Typesetters in the '80s - Computerphile

If you thought mathematics exams were difficult, you should try printing them out! - Professor Brailsford takes us through Nottingham University's path to printing their own papers.
The Great 202 Jailbreak: • The Great 202 Jailbrea...
Democratisation of Fonts: COMING SOON!
Maxwell's Equations Poster: www.eprg.org/computerphile/god...
Nottingham Typesetting Implementation: www.eprg.org/computerphile/new...
/ computerphile
/ computer_phile
This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley.
Computer Science at the University of Nottingham: bit.ly/nottscomputer
Computerphile is a sister project to Brady Haran's Numberphile. See the full list of Brady's video projects at: bit.ly/bradychannels

Пікірлер: 81

  • @fuzzysubjects
    @fuzzysubjects10 жыл бұрын

    I'd love to see a video about the history of Tex and LaTex, since I'm currently learning it for my Bachelor thesis. And I started to love it, after seeing some fellows failing hard at msOffice.

  • @LuckyMarketGameplay
    @LuckyMarketGameplay10 жыл бұрын

    Thank you for your web pointer, I shall process it through the series of tubes as soon as I disembark from my automobile excursion.

  • @CharlesVanNoland
    @CharlesVanNoland7 жыл бұрын

    What I gather from all of the videos I've watched is that Professor Brailsford is not only a super special kinda guy but also a goldmine of history and know-how. He's one in a million! The greatest thing about him, which I noticed a few months ago, and pointed out to a friend of mine, is that he can maintain on a long monologue without requiring a bunch of quick edits to filter out superfluous thoughts. He's concise and thorough, going indepth, and following a coherent train of thought at a healthy pace. EDIT: All of his videos are a real treat!

  • @aleewade4162
    @aleewade41629 жыл бұрын

    In 1982 I was an engineering grad student when we took delivery of a 300DPI Xerox laser printer. It was promptly connected to a VAX-11/780 running VMS and TeX 1.0 (aka TeX82). Ease of publishing increased by an order of magnitude almost over night.

  • @PixelOutlaw
    @PixelOutlaw10 жыл бұрын

    He is a very good narrator, even better that he talks about historical problems and solutions. Computer history is very entertaining for me.

  • @Superphilipp
    @Superphilipp10 жыл бұрын

    This man has the greatest voice I have ever heard. Seriously, has he ever done any acting or voice work?

  • @OsaSoft
    @OsaSoft10 жыл бұрын

    as a student of software engineering i find this channel absolutely fantastic... the people involved all seem to be not only great scientists in their relevant fields, but also great teachers... i also really like these history videos... being in my 20s now i never really experienced this kind of thing and the early years of computing and this is just so fascinating and something you dont really get in school thank you so much :)

  • @Desmaad
    @Desmaad10 жыл бұрын

    I noticed that whoever wrote the brochure typed in Zolig instead of Zilog in the processor list; whee, typos.

  • @WouterDHaeseleer
    @WouterDHaeseleer10 жыл бұрын

    what a great story again! i believe i can listen a whole day to this guy. he can tell it with real passion, something which i admire

  • @MedEighty
    @MedEighty10 жыл бұрын

    06:20 Oops! They misspelt Zilog in their manual.

  • @SharpblueCreative
    @SharpblueCreative9 жыл бұрын

    I was a typesetter in the 1980s - Compugrapgic MCS Powerview 5

  • @3ventic
    @3ventic10 жыл бұрын

    Happy new year to you too!

  • @kuglepen64
    @kuglepen6410 жыл бұрын

    This is lovely stuff! Keep it coming!

  • @romulus2225
    @romulus222510 жыл бұрын

    I'm a physical chemist, but I'm addicted to Computerphile now! I always watched Periodic and Numberphile, but I love these videos!

  • @nomeanlol
    @nomeanlol10 жыл бұрын

    This is fascinating. You don't appreciate how amazing it is to be able to click print and have a reasonable copy pop out of a machine without the history behind it.

  • @amak1131
    @amak113110 жыл бұрын

    I love this man... reminds me of my grandpa telling stories of coding in Basic.

  • @thats2kewl
    @thats2kewl10 жыл бұрын

    Excellent video...love the poster. I would love to buy a Computerphile T-shirt with that on the back!!

