Corpora: rotagraph

[Francis Bond]

G'day,
Pieter> Dear all, One of my literary colleagues has recently come
Pieter> across the term "rotagraph" in an early 20th century
Pieter> letter. The term was used by an author who writes that he has
Pieter> received a rotagraph of the first 50 pages of his intended
Pieter> book from Oxford University Press. Apparently te term refers
Pieter> to a technique or procedure which was new at the time. The
Pieter> term does not occur in the OED.

Pieter> Does anybody know the term?  Could this term have referred to
Pieter> (the equivalent of) proof pages?


1 definition found in the excellent public domain Webster's:

>>From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:

  Rotograph \Ro"to*graph\ (?), n. (Photography)
     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.

Also:

rotograph

n. photograph of manuscript, etc., made direct on bromide paper
   without negative.
<http://www.lineone.net/dictionaryof/difficultwords/d0011221.html>

I think a rotograph could have been used for proof pages.

--
Francis Bond <bond at cslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp>
CSLI, Stanford (IAP Visitor 1999-2000) <hpsg.stanford.edu/hpsg/lingo.html>
NTT Machine Translation Research Group <www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/icl/mtg/>