When I viewed and appraised the records back in September I had a gut feeling that the answers to many of the questions about the production of our nations classic stamps were in front of me. The problem was which files contained the keys. In the past three months the files have been rough sorted and now fill a four drawer lateral file cabinet. The initial sort has yielded three important finds.

The first find was a four-inch file on the patents associated with the grill and other experiments that took place in the mid to late 1860's. This file includes original printed copies of the patents, transcriptions of correspondence between the Third Assistant Postmaster General and the National Banknote Company and information about previously unreported patents. A client with a keen interest in the grills is presently reviewing this file with an eye on publishing this information later this year.

The second find was a large file on the Steinmetz-Travers Affair. Travers was a Asst. PMG who was fired and indicted for his involvement in letting the experimental blue paper issues find their way into the public domain. Tom Alexander came to Wheeling in early January to review this file for inclusion into the introduction of a series of books that he is writing for the Smithsonian on the Travers Papers. Tom feels that this file was once the property of Steinmetz's attorney. Will we ever know how Brazer acquired it.

The last find was two pages of typed notes on the Bowlsby coupon essay. They have helped confirm suspicions I have held for sometime about the nonexistence of the Bowlsby large die essay in black (Scott no. 63-E13a). You will find the complete story about this discovery on page two.

In December we installed a new computer system and said good-bye to ten years in the Mac world. Our new Gateway system is Microsoft driven and will greatly improve the level of service that we are able to provide our clients. The main project for this year is to put our book inventory into a data base that will be interactive on the Web. This will allow you to search our titles using key words. It will also allow for real time inventory control. This project will be finished by the end of this summer.

Our new HP scanner allows us to scan and send color images of material to you. We can also output in color on our new HP Photosmart color printer.

Learning a new platform has not been easy. But it has been fun kicking, screaming and cussing my way into the new century.