[Leica] IMG: Remnant of the Past

[Adam Bridge]

Craftsmen tools came with a lifetime guarentee and were well made. I have a toolbox of them in the garage dating from the late 70s. My submarine’s tool allotment had many Sears tools. Our Machinest Mate (Nuclear) Chief made us throw out all the adjustable wrenches. So we took them home. And, yep, those screwdrivers just keep on goin’

Adam

> On 2021 Oct 5, at 4:40 PM, Douglas Barry <imra at iol.ie> wrote:
> 
> Fascinating, Brian.  There was nothing similar to Sears over here, but low population and huge distances must have been great drivers of innovation. However, having been in branch banking way back, I do remember being involved in applications to our corporate lending department for clients who wanted to buy Heidelberg Off Set printing machines. The machines were hugely expensive at the time and cost a lot more than the average industrial upgrade we came across. Squeaky bum time for us bankers as we deliberated our recommendations. Now? Probably all in scrap yards thanks to digital dominance.
> 
> Douglas
> 
> 
> 
> On 05/10/2021 14:23, Brian Reid wrote:
>> Sears Roebuck was a major force in advancing color printing, and was THE pioneer in digital color printing.
>> 
>> By the 1960s, Sears realized that its customers expected the colors printed in its catalog to be spot-on correct. As its VP of catalog sales noted, "Your grandmother will hold the catalog up next to her curtains to see if the colors match. If they match, she will order new sofa cushions. If when the sofa cushions arrive they do not match the curtains, she will return them angrily and stop buying from Sears for a while. The colors in the catalog must be exact."
>> 
>> By the time I got involved, Sears catalogs were all printed by R. R. Donnelley & Sons at its printing plant on Calumet street in Chicago. RR Donnelley won and kept the contract because they were able to do a better job of printing accurate colors than the competition. My involvement was advising them on digital color separation technology so they could use 7-color presses; the classic optical separation process didn't work well past 4 colors and the filters were mind-numbingly expensive.
>> 
>> When my mother buys sofa cushions by mail order, she evaluates their color using the screen on her iMac. Even if she could lift it to hold it next to her curtains, proper comparison of glowing-screen colors with fabric colors is impossible. The catalogs were better. I sometimes wish I had kept one.
>> 
>> 
>> On 2021-10-04 13:29, Jim Nichols wrote:
>>> As I glanced around me on a cloudy morning, I saw this reminder of the
>>> days before Amazon and other on-line sources.  Sears Roebuck, and its
>>> rival, Montgomery Ward, were the mainstay of rural America.
>>> 
>>> http://www.gallery.leica-users.org/v/OldNick/20211004-DSCF3289-Enhanced.JPG.html 
>> 
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