Ink on fingers! The history of printing (with code!)
summary
A concrete throughline: mechanical Linotype automation dates to 1886 and powers newspapers for nearly a century, Linotype (1886) powered New York Times until 1978. Photo‑typesetters and CRT filmters replace hot metal and enable software control, with a PDP-11 hooked to a photo typesetter and domain languages like troff/eqn producing real print output. Engineers reverse‑engineer a Room 202 phototypesetter, generate new bitmap and vector fonts and even chess emoji, Ken Thompson hacked a typesetter to make emoji for a chess machine, and the hacks work.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:26Hand typesetting to Linotype
- 2:29Linotype revolution
- 3:53Linotype’s dominance
- 4:35Computer typesetting rise
- 6:00WYSIWYG and markup
- 7:03PDP-11 in typesetting
- 8:03Typesetting innovation needs
- 9:06Domain-specific languages for typesetting
- 10:11Kernighan on typesetting
- 11:13CRT typesetters reverse
- 12:39Linotype 202 project
- 13:23Typesetting legacy
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