 Digital halftoning has been replacing photographic halftoning since the 1970s when "electronic dot generators" were developed for the film recorder units linked to color drum scanners made by companies such as Crosfield Electronics, Hell, and Linotype-Paul.In the 1980s, halftoning became available in the new generation of imagesetter film and paper recorders that had been developed from earlier "laser typesetters".Unlike pure scanners or pure typesetters, imagesetters could generate all the elements in a page including type, photographs, and other graphic objects.