Twenty-One Years of the ACS

years before this prerogative was invoked. To complete this outline of the Journal's development,Issue No.9in the Spring,1975,switched to A5size and had 44 pages.This formatstayed unchanged until March,1979,when Issue No. 21 became the first to be printed properly in something akin to present-day style, though the quality of the paper used has improved. Brooke's diligence and the hard grind which lay behind the production ofthe first twenty issues has to be noted. They were usually compiled,typed, duplicated and stapled at the family kitchen table before the end product was dispatched to a membership that raced past 200 inside the first 18 months. Brooke and Lambert originally had envisaged that around 200 would always represent the probable maximum number of members but in fact more than 600 joined before the ACS even reached its fifth anniversary. Inevitably these unexpected numbers caused problems and it was a little while before financial realism replaced altruistic notions that carefully planned funding was not required. Brian Croudy remembers taking a week's holiday on one occasion to save the ACS postage by delivering the Journals by hand throughout Greater London. He criss-crossed the metropolis by bus and tube, the north-east one day,the north west another and so on, in all directions, as far out as Walton-on-Thames and Upminster. Croudy had first encounters with numerous members, who have been friends ever since. Among these was Geoffrey Copinger, these days the ACS doyen and as alert and gracious in his eighties as he has ever been.Croudy unwittingly had spelled Copinger with a double 'p'.'Standing on the doorstep Geoffrey took the envelope from me,studied it with a twinkle in his eye before - as imperiously as A.C.MacLaren dispatching a ball from his presence - he took out a fountain pen and deleted one of my double "p"s with the words:"only one p young man".' Copinger, a former compiler of records and averages for Wisden and the Press Association, and Frank Peach, an expert on Derbyshire statistics, were presented with scrolls at the 1991 AGM to mark their 80th birthdays. Croudy, who for a long time^ w^^^the only^ I^ndo^^ ^he Norman Bates, another London Brian Croiidy member, would photo-copy what was needed and Croudy would collect and distribute them. It was