Moyroud came up with phototypsetting in the 1940s following a visit to a printing plant where he witnessed a Linotype machine setting molten lead into lines of type.

Together with co-inventor Rene Higonnet, Moyroud designed the photo-composing machine, which used a strobe light to project individual font characters through a lens onto a spool of photographic paper.

This produced the columns of text that would then be pasted onto pages and photoengraved on plates ready
for printing.

The technology was first demonstrated in 1946, before being patented in 1957.