I happened upon this at one of our satellite offices yesterday, and my first thought was, "OMG! I haven't seen one of those in probably 25 years and I'd completely forgotten they even existed!"
I posted this on Instagram and a friend—who had actually been in the architectural profession longer that I had—wrote, "What's that?"
Needless to say, I was incredulous that she didn't remember it, or what it was used for, considering by the time the late 80s and early 90s had descended upon us I was convinced every architectural office in the country owned one.
For those who don't know what a Kroytype 80 is…
Prior to the advent of CAD, the only way to get good-looking type on an architectural drawing was to use Letraset press-on letters, or the Leroy device. The Kroy made those all but obsolete.
The machine itself was ridiculously expensive, as were the tapes, but it was a godsend to architectural drafting.
Again, so many memories that put a smile on my face.
When I had the graphics design studio I purchased one of those. Yes, it was very expensive. I thought it would save time and money over the Format or Letraset, but the discs were outrageous and extremely delicate (when being used by 50 freelancers who didn't really give a shit about my overhead.)
It didn't take me long to move on to a photo-typesetting machine. Of course, it cost even more and the photo paper and chemicals just about ruined me.
When desktop publishing came out, I dumped the typesetting machine (and the freelancers) and bought an Apple Macintosh and a laser printer. Worked fine for years. With Corel Draw and later, Photoshop, life was complete. I did miss the freelancers, though.