General Information

Serial #

N/A

Part Number

3

Total Parts

17

AKA

N/A

Patents

N/A

General Description

synthetic and metal components

Dimensions

Note: These reflect the general size for storage and are not necessarily representative of the object's true dimensions.

Length

19.0 cm

Width

N/A

Height

N/A

Thickness

N/A

Weight

N/A

Diameter

10.6 cm

Volume

N/A

Lexicon

Group

Printing

Category

Platemaking

Sub-Category

N/A

Manufacturer

AKA

Hell

Country

Federal Republic of Germany

State/Province

Unknown

City

Kiel

Context

Country

Canada

State/Province

Ontario

Period

Used. c. 1982 until June 2004.

Canada

Example of type of equipment once widely used in the Canadian graphic arts industry. By reducing the time and skilled hand labour required to produce corrected colour separations, digital, electronic scanners like the DC 350 helped the graphic arts industry meet the increasing demand for colour images from advertisers and publishers in the 1970s and 1980s. This example of a DC 350 was originally owned by a company called Colour Images. In 1995 the firm and the scanner were acquired by Maracle Press, which used the scanner until June 2004. Maracle Press was incorporated in 1920 and had a long association with the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Today it is a privately owned company specializing in book manufacturing and commercial printing. It employs more than 75 workers at its Oshawa plant, which provides integrated pre-press, press and bindery services to clients across North America. (Ref. 1)

Function

Element of scanning drum.

Technical

Scanner includes an operator panel, a colour and scale computer and three rotating drums: the first scans the original image, the second scans masks superimposed on the original, and the third records the finished output on photographic film. The Hell Chromagraph DC 350 represents a critical technology introduced to the production of images for the graphic arts industry in the middle of the 20th century. In its use of digital stored program control and a laser, it was an important element in the shift of pre-press operations from a photographic, mechanical and manual activity to a fully automated, digital process. The 1st colour scanners were introduced in the 1950s. Due to their high price and to effective cost competition from colour correction by masking, colour scanners spread very slowly. In the 1970s scanner builders greatly increased the speed and capability of their machines. Digital processing and data storage began to supplant analog devices, greatly increasing the flexibility of the systems by making it easier to manipulate data collected by the scanner. The most advanced of the new generations of scanner were the Crosfield Magnascan 550 and the Hell DC 300 and DC 3000. The first of these machines began appearing in Canadian plants in early 1973. These machines were generally too expensive for medium-sized plants. But manufacturers also introduced smaller scanners with more basic features geared to these firms. By the early 1980s sales of colour scanners were booming. The Chromagraph DC 350 was introduced to the N. American printing trade in 1981, as the successor to the DC 300. It boasted many of the features of advanced scanners of the time, including the ability to produce film positives or negatives in a variety of sizes from a variety of reflection or transparency copy. In addition, it could produce screened film for half-tone reproduction by electronically generated dots controlled by the digital computer. These were exposed on film by a laser, producing half-tones superior in fine detail to the best photographic screened negatives. Finally, the DC 350 offered unparalleled power to alter and create images. In addition to colour and tonal correction and a wide range of scaling operations, the operator could achieve a number of effects using the mask drum. These included the addition of background tones, logotypes and headings and the adjustment of small portions of the image. The DC 350 could also be integrated into a complete "Chromacom" page-makeup system in which, prior to recording on film, the operator stored individual colour scans and placed them on a page display in the size and position they would appear on the printed page. The DC 350 was a hybrid of analogue and digital components. The scanning unit, which could produce the colour separations simultaneously, consisted of an optical subsystem of lenses, mirrors and prisms whose light output was converted to analogue electrical voltages. The operator adjusted these electrical signals by programming the computer using a variety of knobs, switches and controls in order for it to carry out colour and tonal correction and other adjustments. The analogue signal was then converted to digital for scaling of the image before being converted back to analogue prior to recording on the output film. Instead of manually adjusting the controls, the operator could invoke pre-set values stored in digital form on a floppy disc. One of the DC 350's most notable enhancements, this allowed the operator to store up to 13 pre-programmed jobs. A later modification allowed the operator to program the machine using emulation software on a Macintosh computer. (Ref. 1)

Area Notes

Unknown

Details

Markings

No markings visible.

Missing

Appears complete.

Finish

Clear synthetic cylinder is open at one end; has silver metal endpiece for attachment to scanner. Fine line incised on cylinder extends length of cylinder; second incised line rings cylinder slightly above attachment point with solid endpiece.

Decoration

N/A