for both Mac and PC, closely followed by drawing programs such as Illustrator and freehand. Larger screens, faster networking and improved support for peripherals through standards such as SCSI make sure the market matures rapidly.
Artistically the new found freedom often leads to pages that contain at least a dozen different fonts in two or three different typefaces, mixed with fairly low-resolution graphics.
Some of the highlights of the decade:
• 1980: The Ethernet specifications are published.
• 1981: The IBM PC legitimizes personal computers in the business market.
• 1982: Adobe is founded, Sony releases its first Trinitron monitor, Sun is incorporated.
• 1983: The Apple Lisa introduces the graphical user interface and mouse, Creo is incorporated
• 1984: The Apple Macintosh is launched, Adobe releases PostScript, Linotype introduces the Linotronic 300 imagesetter.
• 1985: The Apple LaserWriter and Aldus PageMaker start the desktop publishing revolution.
• 1986: Ventura Publisher appears on PC, Apple ships the Macintosh Plus, Radius make the first Full Page Display.
• 1987: Quark launches QuarkXPress 1.0, Adobe Illustrator 1.0 ships , Linotype starts making PostScript typefaces.
• 1988: NeXT starts selling the NeXTcube, Aldus releases FreeHand 1.0.
• 1989: Helios EtherShare is shown, CorelDRAW 1.0 ships.
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Hi folks,
Neat library page. I forgot all about aldus which was a blast from the past. I once had a pre-press manager who used to curse computers and rave about the simplicity of lead plates. Alot of innovation in the last century so thanks for the trip.
kind regards,
Ron
That was a great trip down memory lane. Thanks. Unfortunately I’m old enough to remember it all happening. Ha!
Scitex started the “desktop revolution” with the Pixet work station in 1982. I was one of the first to operate one for Graphic Arts Systems (Burbank, CA). We did not only photo retouching but page layout as well and output film on the ‘Erray” ouput (up to 30 x 40″ film size). The system incorporated HP 600mg Hard Drives for each workstation.
CIPC was before the Pixet. ELP was before the ERAY. Imager and Imager II with the trackball and zoom wheel and dynamic keypad. Those stations rocked. Imager 3 with adjustable slant digitizing tablet, build in viewing box. 9 track half inch reel to reel tape drives. AMPEX disc drives as big as washing machines. The Scitex Response 300 series with a skilled op can still crush any DTP system. R280 series even more prehistoric. Scitex invented stuff most people couldn’t even dream of.
Nobody yet can do interactive TRNSCOL or make a good High res LW 2540 dpi with CT 300 dpi. masking on DTP sucks.
Brilliant! . . .
Very engaging and one of the shortest introduction to modern Prepress history events, I have ever read. Every graphic design student needs it.
Regards!
That was very interesting.
Thanks
Dear Laurens,
If I may add a bit to your history of prepress..
Before the desktop revolution there was the photosetting revolution, when the ‘hot typesetting’ was replaced by the ‘cold typesetting’. That is, when lead type was replaced by type set in photographic film.
I happened to work in a newspaper that used a photosetting system that could be used as well to fit information in layouts set by commands similar to those of Latex or HTML. It was mad by ATEX company and it lasted about ten years until we moved, very slowly to the desktop revolution with Win 3.11 (Workgroup) and Quark 3.12 for Windows (yes, we were a risk-taking wild bunch).
I remember first making the layouts by hand with the typometre and with my pencils and then typesettings the texts with orders like /dm0,1,9,9,9.9,10p/ (Set roman mode to font number 1 in this system (Times New Roman), body 9 points, width 9 points, leading 9.9 points, width 10 picas/… then, the resulting photographic paper was waxed to the strip base by our strippers (hairy middle-aged guys, don’t think otherwise) together with high contrast-screened copies of the pictures.
Those pages were then photosetted as individual offset plates (for the newspaper) and positioned in the roll web.
I remember the first keyboards we used were about 5-7 cm. thick (not joking) and you could kill a cow by breaking its skull if you hit its head with them.
There was a set of mainframes that could be brought to their knees if everybody hit the ‘H&J’ key at roughly the same time (“System is falling down, System is falling down!!!” was the editorial room yell.).
This system, that needed quite a throung of people to make a newspaper, was nonetheless much cheaper than the preceding ones, using ‘hot type’.
That laste more or less until 1994 or so around here (Madrid, Spain).
Yours, Gustavo
I graduated HS in 1985 (PostScript), and graduated from RIT in 1989. My first job was as a mechanical artist for a large typesetter – Rochester Monotype. I would set and output and graphics from my super fast Mac IIci with PageMaker (RageMaker) or Illustrator 88 to a Linotype L300 imagesetter on RC paper and paste-up (wax) everything up to a board, which would be shot in our camera department to a negative. We also had a second L300 with film. We would output a lot of spot color film negatives that were stripped into conventional film by strippers.
The company had invested seven figures in a Bedford phototypesetting system, and were in the throws of how to maintain both systems – Mac/Lino and Bedford.
I later went to two prepress companies that were heavily invested in Scitex and Hell equipment (Primax, Prisma, Assembler, magnetic tapes, Dolev 200, 800, Hell drum scanners) and struggling with the same paradigm changes with DTP.
It’s been a wild ride for this electronic prepress industry for the last 25 years, for sure.
Very interesting article! Amazing how far we have come in a few short decades. 20 years from now we will be the history discussion points of print technologies of the past? Can’t wait to see!
I remember the change from doing all the make up on a light table, we were called combiners here in Australia. We would make all the traps by hand, use clear film to patch image separation up on, rubylith, liquid opaque and red paper for masking. Our tool box would have brushes, scalpels, snap off blades and high and low registration pins or pin bars.
There are still some things that can be done on the bench by hand that are unattainable today. Very few prepress people today have seen film sepparations or any of the interesting proofing methods that were available before CTP and digital proofing came to town.
How the world of prepress has changed. Here in Australia it was thought that the prepress operator or prepress in general could be done away with. How fare from the truth that is.