A computer-based system for input, storage, and photocomposition of graphical data
Nick A. Farmer, Joseph C. Schehr · 1974
Each year Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) publishes over 62,000 chemical structure diagrams in its various publications. Until recently, each of these diagrams was drawn by a draftsman, photographed and stripped into the final page copy, interspersed with computer-composed textual information. This paper describes a system for inputting chemical structure diagrams from a CRT terminal, storing the graphical data on a magnetic disk, and subsequently outputting the data to a computer-controlled composition system. A description of the graphical data structure used to store the structure diagrams is given first, followed by a description of the input and output systems. Finally, some comments and conclusions concerning the production use of this system are presented.