As most readers of this journal are aware, "Sign Language Studies" ("SLS") served for many years as effectively the only serious scholarly outlet for work in the nascent field of sign language linguistics. Now reaching its 40th anniversary, the journal was founded by William C. Stokoe and then edited by him for the first quarter century of its existence. The "SLS" community of readers will generally be receptive to the claim that Bill Stokoe was also the founder of the emerging field just mentioned. In January 1989 Stokoe himself published a fairly detailed account of the journal's first 16 years (although published at the beginning of 1989, his paper had been written in 1988). One cannot do better than to allow Bill to tell the story in his own words, and this article is an extended extract from his account of those early years, especially how he entered the desktop publishing business, as well as that of journal editing. (Contains 1 figure and 3 notes.)