The reprinted text entitled ‘On the classification of stop consonants’ was written by J. C. Catford, in original phonetic transcription, for the 1939 January–March issue (vol. 65) of Le Maître Phonétique and is an example of the article de fond type of contribution. J. C. (Ian) Catford (1917–2009) studied phonetics with Daniel Jones, Pierre Fouché and Marguerite Durand. He founded the School of Applied Linguistics in Edinburgh in the early 1950s. In 1964, he was invited to the University of Michigan, where he headed the English Language Institute and the Laboratory of Communication Studies until his retirement in 1985.