Pursuit of Perfection

This short but very interesting interview with Mr. Jerry Edelman appeared in the February 1967 issue of Junior Secretary. Jerry wrote the plates for the majority of the Series 90 books. He talked about his job at McGraw-Hill and the process of making shorthand plates.


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6 comments Add yours
  1. Indeed.

    A magazine with a greater emphasis on learning shorthand sounds great! I wish I had heard about this earlier.

    I'll see whether I can find some issues of Junior Secretary on eBay, too.

    Althought 1966 to 1969 sounds as if the contents will likely be in DJS (published in 1963) rather than Simplified as in the early _Today's Seretary_?

  2. Junior Secretary was a short-lived spin-off of Today's Secretary, specifically directed to first-year shorthand students. It contained articles relating to the job market, as well as shorthand, penmanship, and typing practice. Basically, they tried to restore the learner's focus that seem to have been lost in the transition from The Gregg Writer to Today's Secretary. If you skim through the pages of Today's Secretary, it reads more like Glamour magazine, with lots of articles about fashion, but very little shorthand and typing practice. Junior Secretary was published from 1966 to 1969. Eventually, the content was incorporated back into Today's Secretary. The last issue of Today's Secretary was published in May 1982.

  3. Yes, it's DJS. The magazine itself is just 31 pages, smaller than a Gregg Writer in both size and content. The advantage of Today's Secretary is that at one point they were publishing both Simplified and DJS plates at the same time, so that would be beneficial to you. I'm not sure if they continued this practice into the 70s.

  4. Thanks very much for posting this. I wonder why he didn't use a gold nib. I would very much like to know what the ink was made of. When I use a dip pen, I use Higgins Eternal with gum arabic added to it, or an iron gall ink. The master penmen in the Golden Age of penmanship often made their own ink. It would marvelous to be able to visit that time.

    Thanks again for posting this. I found it quite interesting.

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