Twenty-One Years of the ACS

who has done most of the typesetting since then. Three years later the committee finally decided to take the plunge and acquire a computer.These,of course,were commonplace by then in business circles and individual members had been using computers for their own statistics for some time.The ACS was fortunate to have the guidance of Peter Griffiths, a member with the required computer background, to steer them on options and costs. It was decided to purchase an Olivetti PC-286 running Microsoft Windows with a Star laser printer. The initial thinking was threefold with the first aim to be able to keep membership details and to produce complete or selective address lists and mailing labels. Secondly the computer would be used for straightforward desktop publishing with the first target being the pre-1900scores'series, whose layout on each page was almost identical. It meant that once a template was set up,the keying-in of data could begin and Derek Drake has handled this task in recent issues. The ability to produce good quality camera-ready copy on the laser printer has eliminated typesetting costs on these books and ensured that any errors are factual as opposed to typesetting ones and the long-term expectation is that all booklets will be produced this way. The third computer usage could be in accounting and stock control but this has not yet been introduced. Occasional lists in the Journal show that members possess a ^111111^^ wide variety of non-compatible hardware and software. Griffiths would like to see the ACS give a lead in helping to make their data available to each other by encouraging more standardisation. If more members used computers when working on a booklet, a great deal of typesetting, or re-keying of data, Peter Griffiths would be eliminated by taking the information from them on diskette. This would reduce costs and ensure that additional errors did not intrude. Griffiths (born 1948) joined the committee in 1993 and revels in history and archaeology as well as cricket and computers. He is managing director of PGR Computing Ltd. and is also a director of Limlow Books Ltd., a specialist publishing house. Griffiths, needless to say, was in the vanguard among those keeping statistics on computers, though as a professional expert his approach has been different. In his case much of the enjoyment comes from mastering the constantly changing ways to store and retrieve data and this has tended to restrict the amountof new information he has added. For the ACS Griffiths in 1992 compiled and typeset