# Book about playbills?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-about-playbills/800148>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [October 29, 2017, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-about-playbills/800148 "2017-10-29T15:56:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\
**Post date:** [October 29, 2017, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-about-playbills/800148/1 "2017-10-29T15:56:17Z")

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Many years ago, probably 40, I read a written by a man who had written something like a history of playbills. He decided to print it using computerized typesetting. For reasons that I cannot recall, he did it in the following way: He paid cheap typists in China (I think) to type it on Selectrics using a special ball optimized to be machine readable, a problem not well solved in those ancient days. Anyway, it was then scanned into a computer and the book prepared from that. In the days of microcomputers, it would have made sense to rent a couple for the typists, so I think it had to have been in the 70s. Does anyone recall the book or the name of the author?