The base of this display held hot type set by monotype.
The base of this display held hot type set by monotype.
RCA 301 mainframe installation
RCA 301 mainframe installation
Detail map of Los Angeles, California, United States Overview map of Los Angeles, California, United States

A: Los Angeles, California, United States

At the Los Angeles Times Computers Control Hyphenation & Justification of Text Set by Linotype Hot Metal Typesetters

1962
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Paperweight advertising Electronic Composition Type-Justification  with the Aid of the RCA 301Computer

In 1962 the Los Angeles Times newspaper drove Linotype hot metal typesetters with perforated tape created from an RCA 301 computer, greatly speeding up typesetting.

The key to this advance was development of a dictionary and a program to automate hyphenation and justification of text in columns. Paper tape containing wire service copy without line breaks was fed into the 301, and the hyphenation & justification program decided how to break the lines and punched out paper tape containing line breaks. These tasks had taken 40 percent of a manual Linotype operator's time. 

"In 1962, only a handful of dailies had used computers. But thirty-eight newspapers were using computers in typesetting in 1964, eighty-nine in 1965, and 184 in 1966. The computer industry catered to newspapers by manufacturing more and better machines specifically made for publishers. By the mid-1960s, IBM, RCA, National Cash Register, American Type Founders, and numerous other companies were making machines specifically for typesetting in newspapers.(53)
"Computers promised, eventually at least, to revolutionize all phases of newspapering, not just the industry's production methods. "I have never seen an industry that is going to be more completely changed in the next decade as the result of automation, nor one which today realizes it less," management consultant John Diebold told the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) in 1963. Diebold predicted that computers would transform all editorial operations of newspapers within a decade. "Automation is going to change totally the way in which a newspaper is edited," Diebold said, "[including] the environment in which you work, the tools that you use, and, as well, the kind of editorial product that you produce."(54) Florida newspaperman John H. Perry Jr., publisher of the Palm Beach Post-Times, also predicted a production revolution. "I can visualize a composing room of the future," he said in 1963, "that will automatically compose a page in the newspaper starting from a typewritten page to a finished page without any human hands touching it until it is finished and ready for the press."(David R. Davies, "An Industry in Transition: Daily Newspaper, 1960-1965, http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~w304644/ch9.html, accessed 9-2020O

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