Introduction

Although I was born in Brigham City, Box Elder County, Utah, I was raised, for the most part, in Ogden, Weber County, Utah, where I graduated from Ben Lomond High School in 1981. We had a hymn, written by Richard Packham,with lyrics as follows:

From the green Scottish hills where the proud pipers play,
To the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch,
There's no better clan, nor will there ever be
Than the Friendly Fighting Scots of Ben Lomond.

We're proud of Ben Lomond and all that she stands for,
And though o'er the earth we may wander,
A part of our hearts will always yearn to be
In the memory-hallowed halls of Ben Lomond.

We also had a tartan - the Royal Stewart Tartan.

Plaid clothing was popular in Ogden, when I was a child, and I believe I was always fond of many of the plaid patterns I saw. The Royal Stewart Tartan was no exception.

Between 1986 and 1989, I bought my first desktop computer. It was an Atari, with which I could do word-processing as well as play Asteroids.

In 1994, I bought myself a Windows desktop computer with MS-DOS and Windows 3. Windows 3 had a virtual desktop behind the wallpaper. If you used a wallpaper that was smaller than the screen, and didn't stretch or tile it, you could see the desktop behind the wallpaper. You could also select a two-colored Pattern for it. Not only was it possible to select a Pattern, you could select a color scheme which dictated which two colors would be used to display the Patterns. These patterns were tiny images exactly eight pixels by eight pixels, which, when selected, would be tiled across the virtual desktop, and give it what appeared to be texture.

There were a variety of Patterns to choose from, including Fish Scales and Greek Keys. One of my favorites was Cargo Net, perhaps since I was in the U.S. Army at the time. Another was Twill, which looked like twill fabric.

Circa "9-11," while I was stationed at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, I started making bitmap images with the Twill Pattern, which looked like plaid cloth. Using Micrografx Picture Publisher 4 for Windows 3, which still worked on Windows 95 and Windows XP, I added colors and expanded the wallpapers as needed to accommodate the thread counts. 

I soon realized that, if the thread counts I used were equally divisible by four, and I cropped them just right, they would tile seamlessly on a Windows Desktop. In other words, even if you examined each line of pixels, whether horizontally or vertically, you would not be able to see where one tile ended and another started.

Somewhere along the way, I discovered a set of three books which had pictures of various tartans, and included, in most cases, their official thread counts. In a few cases, the thread counts were not provided, because they were secret or unknown.

In addition to this set of books, I sometimes found tartans I liked or which had significance to me, with their thread counts published on the Internet.

In some cases, I simply invented a tartan with my own thread count, in honor of an organization I admired, or for a friend to whom I wanted to show gratitude and respect.

Eventually, I discovered a website called The Scottish Register of Tartans, which is operated by the Scottish government, and provides, in many cases, the official thread counts of official tartans. Newer tartans tend to be protected by copyright, in which case the people at the Register provide contact info for the copyright holders, so that those interested may attempt to persuade them to divulge their thread counts. I prefer to simply guess. I can tell just by looking closely at a picture of plaid cloth what its thread count might be.

I published these images and thread counts on a website (vaughanster.com). Eventually, I relinquished control of this domain name, but I kept my artwork.

In the process of creating and publishing my seamlessly tileable plaid wallpapers for Windows Desktops, I also invented a couple naming conventions for the image files and associated soft copy files. I still use one of these systems, according to the following conventions:

tile-tartan-[xyz]-[name].bmp or .gif

I named Patterns as follows:  tile-patterns-[xyz]-[name].bmp or .gif or .ani (in the case of animated .gifs).

The xyz's can be one of the following:

cop = protected by copyright. This is the abbreviation I use when I am guessing what the thread count might be by closely examining a picture of the tartan, when the official thread count is protected by copyright.

ntc = not the true thread count. In these cases, the official thread count is not equally divisible by four, so I add or subtract one or two threads (usually from the largest stripes, so as to be less noticeable); this creates seamlessly tileable images, but their thread counts are "off" by one or two threads.

ttc = true thread count. In these cases, the official thread count is equally divisible by four, so I can use the official thread count and the image will tile seamlessly.

unk = unknown. This is the abbreviation I use when I am guessing what the thread count might be by closely examining a picture of the tartan, which I do when I see a tartan I like, but don't know it's name and/or have yet to find its official thread count.

WMV = William Mortensen Vaughan. These are the thread counts I simply invented, for tartans of my own design.

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Introduction by William Mortensen Vaughan