1975 What is Word Processing? Vintage Computer History, Educational, IBM, Astrotype
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- Опубліковано 7 вер 2024
- The following is an original 1975 film describing WORD PROCESSING, showing many early word processing computers. This restored educational film explains the benefits of word processing, shows the IBM Selectric Typewriter, the (Rare) ICS Astrotype word processing system (with LINC type drives), IBM Selectric Composer, IBM Mag Card II, IBM MT/ST tape reels, a rare REDACTRON System cassette, LEXITRON and others. - Nice vintage look and feel & good overview. Rescued from an old 16mm film. Provided for historical & editorial comment only. Comments are welcome. ~ Hope you enjoy this vintage classic. Uploaded by the Computer History Archives Project.
How come 1975 never seems that "old" in my memories.🤔...But it ACTUALLY is. 😲
That year is approaching the half-century mark.
First word processor I ever used was Bank Street Writer on our school's Apple IIs in the mid-80s. None of us had ever seen anything like it, but as kids I guess we picked it right up like kids today often use phones and other gadgets better than their parents.
First one I ever used was, I think, was office word 2007 when my teacher was trying to teach me how to use the computer to type work. I thought it was useless and that I could just write with a pen and paper. I was 13.
That was until I became a writer at 17, I never thought how much I truly needed it again.
@@robertnussberger2028 In the mid 90s we had to "fight" with our teachers to get the allowence to write our homework on the computer. In their mind the most modern writing tech was electrical typewriters...
man, I absolutely love these videos. Thanks.
Here's a little gem of information...
I started working for Wang Computer in 1974, they sold IBM Selectric ('golf ball') I/O typewriters hooked to cassette tape units. They worked quite well and were popular but Wang sent us a couple of new units that had small VDU's attached (video screens). So we arranged for the Department of Finance (Australian Government in Canberra) to let us install them for a trial period in the hopes we could sell a bunch of them. They rang us up one day and told us to take them away. "We can't see a future for that sort of thing" they said... DUH!!🙄
Hi Fred, great story! Another technical "missed opportunity". Thanks for sharing that! ~ Victor, at CHAP
I'm writing from Southern California, and I notice you (from Australia) mention VDU's ... here we called them VDTs (Video Display Terminals). Is that a difference you heard about before?
There was even a book, "VDT, Friend or Foe" ... because some people (particularly newspaper unions) were trying to poison the well on the use of computerized typesetting.
PS: As a teen (yes, TEEN) I was tasked with taking WANG files and converting them to ATEX files. Wang had a functionality called "translate tables," and I was writing them to do the conversion. That's back when I was the "boy wonder," instead of this old man typing to you 😕[PS It was SUPER EASY; it's not like I was a genius or anything; just to the "old" people, it was a miracle]
Word Processing was the occupation that I vied for after graduating from the Office Technology course at Control Data Institute in 1988. Due to the numerous rejections for successful employment, I graduated from the word processor to the microcomputer that makes mundane tasks small deals. The disadvantage of the word processor laid in the printing spectrum. This would be no problem if the document is to be printed with the same named font, or if few words or phrases needed a different font from that of the rest of the document. For instance, the author or the keyboard specialist would apply a different font for the heading or subheading. In some cases, some words needed to be italicized for emphasis. This can take place in several places of the document. In that case, the typist or keyboard specialist would set printer stops on the word processor itself. Printer stops were applied easily to both ends of a particular text. When using the printer, it would print with the typeface ball or daisy wheel installed. Then, when the printer reached the stop point, it would stop and wait for a response from the user to change typefaces. This operation would continue until there were no more printer stops in the rest of the document. This procedure would be good for printing one or two copies of a multi-paged document. If several copies are needed to be printed, this step would be very tedious to do on the word processor printer. Therefore, copying such documents could be done on the office copier. The copying process would be faster than printing one page on the word processing printer. Then, the microcomputer came. An ink printer, i.e. ink-jet printer was one step up from the word processing printer, except the ones, like the IBM 5215, that used ink-jet technology. The computer printer has relieved computer users from those extemporaneous steps to print documents that have more than just print plain characters. It seems as though this show was made for me in mind.
Beautiful, thanks for sharing.
I began working on word processors with the IBM MT/ST (introduced in 1964 as the first modern word processor) in 1973 as a teenaged college student. The real transformation in wp was when software for PC's became available. Before that, one had to have dedicated wp's separate from any other computers. This is rather a distorted slant to the early word processing. I also ran IBM Memory typewriters, Mag Card Executive, Mag Card and Mag Card II before changing careers into hospital administration. Oh--and I used the Lexitron. Implication here is that a CRT was necessary to make a machine a word processor. Not so. Remember--dating several decades before, they were using perforated paper tapes to provide automatic typewriting.
