Frank’s Highway to Hell

What the Hell? Frank talks about color scanners and emphasizes the granddaddy of them all, the venerable Hell Scanner, named for Dr. Rudolf Hell. Their use in the 1960s made color common in the printing industry, and trained scanner operators could pull in a decent salary. Soon, more than 10 companies had scanners and prices dropped so that every designer could have one. Now scanners are built into most desktop printers.

Published on July 23, 2021

Discussion

By Barry Brown on Jul 23, 2021

That Hell CP 341 scanner wasn't from the '60s; that appeared in the early '80s.
The scanner technology in the '60s was Hell's Klischograph scanner/engraver, and Crosfield's Scanatron CRT scanner (that created corrected contone separations from uncorrected contone separations).
The colour drum scanners really took-off in the early '70s, with Hell's DC300 and Crosfield's Diascan and Magnascan range.
Yes, the operators were skilled, but so were the photolithographers that they mostly were, who previously made separations with cameras and enlargers, working in the pitch dark with panchromatic emulsions, and producing screened films by projection with glass screens, calculating screen distance dependant on f-stop and 3-stop exposures to force a particular gradient. Those scanners were pricy, but their productivity made their purchase a no-brainer.

By Bob Howard on Jul 23, 2021

Nice video Frank; my dad worked for Crosfield Electronics back in the 80's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosfield_Electronics) and were direct competitors to Hell.

By Frank Romano on Jul 23, 2021

Thanks Bob. I received an award in England many years ago with another person: John Crosfield. Do you remember his SunSetter typesetter?

By Bob Howard on Jul 23, 2021

I do; we're so old....LOL

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