From: "Jed Rothwell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: future printer = future replicator?
<snip> > Even in the 20th century, Japanese printing remain difficult, slow and > expensive because there are so many different characters. After World War > II the number of characters was reduced to around 2000 but even this was > too many for practical use. Typewriters were never practical. A few of them > were used by well-trained secretaries. I once tried one of the "compact > 'personal' typewriters" shown here: > > http://www.honco.net/japanese/05/page1.html > > Japanese typing did not become practical until the invention of the word > processor, and is still a nuisance. The text is input in Romanized format, > and it converts automatically to characters. The conversion is often > incorrect and has to be manually patched up. A chance to add some personal history of a critical step in Japanese printing. As part of my career at RCA, I was with the rise and fall of the Graphics Systems Division, which was chartered to combine TV and computer technology to produce electronically full page images of newspapers on film, and from there printing plates, thus bypassing the labor-intensive composing room. It was audacious, and we were able to do it for text, but not graphics, with the RCA Spectra 70 mainframe computer of the time. For a while the LA Times want ads -- 6 pt type -- were produced by RCA VideoComps, starting with a high resolution 7-in CRT image. It was a tour de force. GSD also wrote the first real word processor, capable of handling books and such, called Page 1. This was in the '60s. RCA had a trading company in Japan to handle business there. In our second or third year, a single representative was sent to GSD to see what we were doing. the following year four came, and then a resident team of eight were set up with their oen computer and access to the in-house videocomp. The requirements of Japanese newspapers -- delicate characters [hevy lines would be rude] and the huge library of images taxed the capability of the VideoComp to its limt. It had to run in the highest resolution mode, crawling at 100 characters per second. The character database had to be organized with a thorough knowledge of the language and character frequency, something that RCA programmers could not attempt. It wasn't perfect, but it was far ahead of the Japanese typewriters of the time, using some 13 levels of shifts -- operated with the feet -- where a skilled person could go at one character per second. GSD and the VideoComp attracted wide attention. a UK publisher offered any amount of money if we could crack the charcoal sketch and halftone problem. After six months of effort we gave up. Laser technology was just emerging. The RCA bean counters demanded a guaranteed cash flow of $50 million annually to retain dvision status. GSD was folded into the computer division, and then RCA decided to get out of the computer business. The Japanese were left high and dry. Eventually the GSD technology was bought up by a smaller firm who may have been able to support the Japanese for a while. I don't know what became of that thread. So all you guys typing happily away with your word processors can lift a beer and shed a tear for RCA GSD, where it was proven that high quality typesetting could be done electronically. If, if, and if, RCA could have had a commanding place in electronic publishing. Instead it's crowning achievement was compatable color television and major contributions to the digital compression techniques used in MPEG-2. So as you raise your eyes from the keyboard to your CRT, you can also thank RCA. Another beer and tear for RCA's pioneering efforts in liquid crystal technology, which it sold to Timex for watches, even as the company struggled to produce "mural TV". So even if you are using an LCD monitor, there is a tiny thread back to a fading legend in electronics. Mike Carrell > > - Jed > > > > >
