WITHIN hours after the pattern of the election returns began to take shape, this special issue--the first extra in TIME'S history--went to press. It is the product of weeks of long-range planning and hours of intensive work.

There was no lack of words to choose from. While the editors had available all the reports of major press services and the din of TV and radio, the heart of the reporting came from 124 TIME correspondents who spent the night at key posts in all 50 states--and with each of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates until the hour of decision. Their assignment from Chief of Correspondents Richard Clurman: "Good, live reporting, not only analyses and explanations but eye-and-ear, sights-and-sounds reporting as well."

Their on-the-spot accounts of what happened--and the how and why of it --were transmitted to New York over a complex of private Teletype circuits designed to provide two-way communications between election headquarters at the new TIME and LIFE Building in Manhattan and all twelve U.S. bureaus. Correspondents stationed elsewhere phoned directly to special lines in New York, where secretaries manned nine sound-recording devices and transscribed the verbal reports onto paper.

Additional Teletype service from the Associated Press and United Press International enabled TIME'S election-night communications network to receive more than 142,000 printed words an hour. A staff of 28 copy deskmen routed this material to writers and editors all through the night; a force of reference librarians dug out background material. At each candidate's election-night headquarters, TIME had its own special wirephoto arrangements to transmit pictures.

Working under National Affairs Editor Louis Banks, a staff of 35 writers and researchers were set to move in whatever direction the night's fast-breaking news took them. Naturally, the President-elect would be on the cover; but that meant two writers assigned and primed to write cover stories--and inevitably one had no story to write. Other facets of the whole election story--the losers, the Senate, the House, the Governors--were in the hands of writers who spent long hours in advance anticipating the outcome, getting ready to measure the significance of the results.

To speed distribution, this issue was printed not only at TIME'S five regular U.S. plants (Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Philadelphia and Albany) but also in San Francisco and Detroit. Delivery in some areas would be slowed by the fact that U.S. post offices would not deliver mail on the Nov. 11 holiday. Readers of our overseas editions will receive this extra as an insert bound into the Nov. 21 issue, which will appear, as does TIME every week, everywhere in the free world.

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