[GreenKeys] ascii art generation

[dmm at lemur.com]

Tony writes:

>RTTY art was done long before personal computers came into existence, 
>and all that fancy stuff like lookuptables etc.

It even predates RTTY and TTY.

I could swear I recall an example from the 19th century (not that
I was there at the time, of course!) of pictures being done in
this way in hand-set type.  I can't find one right now,
so I can't verify this.

I was able to find something closely related, though: an example of
a typeface designed specifically to allow typesetting in imitation
of crochet (or cross-stitch?) patterns.  Here's an example as shown
in Ringwalt's "American Encyclopedia of Printing" from 1871:

http://www.galleyrack.com/temp/ringwalt-1871-crochet.pdf

I have seen (but can't now find) an actual picture composed in crochet type.
Of course, having a typeface for the purpose is cheating a bit.

Here's a variation which is (again) different, but not "cheating"
in the same way:  A portrait of president Wilson, as shown in 
Popular Science, Vol. 92, No. 2 (Feb. 1918).  It is done using
only the variation of weight in the type, allowing the use of
an actual readable text in the picture:

http://www.galleyrack.com/temp/popsci-1918.pdf

The Pop Sci article notes that the portrait above was set by machine,
but it doesn't specify which one (Linotype, Monotype, or a remote
possibility of a Linograph).  Here, though, is a picture done
specifically on the Monotype:

http://www.galleyrack.com/temp/monotypia-1926.pdf

(it's a 12 Meg PDF; sorry about the size, but I wanted to keep with
it enough identifying information so that it didn't become an
anonymous image).  It comes from the specimen book of a
Washington, D.C. based printer.

The interesting thing about the Monotype picture, from a TTY point
of view, is that it was made using punched tape!  The Monotype was
a competitor to the Linotype which came into serious commercial
use about 1900.  It differed from the Linotype in that it 
cast (on demand) and set individual types, not slug-lines of type.
It differed also because it split the process of keyboarding from
that of casting.  A keyboard operator, working in an office and
wearing a suit, tie, and perhaps a visor, would punch a rather
wide paper tape at a pneumatic keyboard.  This tape was then carried 
to a casting machine in a dirtier part of the plant where a casterman, 
wearing a smock and cap (in 1903 ads, at least) would feed it in 
and cast the material.

So although this example relies heavily on typographical ornaments,
everything in it was encoded digitally (just not in ASCII).

I have no idea whether or not anything similar was done with
6-level Teletypesetter tape to the Linotype.  On the one hand,
I can't imagine that it wasn't.  On the other than, TTS installations
tended to be in larger newspapers with crushing production schedules.

Regards,
David M.
===
Dr. David M. MacMillan  -  dmm at lemur.com

   The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
       - Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915); Aldo Leopold

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