Press: Semagraph

A dozen publishers’ representatives crowded around a linotype machine in the Charlotte (N. C.) Observer plant one day last week. No operator sat at the keyboard which was covered by a boxlike apparatus. Into a slot in the box Inventor Buford L. Green, 25 years an Observer employe, fed a sheet of copy typed on translucent paper. Then he turned a switch. To the wonderment of onlookers, the lintoype proceeded to set a galley of accurate type.

Called the “semagraph,” Inventor Green’s device is based upon use of the photo-electric cell. The special typewriter used in preparing copy prints a coded combination of dots under each character. Each group of dots interrupts a tiny beam of light in the semagraph, causing the proper type letter mold to fall into place.

Not to be confused with the semagraph is the teletypesetter, originally promoted by Chain-Publisher Frank E. Gannett, which can set type simultaneously in any number of remote plants.