Does anyone know what terminals they're using at the end? It looks like they have two types.
At lest one of the computers looks like it's some kind of Data General machine. There's also a shot of what looks like an IBM System 370 front panel like this one: (https://old.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/7l79hs/ra..., https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10266809...).
ADDED: It wouldn't surprise me if the terminals were something specialized for the purpose. Pretty sure they're not DG terminals.
I'm more interested in the terminals. Here are some screenshots from the movie of what I'm talking about: https://imgur.com/a/Vm0LGw4
I can't make out the specifics too clearly but they don't look to my eye like standard minicomputer terminals like DG would have sold. There are too many extra blocks of keys and lights.
FWIW, a few years later, the Post brought in a system that Raytheon designed for them. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/10/06/p... So I'm guessing they're something either custom or from one of the early phototypesetting companies. This is pretty early days though. It was very common in the late 70s for editorial at small papers to still be working on typewriters and the final copy was re-inputed into phototypesetting equipment.
That was the clue I needed. I think I found a brochure describing somewhat later models.
The AM Verityper Comp/Set 4800 area composition terminal seems to have the same font and similar graphics capabilities of the integrated-keyboard terminal in the close ups:
https://archive.org/details/TNM_AMtext_425_word_processor_wi...
The AMtext 425 seems to have a similar keyboard layout to the two-piece terminals only seen in the wide shots:
https://archive.org/details/TNM_AMtext_425_word_processor_wi...
Looks like they were made by a company called AM Jacquard Systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM_Jacquard_Systems
The post has a interesting picture that shows correspondence between the screen display and printed output: https://creativepro.com/scanning-around-gene-back-when-types...
(It may also have been hooked up directly through some franken-mess of an Imsai 8080 and other stuff.) Don't remember the details and I never used it directly. Headlines were typed into a different system.
Then everything was pasted up on a light-table.
I think we shot the negatives ourselves as well.
At the time, infrequent publications had someone like ourselves do the production work for them or farmed it out to some local company.
I was a little confused, before I realized that name only appeared in one of photos. After trying to resolve my confusion, I found this, which appears to be a document from 1985 enumerating all these types of systems then in existence:
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/201...
It says the
> AM Varityper 4800 (a Harris 2200 product)
There's a few stock image of those in use at the Austin American-Statesman newspaper:
https://www.alamy.com/austin-texas-usa-circa-1980-newspaper-...
https://www.alamy.com/austin-texas-usa-circa1983-backshop-at...
The hardware is different than in the movie, but the software appears to be similar.
Scanning the document, I saw a mention of Interleaf, which some people at my employer were still using until recently (http://www.computernostalgia.net/articles/Interleaf.htm). The comments on that page about the file format ring true, since we decided to not even try conversion and just have the users re-key their documents into our home-grown system for that content.
The machine I was thinking of (Page 16 of the PDF https://grhpublic.s3.amazonaws.com/packaging_ebook_second.pd...) is similar but it's definitely different. Interesting that the trackball is on the left side.