When We Was Rad:
Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Martin Wager Intro


Martin Wager Interview from Rad MagazineBotheration! The text for this Intro doesn’t seem to be on the backup disc, so all we have is the scan of the page.
If it turns up later, I’ll add it.


2 responses to “Martin Wager Intro”

  1. At the time of this Intro the text would have been entered using a text editor called “PC Write” (which saved in plain text, making what I am doing relatively straightforward).
    All the typsetting commands would also have been typed as plain text like this from the “Intro” file for this issue, which does NOT contain the text of this Intro at all:

    {i1s}
    {t0r56t1r5t2r56t3r5t4r56}

    {f33h40l41r200}< INTRO{f197}< INTRO{f311}< INTRO{f541}< INTRO{f534}< INTRO< ~xr {f535h40l41r200}< JOHN 'Hotte~p"1 Bnuroot' COFFEY< {i1h} {f649h8l9r56}< Last Comment _|{f650}I've got one foot on the golf course already{f649}<

    I can’t exactly remember what the typesetting system which used these codes was called. Newcora? We’d drop the disk off late each night and next morning the galleys of type output on bromide paper would arrive. You can see us running the word “Intro” in several different fonts at the top of the sample, so that we had a choice. We would have to wait 24 hours (and pay again) if we wanted to change anything.

    The type would then be stuck down on boards along with other physical artwork elements. Colours and other instructions would be written by hand on tracing paper overlays.

    I could go on… If we ever do the exhibition I’m keen to include examples of this for the generations who have only known desktop publishing.

    The (solitary) computer involved was a DOS device running an 8086(?) processor. It did have a hard drive as well as a floppy. Funnily enough it survived right up to the time of the New Deal fire. I had kept it hoping that one day I would have time to migrate stuff off the hard drive.

    As you can guess, anyone who had lived in an age of typing codes like those found the switch to writing HTML by hand (in the days before there was any software to do THAT) a complete doddle!

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