Heath Manuals [NOT copyright issues !]

[Barry A. Watzman]

Regarding "reprinting" original manuals......

The Heath manuals were mostly typeset on 1970's era PHOTO typesetters.  They used a photographic film wheel, mostly black with the letters "clear", a different wheel was used for each font and possibly each size, I don't remember [it seems that the size was somewhat adjustable by optics]; the output was chemically processed photographic paper.  Also the output was limited, not entire pages but paragraphs and sentences and headings.  They were "pasted up" on cardboard with rubber cement.  There was no storage for entire documents, only punched paper tape for the individual headings, paragraphs, etc.

You have NO IDEA what effort went into those Heath manuals.  There were times when a kit would have shipped six to twelve months earlier had production not had to wait for various aspects of the manual process [writing them was not exactly fast, either].

Anyway, the equipment is long gone, and the pasted up boards were discarded not too long after the kit was discontinued [they were cardboard thick for each page, a large manual's pasteups could be tens of feet high].  Even if they hadn't been discarded, they would probably have yellowed too much to still be of use 20 to 40 years later.

So, unless you want to retypeset a manual from scratch [still not easy, fast or cheap], the only option open is reproduction from the best available printed manual that you can find.

Barry Watzman

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