50th: Long Road to Automation — From High Touch to Hi Tech

"How Research Pays Off: Color on Newsprint"--RIT's Graphic Arts Research Department has been conducting research for years leading to the development of a system of web offset process color newspaper printing, which would be low-cost, high quality and economical.

The passage of 10 years didn't warrant doing a big industry retrospective in the June 1968 issue. Instead, PRINT 68 was the lead story. It reported that "automation is the watchword of the printing industry today," and cited advances in computer typesetting, electronic controls and platemaking as examples. On the press front, a "massive sales drive" by Japanese manufacturers and a "very pronounced tendency to the in-line production approach" were noted.