The Pioneer Days and Tolbert Lanston

Tolbert Lanston (1844-1913) was a born inventor. He was one of those rare people who, without any training in engineering, could devise original ideas. It was a machine for classifying and tabulating statistics by the use of perforated card that suggested to him the basic idea of a Monotype Keyboard and Caster, and he patented his earliest models in 1887. A Monotype Machine was first demonstrated in London in 1887, and the whole project would have failed if a British syndicate had not provided the necessary capital with which to finance it. In December 1897, The Lanston Monotype Corporation was formed. 

  

IPA Systems Ltd. was formed from four different companies, QED Technology Ltd., GB Techniques, Monotype Systems Ltd. and the Compugraphic part of the Agfa/Compugraphic Newspaper Division in 1992.

In September 1990, QED acquired the Compugraphic Newspaper Division. In March 1992, Cromas Trading acquired the equity in QED. The action by Cromas Trading provided the financial security for the future expansion of the company. To further strengthen its market position and product range QED then acquired GB Techniques Ltd, a developer of newspaper front-end systems, based in Scotland.

From their conception both QED and GBT developed products to meet and satisfy the requirements of the print and publishing industry. QED's chosen hardware platform was the Macintosh whilst GBT elected to develop their applications to run on the PC. The development of these systems coincided with page layout programs which enabled the on-screen make-up of complex pages, and related software operations. The combination of these powerful applications took both companies into the specialist field of newspaper, periodical publishing and allied industries.

In June, 2002 Monotype Systems Ltd which supplies innovative and cost effective products to the Publishing market place through IPA Systems Ltd, changed its name to alfaQuest Technologies.

Major publishing companies around the world continue to invest in IPA developed pre-press systems based on Macintosh and Windows workstations utilising AppleShare, Sun, Novell and Windows NT file serving technology.

IPA Systems Ltd's existing products are regularly upgraded and new developments undertaken using the latest database products and, where appropriate, integrating third party components. IPA Systems Ltd will continue offering the highest level of quality and productivity to the publishing industry.

IPA Systems Ltd has a professional team of approximately 45 staff with unrivalled expertise and a presence at over 300 key world-wide publishing sites. The company is located in three offices in the UK and one in France, other countries are served by an extensive dealer network.

IPA Systems Ltd. is a founding member of the IPA Group of companies which also includes IPA France SA, alfaQuest Inc, alfaQuest BV, IPA Systems Malaysia. The group partners with PrePress Solutions USA, to provide a complete software and output device solution to the printing industry. The IPA Group and distribution partners, spans 94 countries and serves over 7,500 installations.

The Lanston Monotype Corporation: 1897 - 1931

Following improvements to justification in 1897, John Sellers Bancroft redesigned the casting machine in 1899 which incorporated a more efficient matrix-case mechanism. During this time in England, construction of Works premises commenced at Salfords in Surrey which was completed in 1900. H.M. Duncan (technical advisor to Lanston) returned to England where he held the position of Technical Director until his death in 1924. In the first 8 years of the century, installations exceeded 1,100 casting machines and 1,550 keyboards. During the following years, many improvements were made to the casters and keyboards and in 1928 an entirely new 'Super Caster' was introduced which functioned independently from a keyboard. During the 1920's and 1930's, an ambitious typecutting programme was started which led to the introduction of fonts such as Baskerville, Bembo, Garamond and Times New Roman. In 1931, the company name was changed to The Monotype Corporation.

The production of Hot Metal machinery dominated the pre- and post-war years until 'Monophoto' filmsetters, based on a hot-metal design, were introduced in 1955. At about the same time the 4-line mathematical system was introduced for hot-metal casting and was then adapted for filmsetting. In 1963, the extended matrix case was developed as well as a keyboard with keybanks of 14x12 rows. The mid-sixties saw the start of the computer age in phototypesetting and in 1967, the Corporation presented its electronic perforator, for automatic justification and tabular composition. The 'Monophoto' 600 filmsetter and 600 tape perforator were shown at GEC Milan in 1969 and the 1000 and 2000-series filmsetters were developed in the following years, the latter being the fastest filmsetter of its day.

In the late 60s and early 70s a number of companies introduced phototypesetters using Cathode Ray Tube light sources. These were inherently faster than existing mechanical systems but produced poorer quality output. Monotype did not adopt this technology but investigated the feasibility of using a scanning laser beam as a light source. This investigation led to the development of the Lasercomp which was introduced in 1976. This was the world's first raster scan laser based typesetter. The Lasercomp was arguably several years ahead of its time - it was only some 10 years later with the advent of PostScript and page make up programs on powerful standard computers that this capability came into common usage.

Monotype Systems Limited: 1992 - 2002

The IPA Group purchased the company in 1992 and changed the name to Monotype Systems Limited. The objective of this new company, as the name indicates is to integrator products in the Prepress Industry whilst concentrating on the development of RIPs and and workflow systems with the flexibility to interface to all major imagesetters and CTP devices. The company is located in a purpose-built building on the original Monotype site at Salfords in Surrey. IPA Systems takes over worldwide distribution.
Visit the 'Products' Section of this Website for more information about todays product range and connectivity solutions.

alfaQuest Technologies Limited: 2002 - present

In June 2002 Monotype Systems adopts a new name and identity at the expiration of the previous trade mark license. AlfaQuest Technologies Limited continues the development of leading pre press software to support the worldwide market. IPA Systems continues the worldwide distribution of alfaQuest products as well as products from other companies in the IPA group.


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