It may not be that interesting.

I worked in three different compugraphics groups. Unix command line input, no on-screen representation, constantly changing film widths to keep costs down, and then you kerned headlines on the board.

Oh the thrill of finding a waxed letter stuck to your butt and trying to figure out where in the paper it had come from.

Printer's Type in the Twentieth Century by Richard Southall addresses this.

A great text about the transition of Metal to Photo was written by Ed Rondthaler which also happens to be his autobigraphy and the story of PLINC. It's called Life With Letters (as they turned photogenic)

Additionally, since the Filmotype acquisition I've been working on the complete story of the history of the company, device and library which I hope to have published before the coming Typecon.

Best,
Stuart :D

I get the impression that researching photo type is a bugger in part because nobody loved the process very much. So when desktop publishing arrived, most designers unceremoniously swept their photo-type stuff into the trash, and few libraries held on to the old technical manuals.

Stuart, your history of Filmotype sounds like a fun read, I’ll be looking forward to it.