"Typesetting was simultaneously a process, a machine, a person, a service, and an industry. It was manual, mechanical, automated, and electronic -- and almost all of these methods overlapped over 50 years. The phototypesetting era began in 1945 with Higgonet and Moyroud established the basis for electro-mechanical phototypesetting. The roots of phototypesetting go back to the 1930s when the first patents were filed by Intertype, Monotype, and others to adapt mechanical typesetters to photographic typesetting. One can even go back to the early 1900s when photographic typesetters were envisioned. The last phototypesetter was manufactured in the late 1980s as laser imagesetters and CTP replaced them. This book covers the almost 400 models of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation phototypesetters and ends in 1985. It is a time capsule of a bygone era."--Back cover.