MEASUREMENT NEWS #1 TO #131 ON COMPACT DISC March 2, 2006 This CD includes every issue of Measurement News. The first 115 were edited by Pete Riegel. The files for the first 110 issues were created by scanning the paper documents. Issues 111-115 were produced directly from Word documents, thus some text searching is possible. Issues 116 - 130 were edited by Jim Gerweck. Kevin Lucas, the present editor, began with issue 131. The files were produced from electronic documents, thus some text searching is possible. This archive was originally contained on three CD's, but a tip from Mike Sandford permitted file size reduction without serious loss of clarity. Now we have it all on one CD. How the first 115 issues came to be on CD: A few years ago Mike Sandford suggested that it might be a nice idea if the archives of Measurement News could be put on a compact disk. I thought it was an interesting and possibly valuable idea, but did nothing about it. Since then, however, I have acquired a scanner, a more powerful computer, and a CD-writing drive. Shortly after acquiring the CD-writer Mike's idea came back to me. I have, in a basement file drawer, copies of every issue of Measurement News. The drawer is almost full, and the idea of all that scanning put me off for a while. However, the work is now complete. Each of the 3100+ pages has been scanned, individually edited briefly, and assembled into 113 files (one for each issue of MN), readable in Adobe Acrobat Reader format (.jpg). The scanning was incomplete, as I decided not to scan repetitive pages, and also did not scan course lists, as that information is available elsewhere. Material NOT scanned includes: Page 2, which lists the RRTC officers and miscellaneous information Course lists Publications available from RRTC List of Certifiers The raw, off-the-scanner .bmp files were then opened in PhotoStyler and trimmed, oriented, and arranged for viewing in the same way as they appeared in the original Measurement News. Exceptions were made. Several issues of MN were produced with two pages appearing side-by-side on 8.5 x 11 paper. These half-pages have been made to appear as full pages. Some pages, because of their content, were placed sideways in MN. These pages remain sideways, although a very few have been rotated. When the PhotoStyler work was done, each page was saved as an individual .jpg file. Some program was needed to serve as a platform for viewing each issue of MN as a self-contained file. After some discussion and early trials, Adobe Acrobat was chosen as the vehicle. Beginning with Issue 111, MN was composed entirely in Word. All files from 111 onward are in Word converted to .pdf format after they were composed. They are not scans. All issues from 111 onward are complete, with nothing omitted. The index was prepared in three stages. Pete Riegel originally indexed MN up to issue #69, then stopped indexing as further issues were produced. Some time later Pete sent Jim Gerweck some back issues, and Jim expanded the index to issue #78. Meanwhile Pete had lost the original index in a computer crash. After receiving the partial index back from Jim, Pete built on Jim's work to complete the index. The index is in two files, as Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) and Microsoft Excel (.xls). Both contain the same material. Questions? Pete Riegel 3354 Kirkham Road Columbus, OH 43221 USA Phone: 614-451-5617 Email: riegelpete@aol.com