editoradmin
This Flag Forever…
by Harold Segal
Fred Liddle in a recent National Calamity could not understand why Campane or certain other publications did not change their “flag” (front page title) for variety. We have a warped notion that change could be painfully disastrous, but in reality the flag is a trademark, so to speak; instantly recognized right up front. While this publication can hardly stand up to many professional journals, including those that have gone utterly berserk with modern hip-hop typography, their flags are unchanged. That goes for newspapers, too; you wouldn’t find The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Los Angeles Times deserting their Old English-style flags for Arial or Times Roman. Result: we will keep our flag in Umbra, which was initiated in issue #2, February 1947. I did not have that type, so I induced a co-worker who knew someone in another shop who would set it on a Ludlow slug. Now in this modern age, it is a computer font in my collection. Umbra is no longer a particular favorite, but its longevity will continue.
While I try for perfection, it is a goal I never seem to accomplish. I look back at old issues and pick up typos that I missed. I have a lot of quirks, which will be delineated later, but I constantly try to do better. My good buddy Al Fick called me on the phone, after receiving an advance copy of Campane, and gave me holy hell for not using the spell-checker. Sorry, but my PageMaker software ain’t got one. I rely on the U.S. Government Style Manual’s Word Division (joke!) or my “bible” Rudolf Flesch’s Deskbook of American Spelling and Style (hardcover title Look It Up) published in 1976 and now outdated and unavailable. I search Barnes & Noble for similar tomes but, alas, none that I want. As long as good customer Gussie gets a discount, I will continue to look for something similar to Flesch’s Desktop.
This end-of-line hyphenless business is something I started when hand-setting Campane before I switched to the computer. To keep the same format, and to try to make the change from metal type to software as seamless as possible, I purchased Adobe’s Baskerville 353, the same as Monotype’s version. A bonus was that the software font came in roman, italic, bold, bold italic versions, which formerly required separate type cases for each. Before computers I often had to go back and respace three lines to avoid hyphenless lines. I confess that at times I changed a minor word for a better fit, but the author did not complain, or probably missed the editing. In the PageMaker program I can specify hyphenation to be on or off for the entire copy. Of course, the ideal way would be uniform word spacing in the margin. I dislike ragged composition and consider it the lazy compositor’s easy way out. The modern trend in many magazines and newspapers seem to favor rag-right. I surmised the original purpose was to avoid hyphenated end line breaks, but my premise was wrong; they appear as often as straight typesetting.
Editor’s Note: If you are bored stiff with all this typographical mishmah, pick up an old copy of Shampane and enjoy the amusing, silly, often unintentionally abusive, or dumb effusive content. It isn’t often that editor gets the opportunity to rant typographically.
In letterpress days getting proper registration so sheets would back up properly was not a problem. It was simple. The chase was set up for two opposing pages. When the run was printed, you moved the type to a galley and inserted the next two pages in the same lockup. Once the gauge pins were set up they were unchanged until all pages were printed. Not so with my Hewlett-Packard 1200 laser printer. In proof copies the register appears to be perfect. However, there must be some vibration or a hidden devil that moves the sheet adjustment device just enough to affect the top margin. It’s a real pain in the ass. Well, I’m working on that. Once in a while I may get a paper jam, usually caused by a wrinkled or curled sheet, but I am able to fix it. The good point is that it spits out 230 copies in 15 minutes flat. Newer laser printers can improve that speed by 20 to 30%. I have another printer, an HP 5550 inkjet which I use for color, but I am extremely hesitant because it is too damned slow. Hence you haven’t seen a color flag recently. Watching paint dry is an exciting experience compared to the 5550 belching out a sheet every 2¼ minutes. Might be fine for color photos, but – hey there! – I’m trying to make the next NAPA mailing.
Everyone has quirks, but I may be the champion. Kerning is a method of bringing certain type combinations closer or tighter. I don’t like the space between n’t, so I adjust the spacing by .08- or .12-point to n’t rather than n’t. Is there anyone else around who is so damned fussy about an amateur paper? Also check out.” Without.” They probably could care less. But I do and when a page is set I go over the proof and make those what-you-might-call silly nuances. Great fun, eh? Typos, I may miss. Speaking of kerning, as I am, in hot metal days Rich Hopkins kindly cast at my wistful query, kerning periods, commas and apostrophes.
For a good many years, in metal type days, I used Coronet for initials. Why did I change to Shelley Allegro (Vivace, original name?) I think it was Jon McGrew who asked that question. Coronet was originally a Ludlow face and I set all the initials, A to Z individually in a Ludlow offsetstick so they would align perfectly with my 10-point Baskerville. But over time I thought if I changed to Shelley Allegro it would give the page a little more flair.
