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30 YEARS OF It could be said that the SILICON CHIP story commences with the first issue, which hit the streets in November, 1987 – 30 years ago. But in fact, the story really starts quite a long time before that! I n the period between about 1960 and 1980, there were tronics magazines had been started – Electronics Today two publications in publisher John Fairfax & Sons’ (in April 1971) and Australian Electronics Monthly – both stable that were outstanding contributors to the com- considered “upstarts” but, by the same token, competing pany’s fortunes: the Saturday edition of The Sydney Morn- for the same, vital, advertising dollars as EA. As it happened, Electronics Today (or more correctly ing Herald with its fabled “rivers of gold” (also known as the classified adverts) and a strange (at least to the board’s Electronics Today International – ETI – there were seveyes) magazine called “Radio, TV and Hobbies” (later to eral overseas editions) had also been swallowed up by the become Electronics Australia – and universally referred to Federal juggernaut. There was a joke at the time that every time the Federal by readers, advertisers and staff as “EA”). They were each highly successful for similar reasons: Publishing boss went out to buy a sandwich for lunch, they had no real opposition. If you wanted to place a classi- he’d come back owning another magazine (and/or a press fied ad, you chose the Herald. If you wanted an electronics to print it!). Despite the best intentions to maintain ETI as a going magazine (and huge numbers did!), for a long time there concern, in time management decided that it was all too was nothing else but EA. In those days, EA circulation was huge – 50,000 a month hard and ETI would effectively be combined with “EA”, – and they were regularly bringing out issues with up to producing one magazine instead of two. AEM had a chequered career but advertisers became disil200 pages – much of it lovely $$$ advertising! Probably because they didn’t really understand it, the lusioned with their “maybe” publishing dates, making sales powers that be at Fairfax sold Electronics Australia, to the campaigns meaningless (more than one issue was missed; Federal Publishing Company in 1984. Not only were the others were combined into a two-dateline title). Advertising staff uprooted but a whole new structure came into being. support dried up and AEM ceased publication altogether. By early 1987, EA staff had decided their only option was From the staid, arguably cloistered environment they to be the masters of their own destiny – and offered Federal were used to, they viewed the many other magazines owned Publishing a management buy-out to the tune of $250,000. by Federal as “chaotic”. This offer was rejected out of hand, with the then Federal Many did not even have a printed production schedule or deadline and came out, well, sometime close to their Publishing General Manager apparently quoted as saying “Over my dead body”, or words to that effect. dateline! And the same day, Leo Simpson was fired. The EA staff under then editor Leo Simpson gradually With such a resounding “no”, the remaining EA staff became more and more disenchanted with the operation at Federal, even though EA was still an excellent finan- decided that their only path possible was to launch their cial contributor. In fact, at the time Federal management own magazine and resigned, en masse, from Federal Pubregarded the two monthly magazines Electronics Australia lishing. Leo Simpson, Greg Swain, John Clarke and Bob Flynn prepared, over the ensuing months, and Truckin’ Life as their “jewels in the crown”. In the meantime, two other monthly elecBy Ross Tester to launch “SILICON CHIP” 18 Silicon Chip Celebrating 30 Years siliconchip.com.au Again, when the GM heard about this and, presumably, their plans, he promised to see them “dead and buried”. SILICON CHIP launches But SILICON CHIP persevered and month after month, made enough money to pay staff, to pay the printers and distributors . . . with a little (very little!) left over to continue. When SILICON CHIP published its first issue in November 1987, it maintained the same strong, authoritative editorial philosophy and content that readers had come to expect from EA. However, even with SILICON CHIP ’s acknowledged better content (that came from advertisers in the main) it was extraordinarily difficult to prise readers away from the magazine many had grown up with; the one that had taken them from valves, through transistors and now into the digital age. So where did the name come from? You might not recognise this hirsute character these days... but then again, this was almost 30 years ago! He’s a tad older today; slightly less hair . . . (clue: see the inset!) On SILICON CHIP’s 5th Birthday, we went all out and gave away a CAR to a reader!!!! Here’s Jaycar’s owner Gary Johnston drawing the winner! siliconchip.com.au When researching the setting up of a new electronics magazine, Leo Simpson found the market was unbelievably crowded with names involving “Australia”, “Electronics”, etc. Not all of these involved publications but Leo figured anything using those words or combinations of those words stood a very good chance of disappearing in the market. Besides, he wanted a name that would be memorable and different. The digital age was starting to become a force in Celebrating 30 Years November 2017  19 its own right – but even the word “Digital” was hackneyed. So after much brainstorming and further research, the name SILICON CHIP was decided on and registered as a publication. eat dies a death With SILICON CHIP now a legitimate competitor in its own right, (and EA struggling on with several key staff changes) in 2000 Federal Publishing made a monumentally bad call: (arguably again) because they didn’t understand why a magazine would need an expensive laboratory, expensive reference books and higher-paid “technical” staff than those that wrote the Dorothy Dixers in their womens magazines – “and what do you need a technical draftsman for when we have artists on staff?”. Federal decided they wanted ea (now it officially had a name change as well, lower case and all) to go more “consumer” oriented, to develop a market on top of the hobbyist and technical readership. To this end, they imported a couple of hot-shot marketing whizzes from the Old Dart, who completely re-shaped ea to become “eat”. That “hobbyist stuff” was relegated to a few pages “down the back” while most of the now highly glossy magazine breathlessly told all their readers about the latest whizz-bang consumer products coming onto the market. The problem with this approach was three-fold: (1) they missed a couple of months, leading to the rumours that it had ceased publication (which, of course, as EA it effectively had!). (2) the old readership deserted in droves, many cancelling their subscriptions and switching over to SILICON CHIP. (3) They weren’t replacing the old readership because the consumer area of the market was quite crowded anyway. So eat circulation dropped like a stone – and less than a year later it was announced that eat was no more! As an aside, not long after eat’s demise Leo Simpson heard on the grapevine that the magazine’s assets were for sale: the titles eat/ea, EA, ETI, Radio TV and Hobbies, Radio and Hobbies and even back to their ancestor, Wireless Weekly; copyright on all the articles, all the back issues, the laboratory (with all its test equipment), reference books . . . everything that was not nailed down. So Leo Simpson offered Federal’s accountants the princely sum of $10,000 – and they accepted! When asked why he bought the remains of the once proud magazine and what he was going to do with the titles, he said “Absolutely Once upon a time, Greg Swain had the reputation for the messiest desk in the company. Then Ross Tester came along and blew that record right outa the water! 20 Silicon Chip nothing! But it made me feel so good to buy everything for ten grand when I had offered them a quarter of a million!” As owner of all the EA/ETI/RTV&H/R&H copyright, SILICON CHIP continues to make occasional sales for readers wanting reprints of old articles, PCB patterns (where published) and so on. Naturally, with these magazines going back into history (way before computers!), electronic files are virtually non-existent. Changes in SILICON CHIP production That brings us to another rather dramatic change which technology has brought about. When SILICON CHIP started, desktop publishing was largely some time off. It was a rather monumental step-up to even type “copy” onto a word processor, as distinct from a typewriter. But in the early days, the word processor files were sent (via a 300 baud acoustic-coupled modem!) to a company which specialised in “typesetting”. There was no such thing as computerised page layout – the files were returned to SILICON CHIP as “galley proofs” – a continuous strip of paper on which the article was printed, to the required column width and in the appropriate “fonts” or type styles. Galley proofs for large articles could easily be metres long! The galley then went into “paste up” where it was cut up and glued in position on layout sheets printed to the same size as the final magazine size. Allowance was made for any photos, diagrams, etc in the paste-up. Speaking of diagrams, in the early days they were all painstakingly prepared by the draftsman, Bob Flynn, using pen and ink. Large circuit diagrams and printed circuit board overlays could take, sometimes, days to draw. Photographs, which had been taken off-site by professional photographers, predominantly in black and white, were scaled to fit the required spaces and these, along with the diagrams, were then despatched to a photo-engraver to not only re-shoot at the right size but in the case of photos, “screened” to produce the dot pattern capable of being printed (the normal magazine or newspaper printing process to this day cannot print continuous-tone photos). All of the material, page layouts, diagrams, photos, etc, was then despatched to a specialised production house which assembled the pages ready for