The inspiration for this volume lies in Edisbury's Practical Hints for Absorption Spectrometry which was published 17 years ago. Dr Edisbury was a founding member of the Photoelectric Spectrometry Group, served as its first Secretary and edited the Bulletin for many years. His wisdom, humour and pragmatism was evident in early meetings of the Group and in the first issues of the Bulletin, and these qualities were distilled in the writing of Practical Hints. In 1977, the Committee of the Group, which by then had been re-named The UV Spectrometry Group, decided to make use of the expertise...