DearTIME-Reader:

THIS week, TIME'S editors unfold one of the great stories of our era. The Age of Research, they call our day, and a venturesome and productive age they show it to be.

On a far more modest scale, there is also research news in a field that has traditionally emphasized craftsmanship rather than industrial technology. This is the field of printing and the so-called graphic arts -an important one to us at TIME -and I would like to tell you something of what we are doing here. A technological "renaissance" has slowly taken form in printing, and I am proud to be able to tell you that Time Inc. has had a hand in bringing it about.

At the end of World War II, our company launched a research program designed to give us finer magazines faster. In the decade since we opened our experimental plant at Springdale, Conn, (whose personnel today totals 101 scientists, technicians and assistants), the company has spent upwards of $15 million on research that has already benefited the entire printing industry. Time Inc.'s annual outlay for printing and related research represents about a fifth of all money spent for this purpose in the U.S.

In 1950 we set up Printing Developments, Inc. to handle the distribution of products developed by our Springdale Laboratories, notably two new types of lithographic plates and the Electronic Scanner. Last month P.D.I. completed negotiations for building a new electroplating plant at Racine, Wis., to meet the demand from U.S. and Canadian lithographers for these hard-metal, offset plates, the "Lithure" and the "Lithengrave."

The Scanner represented a major breakthrough for Springdale and Eastman Kodak engineers who labored jointly on the project for ten years. An electronic "computer," it automatically transmutes color transparencies (Kodachrome, Ektachrome, etc.) into four separate negatives (one for each color) from which engravings or lithographic plates are made for four-color printing. Other Springdale firsts include an aluminum-backed letterpress plate, an internal lockup plate cylinder, a high-speed bindery, and the "balanced light"illuminator box.

As in the greater confraternity of science, the watchword at Springdale is cooperation. New ideas and findings are interchanged within our own laboratories, among our printing and paper suppliers and throughout the entire industry. More than a thousand visitors a year from the graphic arts call at Springdale, some to see work in progress, others to ask questions and discuss mutual problems. "Anyone who taps on our door gets in -they all bring us ideas," says Research Director Roswell ("Bud") Fisher.

Much of the experimental work at Springdale is on high-speed presses, and I can tell you that the presses on which TIME'S pages will be printed in five years do not exist today. Nor, indeed, do many of the products that will be advertised in those pages -as you will gather from our story, "$5 Billion Investment in Abundance."

Cordially yours,

James A. Linen

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