The introduction of the original Apple LaserWriter, with the Adobe PostScript page description language, went a long way towards making the Mac a credible personal computer. It wasn’t just about having a pretty point-and-click interface. It was about having a genuine tool that soon came to dominate the prepress and publishing industries.

It also went a long way towards destroying a profession, traditional typesetting, and that’s how I got involved with Macs.

From the mid-1970s on, I earned a decent living as a typographer. I worked for small art studios, publishers, and typesetting plants. While such people used to work on machines that generated letterforms from vats of hot lead, I got involved when the industry moved to phototypesetting, where the output was generated onto photosensitive paper.

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This article was posted on Monday, June 5th, 2017 at 12:00 AM and is filed under News and tagged with: Adobe Postscript, Apple, Apple LaserWriter, hot lead, phototypesetting, Typesetting, Typography.