The printed page

In the year 1702 two books were published, in Oxford and Paris, that can now be seen as defining the presses that produced them. In Paris, the Imprimerie Royale issued the Médailles sur les principaux évènements du règne de Louis le Grand, a large folio of text and plates intended to glorify the regime of Louis XIV. In Oxford, the first, large format volume of Clarendon’s The history of the rebellion appeared; painstakingly edited at Christ Church, it brought prestige and profit to the University. Both were considerable statements of publishing intent in graphic form: both were sumptuous, and both used types and decorations reserved to their respective presses. But the French book points the way to future developments in typography, particularly in the design of type, while the Oxford book is a summation of the past, and its types and page design would be abandoned by the Oxford press in little more than thirty years. Tracing the printed pages of Oxford books from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century shows changes that parallel wider developments in English and European typography, but from a distinctly Oxford perspective.

Integrating control and electronics

Previously the author described how control engineering can be introduced using little mathematics in a first year course, the aim being to make the subject accessible across different degrees. One reaction to this was that it was a good idea, but there was not space to include it in the curriculum where, typically control engineering is not introduced until the second year. This paper describes how the author has used a review of the first year teaching to develop a module in which feedback, control and electronics are integrated coherently. This is beneficial as concepts in control and electronics mutually reinforce each other. This has been achieved during a reduction in the available time for teaching the material. This paper describes the strategy used to successfully develop the module, the integrated module and positive student reaction.

Making electronics more accessible to people with learning disabilities

We extended 'littleBits' electronic components by attaching them to a larger base that was designed to help make them easier to pick up and handle, and easier to assemble into circuits for people with learning disabilities. A pilot study with a group of students with learning disabilities was very positive. There were fewer difficulties in assembling the components into circuits, and problems such as attempting to connect them the wrong way round or the wrong way up were eliminated completely.

Facts, scope, style: a guide to writing papers for IEEE transactions on consumer electronics

In a previous article, I wrote a brief piece on how to enhance papers that have been published at one of the IEEE Consumer Electronics (CE) Society conferences to create papers that can be considered for publishing in IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics (T-CE) [1]. Basically, it included some hints and tips to enhance a conference paper into what is required for a full archival journal paper and not fall foul of self-plagiarism. This article focuses on writing original papers specifically for T-CE. After three years as the journal’s editor-in-chief (EiC), a previous eight years on the editorial board, and having reviewed some 4,000 T-CE papers, I decided to write this article to archive and detail for prospective authors what I have learned over this time. Of course, there are numerous articles on writing good papers—some are really useful [2], but they do not address the specific issues of writing for a journal whose topic (scope) is not widely understood or, indeed, is often misunderstood.