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In updating my research on a wildcat labor action among compositors who worked at book, magazine, and job shops in New York City in 1919 for Flong Time, No See, I came across a remarkable claim about a new form of typesetting. The New York Times reported that The Survey magazine had typeset an issue using a planograph. The so-called planograph could set justified copy and print it on a substrate that could then be transferred to a lithographic plate for offset printing.

None of that made sense to me. Offset printing at scale was certainly feasible, though still in its infancy, with the first presses appearing around 1905. The Roland, from 1911, is often cited as the “first,” but it might more accurately be the first European sheet-fed offset press! Quite a disclaimer. However, offset was largely limited to job work, printing on metal, and other significant, but niche purposes, compared with general printing.

What was fully absurd, though, was the notion that a device could produce justified body copy suitable for reproduction without using some kind of matrix or metal type interface, which seemed ludicrous on its face. And yet—the more I researched this, the more I found evidence that it must have existed…briefly.