Harold Jackson writes: Frank Platt was appointed production director of the Guardian in 1985, at the same time as I was translated from Washington correspondent to chief systems editor. Between us, we were responsible for the smooth conversion of the paper’s production from hot metal type to the new digital page make-up. Frank had the daunting job of sorting out the inevitable reduction of the printing staff, I of training several hundred journalists to use their new computers and to realise they no longer had the comforting support of typesetters or proofreaders.
Things went generally smoothly but it became clear that, though I understood Frank’s professional jargon at our planning meetings, he was increasingly baffled by my digital gibberish. After one session, when I had been detailing the translation of the five-unit Baudot telegraph code into the eight-unit ASCII code required for computers, we stopped for lunch. He ruminated on the morning and sought the comfort of the Caxton era: “You know, in the old days they just used to burn people like you.”
