There wasn’t a place on Earth that photocomposition had a greater visual effect than on the New York advertising scene in the mid-20th century. The liberation from the limitations of metal type and the acceleration of output not only provided the typographic designers and type directors of the city with more possibilities, but also opened up new streams of revenue for lettering artists and type composition businesses. In this thorough and in-depth article, Peter Bain explains the influence of this technological revolution on the forms of typographic expression at the time, and on the course of the type industry.