If you ever wondered how a typeface went from a designer’s drawing to a finished, cast piece of type from the Monotype; this is the film for you. Starting with an original drawing, this film goes through the painstaking and multi-step process of creating a single typeface in a single style in a single size for the Monotype composition caster.
This film was created to explain how to properly care and maintain a Monotype Casting Machine mould block (where the molten hot-metal is cast into the matrices).
The Monotype is a wonder of mechanics and engineering and in this film you will see the process of manufacturing the Monotype keyboard and composition caster from beginning to end.
This film was created to convince printing and typesetting shops to send their employees to the school to learn Monotype skills.
Has your Monotype ever produced low-quality type and you can’t figure out why? This film was created to show you how to properly maintain your Monotype Casting Machine to cast perfect type, every time.
Monotype made this film to showcase their newer, computer technologies that were finally coming to the market in the late 1960s. Based on the idea of modules which could be interchanged as needed for printers’ and typesetters’ specific needs, Monotype is desperate to show they are using modern circuit boards and tape-reading “computers” and are not behind the times.
The ‘Rotadon’ darkroom camera from Monotype’s subsidiary, Pictorial Machinery Limited, is a revolutionary, new camera made for photographing, enlarging and reducing, and creating photo positive and negatives for photographic reproduction and printing.
This film showcases Monotype’s answer to the upcoming phototypesetting revolution. They take great pains to show how little has changed from the old, hot-metal Monotype machines by replacing the hot-metal pot with a light source and the brass matrices with individual, photo negative matrices for exposure on paper or film. This cautious approach was in order to assuage the fears of printers who did not want to change.
Learn all about the ‘Monophoto’ Filmsetter from Monotype. This machine attempts to bridge the gap in typesetting from the hot metal machines to the “new and exciting” world of photo typesetting.
This silent film starts with a brief overview of the Monotype Works buildings as well as the company homes for workers. See hundreds of Monotypes being built in the factory from raw materials to the casting machine and keyboards.