Typesetters in the '80s - Computerphile
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters point to it as the history of phototypesetters and a story about the freedom to control your own hardware.
What it is
Professor Brailsford of the University of Nottingham describes how the university set out to print its own mathematics exam papers in the 1980s. The story centers on getting a Mergenthaler Linotron 202 typesetter to work with their own software.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2015 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Recommends ATsch · 2015-11 · on “Experience with the Mergenthaler Linotron 202 Phototypesetter (1980) [pdf]”
Computerphile interviewed one of the writers of this paper in a series of videos, who explained the brilliant and exiting history of this paper and its recreation, as well as the history of Phototypesetters. 1. [LINK] 2. [this video] 3. [LINK]
Cites theoh · 2017-02 · on “A glitch in the human psyche that equates repetition with truth”
I've never seen Stallman speak, but that sounds like a similar situation to this anecdote from Nottingham in the 80s: [this video] It's a somewhat tedious story but it's all about the freedom to control your own hardware.
Cites leoc · 2020-11 · on “The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan”
0:16:40 For those who haven't seen it before, there's a Computerphile video [LINK] (related video: [this video] ) about the hacking of the typesetting machine, a Mergenthaler Linotron 202. 0:24:31 The photo must be the one at [LINK] (probably the webpage, on Dennis Ritchie's old website, that made it famous recently).