printing – usually, after quite a lot of back-and-forwarding for corrections, changes, etc. Finally, the magazine was sent by air to the printer – Two more SILICON CHIP originals: Bob Flynn, our draftsman (since retired), and John Clarke (who hasn’t!). John moved to northern NSW many years ago but is still full time with SC. Celebrating 30 Years siliconchip.com.au originally on Syquest 100MB drives; later, as technology improved, on (wow!) 250MB Iomega Zip disks (usually, it took between six and ten disks to send an entire magazine). That was then . . . and this is now! SILICON CHIP is now produced virtually entirely “in house” until the very last stage of the process, printing (which is done on high speed, heatset web-offset presses the size of a semi-trailer!). Pages are designed and set up “on screen” with an Adobe product called “InDesign”. Computer files containing the article text (called copy), digital photos, circuit diagrams and PCB artwork/overlays, along with anything else to go in the article, are all given the InDesign treatment to produce the pages you are so familiar with. Circuit diagrams and other graphics are “drawn” on screen using “CorelDRAW”, using our own component library, built up over many years. Many have asked over the years why we don’t use a dedicated CAD program but we have found that, despite its sometimes poor behaviour, Corel gives us enormous flexibility. One thing that hasn’t changed much over the years is the “look and feel” of the magazine. SILICON CHIP believes it is important to make articles as legible as possible so you won’t see too much of the “arty-farty” look so many modern magazine creative directors are so enamoured by. In fact, the typeface used in SILICON CHIP in 2017 articles is exactly the same as that used in SILICON CHIP in 1987. Sure, we now make extensive used of colour (something that was prohibitively expensive back then). But the philosophy is to make articles highly readable, as distinct from pretty (and hard to read!). We’ve ignored the “modern” trend to use sans-serif typefaces, simply because research has proved again and again that a serif face – in our case Melior – is very significantly more legible and comprehension is vastly improved. But try telling that to a pony-tailed art director! For the same reason, we try not to use too many typographic “tricks” such as printing over a photo or coloured background – unless, of course, the photo demands it! And speaking of photos, our in-house photography has become one of our strengths – with a minimum of equipment (studio flash and a Nikon DSLR camera) we produce some pretty amazing shots. We’re sure that many people who take press and magazine photos have never even heard For quite some time SILICON CHIP couldn’t afford a secretary but then it got too much for Leo and he hired Ann Morris – the same Ann Morris who still answers the phone today! siliconchip.com.au of depth-of-field! We have . . . Of course, the skill of our people in photography manipulation has just a little to do with that (yes, we use Adobe Photoshop!). And we are constantly congratulated by contributors in the way we are able to turn their “sow’s ears” into “silk purses”. Which is all just as well, as one of the hallmarks of the magazine has always been clarity and consistency. We know that our readers are looking for both detail and information; our constant aim is to give it to them! Another aside: when SILICON CHIP decided to start using desktop publishing in the 1990s, virtually the whole industry used Apple (later Macintosh) computers. Even retailers which sold MS-DOS machines had the ubiquitous Macs in their advertising studios! Unfortunately, Apples at the time sold for two and three times (or more!) IBM PCs (or their clones) so SILICON CHIP decided to go the IBM/MS-DOS route, in line with the company’s “lean and mean” mantra. When Greg Swain started dealing with the typesetters, the owner (a German who must remain nameless!), said “Nein! It vill not vork. IBM is no goot. You must use Apple.” A couple of successful issues later, he expressed his amazement that it did, indeed, “vork”! Lean and mean As Leo Simpson commented in the publisher’s letter this month (page 4) one of the main reasons that SILICON CHIP survived (where so many magazines and publishers failed along the way) was keeping costs to a minimum. When the magazine started, it was produced in the basement of Leo’s home in Sydney’s northern beaches. That was fine with the original “gang of four” (they didn’t even have an advertising manager or even a secretary!) but as the operation grew, extra staff became necessary. So over the ensuing thirty years, SILICON CHIP had to move five times – with barely a day of production lost each time. The last move (gad, was it really 11 years ago?) was to the company’s current building in Brookvale, right in the heart of the Northern Beaches. We’ve also changed printers three times – but two of those were to different divisions of the same company as they rationalised their own operations. Originally, SILICON CHIP was printed by Masterprint, in Dubbo (country NSW). When Hannanprint Sydney purchased Masterprint SILICON CHIP has moved five times in thirty years – two of those not really by choice! Here’s the third office in Bassett St, Mona Vale – still fondly regarded by those who can remember! Celebrating 30 Years November 2017  21 and moved its presses to their plant in Alexandria, SILICON CHIP went with them. Even though they were several hundred kilometres closer, production processes remained much the same. Further rationalisation by Hannanprint saw SILICON CHIP printing moved to their Noble Park plant in Melbourne, Victoria. But in early 2017, the decision was made by SILICON CHIP (for various reasons, not the least being “lean and mean!”) to bring printing back to Sydney – this time to Bluestar, in Silverwater. Oh, those rumours! Over the years (and particularly since the days of computer bulletin boards and later forums) we’ve lost count of the number of times that it has been stated categorically (eg, my mate works for xxxx and he told me that . . .) that SILICON CHIP was owned by Jaycar Electronics or Altronics. And even once, we’ve seen that SILICON CHIP owns Jaycar! (Oh, how we wish . . .). To set the record straight once and for all, none of this is true. While both Jaycar Electronics and Altronics have supported SILICON CHIP with advertising since the first issue – without which the magazine definitely would have folded – all three companies are completely independent of each other. Capiche? The Internet The exponential rise of the Internet since SILICON CHIPstarted has had two major impacts on the magazine. The first, and most obvious, was/is our website, www. siliconchip.com.au This has itself gone through several iterations – initially it was set up “in house” as a simple source of information for SILICON CHIP readers – including such things as PCB pattern and front panel artwork downloads. Later, an outside company was contracted to significantly expand the site and also offer limited component and kit sales, among other lines. The final change (so far!) came when we took the site back “in house” and made the on-screen presentation look identical to that of the printed version, with extensive search facilities. Subscriptions are available in either printed or online editions, or both, as readers require. The other significant advance to the website was brought about by reader demands: they told us that they couldn’t Another of the early SILICON CHIP staff was the late Rick Walters. He brought a “hands-on” knowledge of industry and commercial practice to the company. 22 Silicon Chip build certain projects because PCBs were getting difficult or impossible to buy, and/or as components became more specialised or esoteric, the usual sources did not stock them. Without wanting to go into competition with our major advertisers (in fact, we discussed it with them first) we made the decision to produce and sell all PCBS and many front panels etc, used for magazine projects (since about 2000), along with hard-to-get components which retailers could not justify putting into stock. Where the retailers decide not to “kit up” for a SILICON CHIP project (and again, that’s usually because they cannot justify the cost of doing so), we sometimes make kits available ourselves, either in “short form” or occasionally full versions. Most recently, with the purchase of a CAD Laser Cutter, we also have many acrylic cases, front panels etc, available via the SILICON CHIP Online Shop. The other impact of the internet for SILICON CHIP is completely unseen by readers: it has enabled a quite dramatic streamlining of production processes and tightening of deadlines, because electronic file despatch and receipt is virtually instantaneous. Where deadlines for advertisers “in the olden days!” used to be around six weeks or so from publication date, it’s now around a month – with publication on the last Thursday of each month, deadlines are now the first of that same month. Internally, that’s also meant we can work very much closer to the “on press” date because all pages sent to the printer totally complete. Corrections and amendments are also electronic, and with the printers using the latest publishing and imposition software, revised pages simply slot into place. SILICON CHIP, like most publications these days, is produced “Computer to Plate” – gone are the days when four huge sheets of film (one for each colour, cyan, magenta, yellow and black) had to be shot and then used to expose light-sensitive plates for the press. Now, the finished pages are sent via computer to produce the printing plates direct. The future? Well, that is really up to you, our readers and advertisers. With your continued support, we plan on being around for another thirty years – and then some . . . though we doubt that too many of the current staff will be here to celebrate SC that particular birthday! Staff photographer, graphic designer and writer Ross Tester wasn’t one of the originals: he came along when Leo asked him to work a day or so a month – nearly twenty years ago! Celebrating 30 Years siliconchip.com.au