FACILITY FIRE BRI FIRE AND EMERGENCY SERVICES INS FIRE PROTECTION, DETECTION, AN
FIRE SERVICE HYDRAULICS AND WATER SUPPLY HAZARDOUS MATERIALS TECHNICIAN PRINCIPLES OF PASSENGER VEHICLE EXTRICATION GROUND COVER FIRE FIGHTING FOR STRUCTURAL FIREFIGHTERS
From its earliest days as Oklahoma A&M College, orange and black were selected as the school colors. The school’s first nickname was the Tigers. This was because much of the college was modeled after Princeton University in New Jersey. This included the architecture style and colored brick patterns used on the outside of the buildings on campus, which continues to be used on new construction today. Princeton’s mascot is a tiger and their school colors are orange and black. Many people referred to Oklahoma A&M as the “Princeton on the Prairie.” The university was renamed Oklahoma State University in 1957. The nickname was changed to the Cowboys, however orange and black remained the official colors. Although the design of the IFSTA manual covers has changed dramatically over the years, red is still the primary color used in the cover design, which is why they continue to be referred to as the “Red Books.” As technology advanced, it became more feasible to print copies of the drafts for each member of the validation committee. These drafts were mailed to the committee members several weeks prior to the conference. They would make notes in their copies and bring them to the meeting. At the meeting, the draft was reviewed page-by-page. The committee secretary maintained the master copy. This copy was commonly referred to as the “dog-eared” copy, as the secretary would fold over the top corner on every page of the master draft that had a change the committee agreed upon. As in the older system, once the entire draft was validated, the dog-eared copy went back to FPP for publishing. As mentioned previously, in the earliest years of the organization, all of the work to develop the actual text of the manuals was done on typewriters. Initially, manual typewriters were the only option available. Electric typewriters entered the picture and were placed in service at in the mid-1970s. Later versions had an option where you could white out a typo and make a correction on top of it. Final drafts were sent to Graphics where phototypesetters would enter the text into a phototypesetting machine. The machine would turn the text into long strips of a special type of paper that a graphic designer would cut into pieces in order manually lay out each page of the manual. The development of manuals using digital means began in the late 1980s. FPP Editorial employees received their first desktop computers around 1987. These were stand-alone units that had very minimal capabilities beyond basic word processing. They were basically glorified electronic typewriters. The word processing program used with these devices was called Xywrite. There was no choice of font types and very limited choices of font size. Bold, underlined, and italic types were available. The data was stored on 6-inch floppy disks. The disks had to be shared back and forth among the people who were working on a particular project. Graphic design and layout were not yet being done digitally, but they could take the text files off of the disks and use them for layout. Print product development took a major step forward when FPP moved into its new office building in 1989. The building was equipped with a computer network and all Editorial and Curriculum staff had new, networked IBM computers at their workstations. Microsoft Word was selected as the word processing program that would be used in the future. The network allowed files to be stored and shared much more efficiently than the previous method. It also allowed photographs and illustrations to be stored and accessed. Although system upgrades occurred along the way, this was the primary way that content was developed and stored until 2019 when the Google Docs system was implemented. This brought the FPP content development process into the modern age. Once the content of a manual has been prepared, the next step is to turn it into a format that is ready for printing. In the earliest days of the organization, these duties were shared by the editor and the printing operation. As the number of manuals grew and the complexity of finalizing them for print increased, the need to hire someone with these special skills became clear. In 1972, Ann Moffat was hired to assume these duties (Figure 17, p. 22) . Ann was a recent OSU graduate and she quickly integrated into her new role. Her talents were quickly visible in the new manuals that she was working on. A more professional look for IFSTA manuals began to emerge.
IFSTA/FPP: THE FIRST 90 YEARS 21
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