Multilanguage Electronic Phototypesetting System
MEPS is an abbreviation that stands for Multilanguage Electronic Phototypesetting System. It is a system that Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves have developed for getting written material published quickly in many languages. They developed MEPS because nowhere in the world was such a system available for publishing in the many languages in which they print their Bible literature.
Why did Jehovah's Witnesses create MEPS?
Simply stated, because most printing is done for profit, and there was not sufficient monetary return to cover the cost of developing a computerized system for producing literature in many of the languages in which publications of the Watchtower Society are produced. But Jehovah’s Witnesses do not print for profit.
Actually no organization in the world was in a better position than were Jehovah’s Witnesses to develop a multilanguage publishing system. Why? Because Jehovah’s Witnesses have regularly been translating material into over 165 languages. Therefore, from their own translators they also could obtain the necessary language information to produce MEPS.
Industry Leading to MEPS
As many readers know, the publishing industry has been revolutionized by new methods of production during the past 20 years or so. Ever since the last century, operators of linotype machines turned hot, molten lead into single one-piece lines of metal type. These lines of metal type, called slugs, were then arranged into pages by a compositor. From these pages of metal type, molds were made for casting heavy lead printing plates that were used on rotary letterpresses.
In the early 1960’s, by far the majority of newspapers, magazines and books were printed on letterpresses. Today practically none are. The method of printing with type produced from hot lead became obsolete almost overnight. Any factories using hot lead, if they wanted to continue printing, were soon forced to change with the industry. Thus practically all printing of newspapers, magazines and books is now done on lithographic offset presses.
In January 1978, printing on rotary offset presses was begun at the headquarters printery of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Brooklyn, New York. In offset printing the image to be printed is not raised as it is in letterpress, but it is on the same plane, or level, as the surface that surrounds it. This method of printing is accomplished by taking a photograph of the printed page and then using the film produced to make thin offset printing plates.
To make these thin offset printing plates to produce literature photographs had to be taken of proofs of linotype-produced pages. The film negatives were then merged with negatives of the pictures or illustrations. It was this slow, mechanical, prepress system of producing type from hot lead that needed to be replaced by some faster method. A group of Jehovah’s Witnesses investigated how to do this.
MEPS System
The heart of the system is the MEPS computer, housed within a compact, handsome frame approximately 40 inches (1016 mm) high, 36 inches (914 mm) wide and 34 inches (864 mm) deep. Inside, hundreds of tiny silicon chips, with intricate electronic circuitry, provide the computer with the capacity to handle all the activity of four graphics terminals called work stations. Most of the principal equipment was built by Jehovah's Witnesses.
One of these work stations is also shown. It is composed of a familiar but enlarged typewriter keyboard and a graphics display screen. The display screen is approximately the size and shape of a page of the Awake! or the Watchtower magazine. The keyboard has its own 16-bit microcomputer to control the 182 keys. Each key has five shift levels that provide the equivalent of 910 keys to represent commands, characters or combination commands.
The work station is designed to perform two basic functions. The first function, or operation, is to enter written text. In other words, the terminal serves basically as a typewriter, only the entered text appears on the screen rather than on a piece of paper. If a printout of a document is needed, a nearby printer (similar to a high-speed typewriter) can be activated to type out on regular sheets of paper everything that has been entered. Such material can then be editorially read or proofread in the usual way.
The work station is designed to perform two basic functions. The first function, or operation, is to enter written text. In other words, the terminal serves basically as a typewriter, only the entered text appears on the screen rather than on a piece of paper. If a printout of a document is needed, a nearby printer (similar to a high-speed typewriter) can be activated to type out on regular sheets of paper everything that has been entered. Such material can then be editorially read or proofread in the usual way.
The work station is designed to perform two basic functions. The first function, or operation, is to enter written text. In other words, the terminal serves basically as a typewriter, only the entered text appears on the screen rather than on a piece of paper. If a printout of a document is needed, a nearby printer (similar to a high-speed typewriter) can be activated to type out on regular sheets of paper everything that has been entered. Such material can then be editorially read or proofread in the usual way.
After a publication has been composed on the display terminal, how is it transferred from there in such a form that the printing plates for the offset presses can be produced? This is accomplished by the MEPS phototypesetter. It is housed in a 42-inch-high (1067 mm) by 33.5-inch-wide (851 mm) by 32-inch-deep (813 mm) cabinet that matches the rest of the MEPS hardware. The phototypesetter produces an image on photographic paper by using a tiny beam of light as a very small paint brush, much the same way as a television set produces an image on its screen. After the photographic paper is processed, it is photographed to produce film that, in turn, is used to make offset printing plates.
Usage
Because of the equipment’s simplicity of design, it has been taking people familiar with typing and composition procedures only about two weeks to become proficient both at text entry and page composition. Other people have stayed longer and received training in the maintenance of the equipment. Thus when MEPS arrived in Greece, one of the trained personnel from Germany traveled over to install it.
Arabic letters are written in four different ways depending upon where they appear in a word or sentence,” he said. “If a letter appears at the beginning of a word, it is written one way, if in the middle of a word, it is written another way, if at the end of the word, yet another way, and if the letter stands by itself in the sentence, it is written in yet a fourth way. An Arabic linotype must have different keys for all of the scores of different variations of the 22 Arabic letters that are written in the four different ways. But MEPS was programmed so that only one keystroke is needed for each Arabic letter. The machine automatically determines, by the position of that letter in the word or sentence, the correct way to write it. As you can imagine, this makes the entering of text on MEPS much easier and faster.
References
Watchtower magazine www.watchtower.org, April 22, 1984