1. A photocomposing machine comprising a plurality of charater drum means, each including a rotatable character drum bearing characters to be optically projected, each said character drum means also including drum traversing drive means to move said rotatable character drum in a direction substantially parallel to the axis of rotation thereof between a first and a second drum position, said characters being arranged in a plurality of substantially parallel equally spaced bands extending circumferentially around each of said character drums the distance between said first and second drum positions being equal to the distance between the centers of two adjacent bands of characters and light projection means mounted within each of said rotating character drums for projecting characters along an optical path outwardly from the character drum, each such light projection means including light gun means mounted against rotation with said character drum and light gun positioning means to selectively move the light gun means to one of a plurality of light projection points, said light gun means being operative at each of said light projection points to illuminate characters in a different band of characters of said character drum.
1. A photocomposing machine comprising a plurality of charater drum means, each including a rotatable character drum bearing characters to be optically projected, each said character drum means also including drum traversing drive means to move said rotatable character drum in a direction substantially parallel to the axis of rotation thereof between a first and a second drum position, said characters being arranged in a plurality of substantially parallel equally spaced bands extending circumferentially around each of said character drums the distance between said first and second drum positions being equal to the distance between the centers of two adjacent bands of characters and light projection means mounted within each of said rotating character drums for projecting characters along an optical path outwardly from the character drum, each such light projection means including light gun means mounted against rotation with said character drum and light gun positioning means to selectively move the light gun means to one of a plurality of light projection points, said light gun means being operative at each of said light projection points to illuminate characters in a different band of characters of said character drum. 3. The photocomposing means of claim 1 wherein said light gun means is operative at each light projection point to selectively illuminate characters in one of two adjacent character bands on said character drum, said light gun means illuminating characters in one band when the character drum is in the first drum position and characters in a second band when the character drum is in the second drum position.