Offset's Rough Road To Prominence

Introduced in 1949, the Intertype Fotosetter was essentially a linecaster, but with one important difference: it didn't depend on hot-metal type. Instead the master character image was photographed.

In 1954, the second generation of phototypesetting equipment was introduced.

Using a light source and photosensitive paper, the Photon 200B drastically reduced the amount of time needed to prepare text for platemaking. More importantly it set the stage for the development of cathode-ray-tube units, which were the first generation of today's digital typesetters.