رئيس التحرير في مواجهة الآلية التلقائية ٢_a .. كتاب صحافة الغد

The image is on a sensitive glass plate (negative). The second is to print this image again on a sensitive (positive) zinc plate, the third is to roast this plate (zinc) over a fire, and the fourth is to place the zinc plate in an etching machine filled with chemical acids several times until it is etched to the required depth.

All of these stages required human effort by eight semi-specialists and required a time of no less than 90 minutes per painting.

All of this has been reduced to one specialized worker who places the original image in the clichograph device and places a plate (a plastic paste called Nollar) over the image. Then he adjusts the keys, places a drilled needle on top of the Nollar plate, presses an electrical switch, then leaves the device working alone and the worker devotes himself to preparing the other image on the device. No. 2. This process does not take more than one stage in 20 minutes (and one worker) for one panel, while in the traditional method it took 90 minutes in 4 stages carried out by eight workers.

This device was the first step in the era of development, then it was followed in 1963 by the telephone receiver and transmitter for transmitting single-color images (one image every 6 minutes). Shortly after that, the wireless transmitter and receiver for single-color images and the manual devices (sack) arrived for transmitting images from the regions. By telephone line. In the field of collecting materials, Al-Ahram Foundation has introduced an automatic collection system. (T.T.S.)

This system - which is the same system used now in Western countries - saves a lot of time and effort. Written materials are sent to female writers on new type machines called perforators. In this machine there is a long, circular strip that comes out of a small hole. The width of the tape is less than three centimeters. When the typist presses the keys of the machine on which are written the abbreviated letters of the alphabet (90 letters), the tape is perforated - with each letter - and a number of holes appear on it in a rectangular shape, and each letter has a special code with a number of holes. When the entire article is finished with the holes, the tape is sent to the automatic collecting machine, and as soon as the tape enters, the machine starts working on its own without the worker pressing the letter keys, and the lead lines descend at a speed of 5 lines per minute (300 lines per hour). What is the benefit to the institution from this modern method of collection? A quick look at the history of the invention of the mechanical combine may give an idea of ​​this development. The following was stated in the book “Printing and Publishing Newspapers” (by Dr. A. H. Al-Sawy):

The method of manual assembly remained the one used in preparing various types of publications, for more than four centuries after the invention of printing. Printing letters themselves have undergone several improvements and many shapes have been cast from them, despite the progress of methods of printing, producing publications, making paper, ink, and so on.

When journalism made great progress in the nineteenth century, and at the same time means of transportation and communication advanced, and speed became a major factor in newspaper production and distribution, the slow manual collection method no longer suited the needs of journalism. Hence, specifically for the needs of journalism, he began thinking about making a machine that would independently carry out all the steps of the manual process. After many experiments that lasted many years, it was possible to produce simple machines that collect printing letters and arrange them in lines, but they did not adjust the lengths of the lines or Redistributing the letters in their places, however, in 1870, an American company produced a machine that was able to solve the second problem, which is the Unitype machine.

This machine consists of two cylinders, one on top of the other, and underneath them is a keyboard similar to the keyboard of a typewriter. The worker performs his task sitting in front of the keyboard. When he presses the key for letters, the letter falls from the bottom cylinder to where there is a row in which the letters are arranged next to each other, forming words in a line. But each line ultimately required the worker to adjust its length by hand, using spacers.

Although this machine was not able to solve the problem completely so that the collection process was completed automatically in all its stages, it was able to do the work of four collection workers at the same time, and it was the best of its kind produced at that time. Thus, it opened the door to the efforts of inventors to work on producing other machines that are more adequate for the purpose.

One of these inventors (in 1877), Ottomar Mergenthaler, an American of German origin, immigrated to the United States in 1872 at the age of eighteen. He had been interested since his youth in manufacturing precision instruments, and his efforts in this field would bear fruit after a few ten years. This young man was able to come up with a new plural making machine that is based on different foundations from what came before it. It combines the mothers (barricades) of the copper letters, instead of collecting the letters themselves, by pressing the keys bearing their marks. Then describe these mothers and level them according to the required lengths. After that, the letters are cast on it from molten metal. The collected material comes out in the end as coherent lines, Shugs, not separate letters. Then the machine returns the mothers to their places again automatically, using a circular column. The mother here resembles the letters on the “Unitip” machine in that it has teeth that match the teeth of the channel opening for this store. This machine was created after several experiments and attempts, and after a number of newspaper publishers were convinced of the feasibility of the invention and funded it, and it actually began its work in the summer of 1886 in the New York Tribune newspaper. It was soon used after the owners of the newspapers became clear how much time and effort it saved. This is the “Linotype” machine, which is still used today, although it has undergone several modifications to its first form. After the success of this machine, printing press manufacturing companies began working on producing similar machines. The “Intertype” machine was the most important. The most powerful of these machines was produced in competition with the “Linotype” machine. This machine was produced by an American company and began its work in the “New York Journal of Commerce” newspaper in the spring of 1913. This machine does not differ in general principles and work steps from the “Linotype” machine, other than that. It is characterized by several characteristics, the most important of which are the simplicity of construction, the multiplicity of stores of the main letters, and the possibility of changing these stores and increasing their number easily.

This historical summary notes that the mechanical summing machine remained as it was without any significant changes from 1877 to the sixties of this century. This means that no new discovery of the method of combining letters has been made for more than eighty years. Therefore, the printing revolution that began to spread in journalistic institutions is considered to lag behind the industrial revolutions that appeared in other fields. But now she was running at a fast pace to catch up with others.

This revolution began with the lifting of the keyboard using the perforated tape, which was the first modification to occur in mechanical combination machines.

The idea of ​​differentiating between the keyboard and the adding machine is an old one. This Teletypesetter idea, known as T.T.S. It dates back to the year 1932 when the Americans introduced it into the journalism industry. But the idea of ​​playing tape on an adding machine dates back to 1867.

In 1934, Britain followed America’s example and introduced the newspaper “The Scotsman,” the first T.T.S. tape recorder. In 1938, The Glasgow Herald followed suit, and then The Times of London followed them in 1951. The Times used this device to transfer the sessions of the English Parliament directly from the Parliament building to a machine. Collection via telephone tape. Thus, printing moved from the mechanical revolution to the automatic revolution, then the electronic and optical revolution (which we will talk about in the next chapter).

So we return to the automatic revolution that took place in the assembly halls of the Al-Ahram Foundation. What happened in the past (before the era of perforated tape) was the following: the written material was sent to the mechanical collection machines department. The worker places the article in front of him, then adjusts the size of the machine to the size required to collect the article, and also determines the type