48 years ago William Garth, Jr., president and founder of Photon, Inc., and Ellis Hanson, Chief Engineer of Photon, opened the doors to Compugraphic Corporation. That company is now a distant memory but in their day they wrought a revolution that brought phototypesetting to the printing industry, killed the last vestiges of hot metal typesetting, and ushered in the offset litho era.

Bill Garth was the accidental pioneer in phototypesetting. He graduated from MIT and ran a company called Lithomat, which made paper masters for offset printing. You typed on them and then ran them on offset duplicators which was competitive with mimeograph stencil printing.

In 1944, Rene Higgonnet and Louis Moyroud invented a fledgling phototypesetter and brought the idea to Vannevar Bush of MIT. Bush was Roosevelt's advisor on technology and oversaw the focus of American engineers on war technology. He returned to MIT and was involved in the formation of Raytheon and EG&G. He took the phototypesetter idea to Garth and Garth sponsored Moyroud's trip to the U.S.