| Industry | Phototypesetting |
|---|---|
| Fate | Acquired by Agfa-Gevaert |
| Successor | Agfa-Gevaert |
| Founded | 1960 |
| Defunct | 1988 |
| Key people | William Garth Jr. |
Compugraphic Corporation was an American producer of typesetting systems and phototypesetting equipment, based, at the time of the Agfa merger, in Wilmington, Massachusetts, just a few miles from where it was founded. This company is not to be confused with Compugraphics[1], a British company founded 1967 in Aldershot, UK that specializes in the production of photomasks used in the production of integrated circuits.
Along with AM/Varityper and Mergenthaler, Compugraphic was at the vanguard of what was then considered to be a revolution in the graphic arts: "cold type." Prior to computerized typesetting systems such as those manufactured by Compugraphic, typography for magazines, newspapers and advertising was set using Linotype machines, which physically placed metal type forms (not unlike those found within manual typewriters) in line to form the headlines and text of their subjects. This was known as "hot type." When Compugraphic machines and their counterparts came to market, it represented a dramatic leap forward in speed and cost-efficiency and quickly made hot type technology obsolete. Ironically, cold type itself would become obsolete only a few decades later with the advent of desktop publishing and the graphics capabilities of Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga and Windows PC computers and the software that was developed for them by Adobe, Aldus, and others.
Compugraphic was founded in 1960 by William Garth Jr. in Brookline, Massachusetts. Along with Mr. Garth, Ellis Hanson and David Lunquist came from Photon, Corp. at the same time. Shortly thereafter, Earl Fortini joined the firm. The first hourly employee, with a Clock Number 1, was Leslie A. Clark.
The first product developed was the DTP, the Directory Tape Processor, an electro-mechanical machine, the size of a small upright freezer, and sold to publishers of telephone books.
In 1963, Compugraphic moved to Reading and commissioned Massachusetts-based Wang Laboratories to develop the Linasec, a computer used to prepare justified punched tape to drive linotype typesetting machines which were widely used in the printing industry, which at that time was based entirely on hot metal type.
In the late 1960s, Compugraphic introduced the 7200 and 2900 photocomposition machines. Prepared by a computer, a tape would be fed into a phototypesetter, which would imprint type from a strip of film onto Kodak-made Ektamatic (light-sensitive) paper, which would then be used for paste up. As the development of its systems progressed, Compugraphic continually included new technology such as larger CRT monitors, floppy-disk storage, and screen preview capabilities. Its most prolific product was the EditWriter, which could image onto photo paper up to 8 inches wide, could create type in sizes from 6 to 72 points by using various fixed lenses mounted on an internal turret, and stored information on 8" floppy disks.
In the 1980s the Teletypesetting Co. developed a hardware and software interface that allowed Compugraphic phototypesetting machines to connect to personal computers such as the Apple II[2]
In 1987, a U.S. patent for Intellifont, a system of hinted scaling computer fonts, was granted to Thomas B. Hawkins of Compugraphic.
In the trading quarter to September 30, 1987, Compugraphic reported revenue of some $92 million [3] In 1988, the company was acquired by the European image processing company, Agfa-Gevaert.
In 1990, printer and computing system manufacturer Hewlett-Packard adopted Intellifont scaling as part of its PCL 5 printer control protocol.