  • @666Tomato666
    @666Tomato66610 жыл бұрын

    and to think that I was able to write similar quality notes during my university coursework using LaTeX system just few years ago...

  • @patrick1020000
    @patrick102000010 жыл бұрын

    Great video again!

  • @Falcrist
    @Falcrist10 жыл бұрын

    I absolutely can't believe i got into the sub-301 club. That email notification must have been really quick!

  • @Komodojou
    @Komodojou10 жыл бұрын

    Funny that this video comes up today, as I've been playing Type:Rider.

  • @ilikewebm
    @ilikewebm10 жыл бұрын

    Bell Labs and Unix changed everything... But really good printing quality for this time... 700 dpi are very impresive.

  • @tobortine
    @tobortine10 жыл бұрын

    Excellent, thank you.

  • @ch0rd2
    @ch0rd210 жыл бұрын

    Ab-so-lute-ly love this stuff. Many thx.

  • @1804180469
    @180418046910 жыл бұрын

    Are we going to get a video on TeX and LaTeX at some point?

  • @jdgrahamo
    @jdgrahamo10 жыл бұрын

    The advent of computer printing more or less sounded the death knell for letter spacing, which nobody seems to bother with any more. A great retrograde step in design, I fear.

  • @_wouter52
    @_wouter5210 жыл бұрын

    Very interesting! Thnx!

  • @Nordath1
    @Nordath110 жыл бұрын

    Awesome!

  • @MRayner59
    @MRayner5910 жыл бұрын

    This may be the nerdiest video... ever! Quite delightful.

  • @alsifjlasieflooo
    @alsifjlasieflooo10 жыл бұрын

    And today you just press Ctrl + P...

  • @photosinensis

    @photosinensis

    10 жыл бұрын

    It's not quite the same. There's still a power to typesetters that hitting Ctrl+P doesn't come close to. Those things can crank out a large volume of printed material very quickly--enough for a newspaper print run, for example.

  • @Congochicken
    @Congochicken9 жыл бұрын

    Did that video that says coming soon at the end ever come out?

  • @dkarlovi
    @dkarlovi10 жыл бұрын

    It's funny when you think about the human life and context. I find this gentleman fascinating and would buy him a beverage every day to hear him talk about this (or his other experiences). His wife, as is usually the case, must be sick of hearing about it. :)

  • @TheKuleluke
    @TheKuleluke10 жыл бұрын

    *Computerphile* _is_ *awesome*

  • @symbolxchannel

    @symbolxchannel

    10 жыл бұрын

    var *Computerphile* = "awesome!"; alert(*Computerphile*);

  • @yousorooo

    @yousorooo

    10 жыл бұрын

    SymbolX Too much JavaScript.

  • @realraven2000

    @realraven2000

    10 жыл бұрын

    SymbolX at least use let ;-)

  • @jhoughjr1

    @jhoughjr1

    10 жыл бұрын

    Derek Leung [self setComputerphile:@"awesome"]; NSLog(@"%@",_computerphile);

  • @linkVIII
    @linkVIII10 жыл бұрын

    cool stuff

  • @ejetzer
    @ejetzer10 жыл бұрын

    You could ask the same question about regular text.

  • @Khaltazar
    @Khaltazar10 жыл бұрын

    How in the world do you use that Mac keyboard? It's terrible.

  • @d3line
    @d3line10 жыл бұрын

    I want to buy that poster!!!

  • @crumplezone1
    @crumplezone110 жыл бұрын

    Dont pick ur nose prof ! @ 10.00, LOL Another fantastic vid sir

  • @Urf93
    @Urf9310 жыл бұрын

    Awesome :D

  • @MooImABunny
    @MooImABunny9 жыл бұрын

    why in the hell would god write down electrodynamics in spherical coordinates?? more importatnly, why would he not use 4-vector / tensors spacetime notations...

  • @daedra40
    @daedra4010 жыл бұрын

    Just at the start, i want to say that it's pretty difficult to not like whatever the prof has to say. Simply.

  • @sooskca
    @sooskca10 жыл бұрын

    most dramatic hacking tales on the internet

  • @zwz.zdenek
    @zwz.zdenek9 жыл бұрын

    I wonder how did the big printing houses produce the math handbooks I had always known about. Why didn't you use whatever proven workflow they had developed? Even if that meant lead types.

