At the meeting of the International Astronomical Union at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1932, Dr L.J. Comrie, Superintendent of H.M. Nautical Almanac Office, proposed that efforts be made to eliminate duplicate printing in the national ephemerides, notably that of apparent places of stars. The meeting of the I.A.U. in Paris in 1935 recommended that the apparent places of stars in all astronomical ephemerides be based on the mean places of the Third Fundamental Catalogue of the 'Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuch' (FK3), and that these places in the FK3 and its supplement should be published annually in a single volume. The resulting publication, entitled 'Apparent Places of Fundamental Stars', was produced by H.M. Nautical Almanac Office from 1940 with the cooperation of the almanac offices in Berlin, Paris, San Fernando and London, and published by H.M. Stationery Office, London. Responsibility for the compilation and publication of the volume passed to the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut in Heidelberg from the 1960 edition.