Richard, as an ex- Crosfield man, a few pointers: I believe that almost all scanning innovations from the mid-60's were from both HELL & CROSFIELD, with us having a few more. Much development of drum scanners was done earlier by the likes of P.D.I. These were very expensive beasts however. Hell certainly developed the first laser dot generation in the 70's which was very successful, until our 646 came along. This replaced the 550 which was the first all (or mostly!) digital scanner, dating from the mid-70's. This version of the Magnascan lasted from 1981 until the end of the Celsis production in 2003. Crosfield's scanner expertise is now in the hands of Fuji Film Electronic Imaging (same buildings, some of the same people) and is apparent in the Lanovia flatbed scanners and ColourKit software, which has excellent PROFILE EDITING capabilities. These are clearly similiar to the Crosfield Celsis scanner software. I believe that Dr. Hell and John Crosfield were indeed friends and used to meet up in the Caribbean on their yachts, after selling their companies and retiring. Apparently Dr. Hell would still visit what was left of his company in Kiel until just before his death aged over 100! John Crosfield is 90, I believe. Sadly Fuji chose not to use the great name.
Phil Cruse Graphic Quality Consultancy
www.colourphil.co.uk
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 00:39:58 -0000
All the early drum scanner development for the litho industry was carried out by Crosfield Electronics lead by that companies MD John Crosfield.
Hell's scanners were primarily produced for the gravure industry and therefore output to continuous tome material at same size, which meant that most scanned material consisted of duplicate pages pre-made-up to final size.
The Crosfield organisation produced the first Drum scanner to enlarge and reduce in a single step and that output screened final size separations for the litho industry |