Rudolph Hell, the developer of the Klischograph photomechanical etching machine for producing printing plates and Digiset, the first digital typesetter, celebrated his 100th birthday yesterday (19 December).

Hells pioneering work on breaking images and text down into lines and dots initially for transmission and later for producing printing plates paved the way for the development of digital pre-press and a fully digital workflow.

Earlier this year the city of Kiel in north Germany the site of the Hell factory, now Heidelbergs digital and pre-press site renamed a street Dr Hell Strasse in his honour.