It is wonderful now to have all these fonts on the computer at much less than the metal costs, and clogging hard drive space. Rather than have my computer’s main drive laden with fonts, I store them on a separate hard drive and also on an additional zip drive (just in case my machine has a death rattle). When I purchased a previous it had a program called FontSmart, which they no longer support, alas! However, I have found a way to use it. It has two columns, one with unused faces and the other with fonts that are installed. A click of the mouse will bring a font in or out of current use. I’ve been called a typoholic. Is there a help station for such addicts?
It was easy before the computer supermarkets opened to get good paper. When you decided just what paper you wanted for your publication, you called a paperhouse, ordered a case of 25×38, or whatever, cut to your size. In my Pearl press days I would order it to be cut to 7×10, and in two days it would be delivered to my house, plus offcuts if there were any. Today I would prefer the length to be a bit longer to permit bleeds (part that runs off the sheet). My HP 1200 printer will not print, like other lower-priced machines, edge-to-edge. That means the sheet must be a bit longer to allow for trimming.
Today I get my paper stock from Staples or OfficeMax. Their prices are lower than the paperhouses, who usually carry name brands. Most stock either come in letter sizes, 8½x11, or ledger 8½x14, but the latter only 20-lb is merely copy paper. When we go to Wilmington, Delaware, to visit my sister and her family, I stop to get paper, cartridges supplies. There is no sales tax in Delaware, and I hate that 6% Pennsylvania tax when I buy locally. It could amount to $6 for each $100 I spend. Staples recently abandoned their name-brand laser paper for a product called “Printing Paper”; previously they had laser paper and inkjet paper. Now it is combined, still 24-lb but the finish does not have the gloss it once had. What are we poor innocent dumbos supposed to do? I guess we go back to the paper house and pay through the nostrils.
The reason I preferred the PageMaker program was it had familiar printers’ terms. I have been in the black art so many years that I think in picas. It is more precise than inches measuring widths and depths. A pica is 12-points and six picas equals an inch. In PageMaker a pica can be divided by .1 (1/10) of a point. This is critical in specifying widths and line spacings. Most hobby printers use the Word program because it is readily available, thanks to Bill Gates’ Windows software. Professional publishing programs like PageMaker, QuarkXpress and Ventura come to a lofty fee, but if you are wading in hobby publishing up to your knees, you may find it a worthwhile investment. It takes a bit of learning, but if I can do it, you won’t have any trouble.
Changes are inevitable, but Campane introduces them slowly, sometimes barely recognizable. The body (text) type was increased from 10-point to 10.1-point which decreased the line length by one character, but still on the same grid.
In 1969 the line-art Town Crier swung his bell for the first time, partially hidden behind the NAPA logo on page 1 in issue 142. The woodblock cut was given to me by Dave Churchman. It was roughly 3×5”, reduced to size to become a fixture on page 1. Why? The hand-bell he is holding to attract attention is a campane, a word I found in a very old dictionary – and it was certainly appropriate. I didn’t want the title Campane to be associated with campaign. In my early years in the hobby, I had been very involved in NAPA politics.
When the early years became the later years, there was a change in the shop and the proprietor. Computers were now available. My first in 1982 was an 18-lb “portable” Osbourne (cost $1800). Jake Warner convinced me that it was the way to go. I couldn’t find justification for this expense, but Gussie prodded me on. At that time computer proportional type fonts were about to be introduced. A few months later we met at Jake’s home with Rich Hopkins and our machines and operated in unison for helpful tips and hints. Today Rich is the master of anything technological in computers and printing.
Gone are all the type cases and cabinets, the slug cutter, the press, chase, quoins, inks, proof press and the allied paraphernalia. The shop was donated to the Book Arts division of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. A truck with a mechanical lift tailgate hoisted everything else in less than two hours. Gone, but still in my memory.
You already know that Al Fick and I are involved in the little sheet Shampane, which is a conglom of his Shambler and my Campane, just as its shadow editor is a combination of parts of our name Harold Segal and Alvin Fick. We banter around for a theme; send, e-mail or phone bits and paragraphs back and forth. Eventually a proof goes out to Al and Alma, where she carefully scrutinizes it for typos or grammatical no-nos. If you still find typos, point your finger in my direction.
With all the books overhead my office in the corner of our second bedroom you may mistakenly believe there are no typos. Most words do not spell themselves. They are created by my ten thumbs. I cannot blame the loss of my right eye (in 2003) or claim that I am in a frenzy trying to meet the mailing deadline. I enlarge the screen 200% and with my new flat screen monitor, the page is bigger than life. The typos should be evident. If there are any, my friends will call or send an e-mail.