  • @DarkosLab
    @DarkosLab10 жыл бұрын

    Do you think we could get Maxwell's equations on Numberphile?

  • @J2897Tutorials
    @J2897Tutorials10 жыл бұрын

    Did that letter mention a fee for the UNIX OS? I couldn't see all of it. Or was that before companies began hiding source code?

  • @boogiman007
    @boogiman00710 жыл бұрын

    so HD has been around since the 80s. huh!

  • @jdrejert
    @jdrejert10 жыл бұрын

    I'm pretty sure I saw that t-shirt in a Modern Family episode (worn by Alex).

  • @jdrejert

    @jdrejert

    10 жыл бұрын

    (Although with curl and grad notation.)

  • @ArnimSommer
    @ArnimSommer10 жыл бұрын

    I wonder if Professor Brailsford ever met Don Knuth...

  • @OmegaCraftable
    @OmegaCraftable10 жыл бұрын

    The link to the poster doesn't work. :(

  • @angeldude101

    @angeldude101

    10 жыл бұрын

    You mean the pointer?

  • @yetanothertubeuser

    @yetanothertubeuser

    10 жыл бұрын

    Remove the %C2%AD bit. KZread put a tag there for some reason. Edit: Or do you actually mean the poster? Because that one works.

  • @TheChipmunk2008

    @TheChipmunk2008

    10 жыл бұрын

    Works fine here, it's just not hyperlinked is all

  • @Nilguiri
    @Nilguiri10 жыл бұрын

    Interesting.

  • @pepper669
    @pepper6697 жыл бұрын

    Are there any surviving 202s?

  • @DAR00ST3R
    @DAR00ST3R10 жыл бұрын

    Sadly, all I get is grey screens of nothing when trying to access the eprg(dot)org links. Great video nonetheless though :-)

  • @TMTVL
    @TMTVL10 жыл бұрын

    So, is this the video uploaded in Ubuntu?

  • @serhiyint
    @serhiyint10 жыл бұрын

    Apple product placement?

  • @Patman128
    @Patman12810 жыл бұрын

    Says "Zolig Z80" at 6:30 lol.

  • @Sammysapphira
    @Sammysapphira10 жыл бұрын

    Its been 5 minutes how are there no comments.

  • @unvergebeneid
    @unvergebeneid10 жыл бұрын

    Wasn't TeX already developed in the late 1970s? How then isn't it even mentioned in a video on typesetting in the 1980s?

  • @frustbox

    @frustbox

    10 жыл бұрын

    Donald E. Knuth started TeX in 1978 but it wasn't finished until 1986. I'm looking forward to a follow up to this video, moving on to "modern" typesetting using TeX, LaTeX and maybe even further.

  • @666Tomato666

    @666Tomato666

    10 жыл бұрын

    frustbox the only thing that's further than LaTeX is XeTeX or LuaTeX.

  • @unvergebeneid

    @unvergebeneid

    10 жыл бұрын

    666Tomato666 While I agree purely regarding typography, TeX isn't for everyone and TeX surely isn't perfect (tex.stackexchange.com/questions/27440/what-cant-tex-do).

  • @joshcryer

    @joshcryer

    10 жыл бұрын

    It's briefly mentioned in the 202 hacking video, which, btw, is a lot more comprehensive.

  • @unvergebeneid

    @unvergebeneid

    10 жыл бұрын

    joshcryer Oh ok. I had seen that video but obviously I've already forgotten.

  • @TheRealFlenuan
    @TheRealFlenuan10 жыл бұрын

    It's "80s". Apostrophes are not used for pluralization.

  • @alexanderwesterstahl
    @alexanderwesterstahl10 жыл бұрын

    Haha, "Zolig Z80" xD

  • @jamez6398
    @jamez639810 жыл бұрын

    What!? Why on earth would you go to all of that effort to get the printer to work!? Come on, now. Those are only a list of mathematical equations; they weren't graphs or artistic styluses; why on earth would you need to use a printer to get these images when they are only a list of mathematical equations? If they're only printed-out mathematical equations, then surely being hand-written is good enough??

  • @sadade32
    @sadade3210 жыл бұрын

    Mai god, one of the early commenters!

  • @ElectricEvan
    @ElectricEvan10 жыл бұрын

    This is the problem with making things for other people.

  • @zupnikal
    @zupnikal10 жыл бұрын

    Gaussian units... ARGH...