Unitary photographic lettering and display typography device

Abstract

This apparatus is a unitary photographic lettering and display typography composing device and has as its objective the creation and mechanical combining of two adjacent master and slave photo typographic systems into one unitary, simultaneously controlled photographic, daylight operating lettering composing device that can produce display headings, captions and sub-heads in either English or foreign languages, on a full sheet of photographic paper. Because of its constantly yellow-illuminated character image that develops into a black character image instantly upon exposure to white light and its visible spacing control, its transverse and longitudinal motion adjustability of the photographic paper, it also lends itself to the composition of Semitic and Oriental languages, border designs, overall background pattern tint effects and engineering symbols. Each character is constantly projected in the master unit from a yellow safety light source and is visually spaced to the desired position. The character is instantly developed upon exposure by white light and appears as a black image. The operator continues to compose one character after another without concern as to the sensitized material on which the photographic composition is viewed becoming spoiled and unusable from overdevelopment, overexposure, exposure to extraneous light and/or overall fogging from lengthy interruption during composition. This advantage results from the use of the composing photographic sheet which the operator views only as a basic spacing control sheet and which is discarded when composition is completed. A second sheet of dry photographic paper in an adjacent darkroom slave unit apparatus receives a simultaneous latent image exposure in the exact size, position, spacing or overlap as the developer immersed spacing control photo paper sheet. The dry photo paper is subsequently developed, resulting in a sharp, accurate, identically composed, good contrast, finished duplicate suitable for reproduction. With this unitary twin photographic lettering and display typography composing device, rapid font character selection is achieved by merely rotating a font character selection dial which is connected to the negative film font disks of both systems. A single font shifting lever which shifts from the outer to the inner concentric ring of the alpha-numeric characters on both identical master and slave font character disks at the same time, allows for rapid combining of different types of font characters such as Roman (vertical) and Italic (slanted) for instant mixing of composed words on a common base line. With this photographic lettering and display typography composing device, whether the operator leaves the machine for short or long periods - from less than a minute to longer than a week - the visual images already composed will be retained and the photo paper will not lose its light sensitivity for the balance of the composition. Each latent image of a font character exposed onto the photo paper in the slave unit, after subsequent development within the machine, will be uniform in weight, sharpness, contrast and density.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.