Corpora: rotagraph definition

[Patrick Cassidy]

Concerning your query to the Corpora list:

> Pieter de Haan wrote:

> Dear all,
> One of my literary colleagues has recently come across the term "rotagraph"
> in an early 20th century letter. The term was used by an author who writes
> that he has received a rotagraph of the first 50 pages of his intended book
> from Oxford University Press. Apparently te term refers to a technique or
> procedure which was new at the time. The term does not occur in the OED.
>
> Does anybody know the term?
> Could this term have referred to (the equivalent of) proof pages?
>

  In the 1913 "New Words" Supplement to the Webster's Revised Unabridged
Dictionary (Merriam Co.) the term "rotagraph does not occur, but
"rotograph" does;it may be the same thing.  The definition is reproduced
here (in tagged form):

<p><hw>Ro"to*graph</hw> <pr>(?)</pr>, <pos>n.</pos>
<fld>(Photography)</fld>
<def>A photograph printed by a process in which
a strip or roll of sensitized paper is automatically
fed over the negative so that a series of prints are made, and
are then developed, fixed, cut apart, and washed at a very
rapid rate.</def><br/
[<source>Webster 1913 Suppl.</source>]</p>


    However, neither "rotagraph" nor "rotograph" occur in the 1906
Century dictionary.   The dictionary files in which the
above definition is found are available at:
    ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/gnu/dictionary

Pat

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Patrick Cassidy

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