Overhead and on my desk are a bunch of reference books that may save any negligence. Here is the list:
Webster’s New World Dictionary
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Beirce
Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary, Josepha Heifetz Byrne
The New York Times Crossword Dictionary
Seven Language Dictionary, David Shumaker
Words, Paul Dickson
Wicked Words, Hugh Rawson
Synonym Finder, J.I. Rodale
More Joy of Lex, Gyles Brandreth
The Thinker’s Thesaurus, Sophisticated Alternatives, Peter E. Meltzer
The Portable Curmudgeon, Jon Winokur (a gift from Gussie, I wonder why?)
American Metal Type Faces of the 20th Century, Mac McGrew
Types Best Remembered, Types Best Forgotten, various contributors
History of Amateur Journalism, Truman J. Spencer, and the Index, Nita Gerner Smith
Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Lynne Truss
Books by amateur journalists that are displayed in the living room are by Rowena Moitoret, Thomas B. Whitbread, Ralph Babcock, Alvin Fick, Robert Orbach, Ann Vrooman, Betty Simmons, Viola Payne, Sean Donnelly with Leland Hawes, and one of my own, Which Way’s the War?
A reminder of the glory days of handset type and the Amateur Printers Club. Fortunately, then I was located in the middle of the New York-Washington axis and was able to attend most meetings. Centered was my majestic 1890 Pearl 7×10 treadle press (made 25 years before I was born).
The new year will mark my 76th year in this strange and frabjous hobby. It has been a great run and I have my sights set on the 77th.
The people I have met through the years in person and in letters, are wonderful and caring for each other, one of the truly great benefits of organized amateur journalism.
The Origin of the Bar Code
by Frank J. Romano (from Electronic Publishing)
In 1952 a business student named Wallace Flint wrote a master’s thesis which he envisioned a supermarket where customers would perforate cards to mark their selections; at the checkout counter they would insert them into a reader, which would activate machinery to bring the purchases to them on a conveyer belt. He anticipated the bar code.
The entire U.S. economy could not function without bar codes. These black-and-white bars enable airports to lose your luggage. They enable tracking of UPS and FedEx packages and they sort letters at the U.S. Postal Service. They are found on assembly lines, on pallets and cases, on your passport, and even on the wristbands patients wear in hospitals. It all began in 1948 when Bernard Silver was a graduate student at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He overheard a local food store owner talking about research into a method for automatically reading information during a checkout. Silver joined with a fellow graduate student Norman Joseph Woodland to work on a solution. Their first idea used patterns that would glow under ultraviolet light, but ink instability and expense were the issues. In October 1952 they were issued a patent “for classifying Apparatus and Method.”
Woodland went to work for IBM, who offered to buy their patent. In 1926 Philco met IBM’s price. The patent was later sold to RCA, who installed the first scanning system at a Kroger store in Cincinnati. Codes were not printed on products, but on slips pasted on the products. The National Association of Food Chains Ad Hoc Committee was formed and consultants McKinsey & Co. defined a numeric format for product information. The committee in 1943 selected the UPC symbol (based on a proposal from IBM) as the industry standard.
The first company to produce bar code equipment for retail trade (using UGPIC) was Monarch Marking Systems (a tag and label printer). The UGPIC evolved into the UPC symbol set or Universal Product Code.
The use of scanners grew slowly at first. A minimum of 85% of all products would have to carry the codes before the system could pay off, and when it reached that level in the late ‘70s, sales of the systems took off. In 1978 less than 1% of grocers stores had scanners. By mid-1981 the figure was 10%; by 1984 it was 33% and today 90% are equipped.
June 1974 one of the first UPC scanners, made by NCR, was installed at Marsh’s supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The first product with a bar code to be scanned at a check-out counter was a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum. That pack of gum is on display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
What got the bar codes into industrial application occurred in 1981 when the Department of Defense adopted the use of Code 39 for marking all products sold to the military. But it was retail applications that drove the early technological development of bar coding and applications that soon followed.
Bernard Silver died at 38 before seeing the commercial use of bar codes. Norman Woodland was awarded the 1992 National Medal of Technology by the first president Bush. Neither man made much money on the idea that started a billion-dollar business. Within a few years RFID (Radio Frequency ID) will negate the bar code and scanning. Each package will broadcast its code and this will open a new world for printers, retail operations and any application you can imagine.
Campane, published since 1941 in the interest of amateur journalism, the National Amateur Press Association and the fascination of hobby printing (letterpress and electronic). Harold Segal, editor and publisher; Gussie Segal, able assistant, at Wyncote, PA 19095-1404. Type: Text and heads in Baskerville 353; dateline and folios: Friz Quadrata; Printed on an HP model 1200 laser printer. Folding, collating, stapled and bundled by the Publisher, who has many hats, but not much hair. Typed manuscripts are needed, we beg of thee.