Thanks for the great Monarch posts, Chris & Dave.
My, they have a smooth motion.
Family friends had Monarchs and Elektrons and I remember them being operated manually. The local papers had several operating on tape, and my understanding was that they required tweaking in the first year in order to get them up to the maximum rated production (14 to 15 line/min). The small shops that had Elektrons evidently had ongoing trouble, apparent by their desire to unload them. I tend to blame that on either a lack of patience OR the early manifestation of phototype plague.
Elektrons and Monarchs were (are) very finely engineered machines.
Hey, no joking about that phototype stuff, Dave. The tape driven VIPs and Photons, and later direct-entry Comp-Edits and Compugraphics required a leap of faith. Great for publishers. But quite a few Comp firms took the leap and crashed with that stuff.