The explanation of word processing is anything but clear.
Once you buy the word processing machine, it will explain it to you itself.
It's amazing that by the time I used my first computer, I could do all this at home with my parent's computer with a disk/CD Drive.
Hi Steven, yes, quite amazing how far the tech has come. And now, AI...
The narrator is long-time KGO-TV reporter Pete Wilson.
Fascinating! Thank you. ~ Victor at CHAP
Gee! I recognized Wilson's distinctive voice and phrasing style, but didn't recognize him in the brief on-camera appearance @3:00. The comb-over hair and eyewear made him unrecognizable from what I recall of his facial features in the 1990s.
Wilson also worked as a TV news anchor for KRON back in the good-old-days when The Chronicle owned the station; where is ditched the glasses and had a slight receding hairline.
I'm planning to do some word processing myself this afternoon.
Lol, all the advantages of electronic text-editing and the rollers are still covered in twink / tippex / whiteout - liquid paper...! And... there was definitely no visible Selectric Composer in that clip
I noticed that too; the bail rollers were all _covered_ in white out.
Bring back Wordstar!
I recall back in the early 1980s when Wordstar had that "WOW!" aspect to it among PC users.
I was more partial to DisplayWrite III.
I _HATED_ WordStar! The last character of each word had the "high" bit set, so it wasn't standard ASCII ... we had to write programs to strip the 8th bit from the alphabet characters to get words we could actually set type from!
Yes, I know that outs me as being old 😞
In 1984 we had a word processor that used special characters for centering and other things like that. The letter quality printer was a wheel writer that sounded like a machine gun, loud.
3:36 those terminals were the same as the ones we got in 1976.
yet its 2019 and computers still wont wrap your wife's anniversary present.
Give it time. AI and 3D printing have not yet kicked into high gear. They're just warming up.
@@hornet6969 2021, now. Still waiting.
@@HerbertFilby FWIW, after being a kid watching the Jetsons, I'm still waiting for my flying car!
I wonder if anyone having a chance wouldn't like to use this kind of equipment for one day just to try it out.
I would. I dig this stuff. And TBH, any old IBM Selectric is a friggin' joy to type on!
I definetly would! I was born in the mid 1980s and I'm fascinated by 70s technology.
It would be a wonderful trip down memory lane.
I'm going to sound like a broken record every time I see a vintage film from the early days of computer technology in the office, which is to say [again] about the air-conditioning upgrades the office space needed due to the heat generated from the new fangled high-tech equipment brought into the office space.
I worked for a semiconductor manufacturer in Silicon Valley in the early 1980s that had a 'word processing room' with inadequate cooling ventilation in that room, resulting with the word processing department shutting down when it got to 80 degrees F, or 27 degrees C; as, aside from the discomfort for the employees, the equipment would malfunction at that room temperature level.
Bloqk-16, fascinating, thank you for your comments, an interesting perspective and historical info.
I remember when we got the ATEX terminals (≈ Sept. 1983), the brag was "no fan, produces no more heat than a person." Of course that _still_ added a lot of heat, but I guess not as much as the '70s technology.
I love these videos, except the typo @6:09 made my eye twitch.
That was probably done by someone WITHOUT access to a word processor. 😋
I think the first mainframe (actually running on a VAX VMS) based word processor I saw was something called “Mass 11” in 1979. I’m not sure I even have the name correct because google is not leading me anywhere.
6:10 Can someone just use a word processor to get rid of the spurious apostrophe in "it's". This is ownership not abbreviation of "it is", so no apostrophe.
@The Lavian Yeah, I guess that people in OTHER countries NEVER make mistakes....🤨
Well, it would have been a bitch to get a film transparency printed in a 1975 word processor though. 😋
Average day of a secretary: Checking email 5%, Playing Solitaire 94%, Other 1%.
5:15 Notice the white-out on the bail rollers.
But, but, but, I thought she wasn't using white out??!!??
5:12 Notice the whiteout on the rollers; didn't they just say they don't need that 'white gunk' with word processing! 3:57
Would like to try some of this word processing stuff. How to get started ?
Buy a copy of XyWrite.
I get a feeling that word processing technology should have been implemented at 6:04. Who else can catch the error?
Well, you stumped me. I can't see the error.... is it in the slide?
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Yes! I do not wish to spoil it. :)
Ok, we'll see who spots it.
sounds expensive to maintain and keep up to date.
It'll never catch on.
And now we have natural language processing. By the way, if we think that it all began with this.
4 to 6 words per minute? What?
She’s cute I like her 😘 👩💼
Companies in every decade love to use their own silly buzzwords, and they feel so proud about themselves
Wait was that what they called a micro computer😂🤣😂