The Role of Output Devices in the Higher Education Courses of Cartography - Maps for the Future Children Education and Internet - page 29

realized. Although color reproduction theory was fairly well understood, the lack of
color film restricted color work to studios where the necessary separation negatives
had to be made directly from the subject, under the most exacting conditions.
Reliable color film became available in the 1930s and 1940s, and color reproduc-
tion grew both more common and more accurate.
The development of offset printing method was very important for carto-
graphers. This was the first method which let the cartographers to reproduce their
color maps economically without any constrain on the used colors or lines. How-
ever cartographers regularly used sport color printing methods instead of the
process color methods which were the most common methods for color reproduc-
tion, especially for color photographs etc. In the early years of color offset printing
it was not unusual that a map was printed more than ten spot colors which made the
printing process quite expensive and required special care and treatment on the
technology and the printing paper itself.
With the development of the photography screening methods (halftone dots)
were used to reduce the number of printed colors using shades of the printed colors.
3.3 The Foundation of ICA
The International Cartographic Association was established in 1959. The founda-
tion was closely connected with a new era of rapid and substantial development of
cartographic technology. In the 10-15 years after World War II, against a back-
ground of a continuously increasing worldwide demand for maps (including not
only topographic, but mostly road, city and tourist maps, but also thematic maps),
an almost simultaneously occurring wave of innovations further revolutionized the
map production process. Plastic drawing materials which were dimensionally stable
were invented, new methods, like scribing on coated polyester material replaced the
conventional ink drawing.
Typesetting machines were also very important in cartography because these
machines could replace one of the most time consuming process of map production:
the hand lettering. The first mechanical phototypesetters involved the adaptation of
existing typesetters by replacing the metal matrices with matrices carrying the
image of the letters and replacing the caster with a photographic unit. The industrial
application of this idea resulted in the Fotosetter (1947), a phototypesetter manu-
factured in USA by Intertype. Very soon French, German and Russian models were
invented. Later models with a separate keyboard printed more than 28,000
characters per hour. The third generation of phototypesetters appeared in the
1960s, in which all mechanical moving parts were eliminated by omitting the use
of light and therefore omitting the moving optical device responsible for operating
in its field (Latimer 1977 ).
Dr. Carl Mannerfelt , from the Esselte Map Service (Sweden) initiated a co-
operation of map production experts. He invited a number of foreign experts in
different areas of map production to exchange information on the technological