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I LANSTON TYPE COMPANY I GERALD GIAMPA I
¶ THIS MACHINE is Giampa's first entry interest in computers. It seemed ironic to many that he would have installed such a machine into a letterpress shop. In fact Cobblestone Press was perhaps the first print shop in Vancouver to use one for office work.
The main purpose of this machine was for estimating. There were no programs for sale at that time so Giampa wrote the manual and worked with his lifetime friend David Whitmore to write a program.
Wang Computers was very interested in buying the program.
In 1981 Cobblestone Press went through a consolidation period after a serious economic downturn purposely caused by the then Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Elliot Trudeau. During this reorganization Giampa conceived a massive expansion, renaming his company The Northland Letterpress Co. Ltd. The new firm was incorporated in Cambie Street, four presses purchased, salesman hired and the plant moved to1340 East Pender Street.
The computer and the estimating program serviced the letterpress department until Northland Letterpress closed its plant in 1994.
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¶ EVEN THOUGH ALL 'BOOT' & 'APPLICATION' SOFTWARE was on a tape recorder this machine ran daily until 1994. This machine also had a 'hand typesetting' program running on it. Don't ask? Yes I know, computerized hand set type, some marriage, but with merit.
I found this TRS 80 indispensable. It ran software written for estimating letterpress pricing and scheduling from business cards to books.
I had nothing to do with writing the code, I wrote the manual, Dave Whitmore made it work. Although Whitmore also added many inventive and useful contributions in addition.
Dave Whitmore was instrumental in early type development at Giampa TextWare. Together he and I were the first to produce Postscript fonts converted from Ikarus data. Quickly we were followed by Agfa and URW.
How did it work? Very well thank you.
The race was on to hint fonts.