Those of us who have been retired for some time look at publications in present-day journals, which display text, equations and graphs with a variety of colours and fonts, with less-than-fond memories.
We recall very vividly the effort and frustration that came with preparing a document for submission to a journal prior to the introduction of the personal computer (PC). The initial, hand-written version of the document was submitted to a typist (“the secretary”) who prepared the “first draft”. Before about 1980, this meant using a regular typewriter. Greek letters, exponents, equations and scientific terms were added later by hand.
A lucky secretary was the one whose workplace was able to provide her with the IBM Selectric, or similar make, electric typewriters which featured a replaceable ball rather than having separate individual striking-keys for each letter. Not only did the keys not get tangled, but the balls could be quickly changed for different fonts or for balls which contained the Greek alphabet or scientific symbols.
The “first draft” document would then be returned to the researcher to proofread, correct errors and then build up his courage to approach the typists to ask for the next draft. “Cut and Paste” literally meant that before the arrival of the PC. The typist now had a mix of handwritten and glued-up, typed pages to assemble into a “second draft.” Several additional iterations of this process might still be required before the paper was ready for submission to a journal.
Then came the work with diagrams or graphs. In most cases this meant several pencil-drawn iterations of the diagrams until consensus was reached among co-authors. The journals, however, usually required India-ink drawings. The tools typically available to assist with this part of the task were sets of French Curves and the Leroy lettering kits.
The French Curves were plastic-sheet units of a wide range of sizes and curvatures. The Leroy kits consisted of a set of ink pens of various line width and embossed rulers with the alphabet and numbers 0-9 in various font sizes. In larger organizations such as AECL, a group of ladies, “the tracers”, existed whose main task was producing these ink drawings. At most universities this luxury did not exist and the task fell to graduate students. Many a student needed several painstaking tries to produce a smear-free version of a diagram suitable for publication.
The Canadian Nuclear Heritage Museum has a set of the Leroy lettering kit, two sets of French curves and one of the earliest PCs produced on display and invite the public to view them during a visit. We have not yet been able to collect a set of the replaceable, typewriter balls nor a vial of the tears from the secretaries who endured the repeated requests for “just one more draft”.
