Top and middle right: as it was when we first took over the pre-press operation from Cambridge University Press (CUP), in 1992. We produced these tomes at the rate of one a month. We only took over the pre-press work. CUP continued to do the printing, marketing and distribution.
When we first took over, CUP were sceptical about the quality of typesetting we could achieve on Acorn computers. It took us a little while to get up to speed, but our quality was just as good as theirs from the first. The first time we actually produced any camera ready copy, we did two 32-page sections of a 768 page issue. We matched CUP’s typesetting so closely that their own staff couldn’t tell which sections we’d done, and which had been done by their colleagues.
Below and bottom right: later we changed to fortnightly issues with rather more than half the content, in A4 paperback format, with a redesigned layout and tweaked typography which I worked out with the editors. And coloured illustrations on the covers. All done on the Acorns.
(The bottom right illustration has a text column cropped at the left – the illustration is only to show the typography, not the content! It also has a rare thing for J.Physiol – an error that escaped the beady eyes of our production editors. I only spotted it in 2024... and you don’t need to be a physiologist to spot it. Can you?)
We also produced The Journal of Experimental Physiology and The Proceedings of the Physiological Society.
©2018-22024 Clive K Semmens
