Accuracy and alacrity are two requirements at TIME, and both have been served by the computer revolution. Since the mid-1960s, staffers at TIME headquarters in New York City have used keyboards and video-display screens to complete tasks that were once accomplished with scissors and rubber cement.
In this electronic operation, the typesetters of former years have been transformed into "copy processors." Among them are a crack crew called page coders. Working at a bank of glowing terminals, they convert stories into unique computer-language translations, or "codes," in which photographs, text and other elements of the page are represented by numerical commands.
As the...