During 36 years, from 1884 onward, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society had millions of Bible publications printed by outside printers. But in 1920 the Society decided to do its own magazine printing. This advance also meant that eventually Linotype typesetters had to be acquired. Mergenthaler’s 1884 invention for quicker type composition had been a boon to the printing trade and now it was an enormous aid in speeding up the publishing of the good news.

In 1922 the Society decided to do its own printing of books and Bibles. Local printers and bookbinders were not impressed. A report states: “A complete outfit of typesetting, electroplating, printing and binding machinery, most of it new, was obtained. The president of one important printing concern that had been doing much of the Society’s work saw the equipment and said: ‘Here you are with a first-class printing establishment on your hands, and nobody around the place that knows a thing about what to do with it. In six months the whole thing will be a lot of junk; and you will find out that the people to do your printing are those that have always done it.’”

Was that businessman’s pessimism vindicated? To the contrary, the volunteer workers at the Society’s headquarters learned fast. At first they could only bind 2,000 books a day. By 1927 that figure had risen to 12,000 a day​—but with one further advantage! When the books were printed by outside firms they were costing the public 50 to 75 cents. Off the Society’s presses, and printed by volunteer laborers, the books were produced and distributed for 25 cents each!

A Unique System

Just as the Linotype typesetter had been a revolutionary boon to the printing world in 1884, so was the combination of offset printing and phototypesetting that gathered momentum in the 1960’s. Practically overnight, photocomposition made the hot-lead typesetting process obsolete. To illustrate the advantage of phototypesetting, a 600-page book that would normally have taken a year to typeset by the old method was phototypeset in 12 hours!

The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society was watching developments in this field and entered phototypesetting when most of the problems had been worked out of the system. Since 1978 the Society has been printing on rotary offset presses and has developed its own multilanguage computerized, prepress system called MEPS, or Multilanguage Electronic Phototypesetting System.a It is one of the most advanced, fully automated prepress systems in the world.

Why has the Society become deeply involved in computerization, to the point of having its own research laboratory? The prestigious Seybold Report on Publishing Systems gives a clue, saying: “The extraordinary multi-lingual requirements of Watchtower would have meant a great deal of customization, perhaps even redesign, for any vendor. . . . The Watchtower’s printing and publishing operations produce hundreds of millions of copies of books and pamphlets each year. The fact that these publications are produced in scores of different languages for worldwide distribution is the cause of some unusual typesetting problems.”

These problems are being resolved by Jehovah’s Witnesses to the point that by January 1, 1985, the Watchtower magazine’s contents will be published simultaneously in most major languages. With this tremendous advance, over 90 percent of the world readership will be getting vital Bible information at the same time.