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It's also technology was much less ubiquitous back then and less evenly distributed, at least in my experience. I went from a mechanical typewriter which had t
by phil21 2y ago
It's also technology was much less ubiquitous back then and less evenly distributed, at least in my experience.
I went from a mechanical typewriter which had the whiteout tape as it's only "advanced" feature, directly to a WYSIWYG editor. It was absolutely night and day. I only saw an "advanced" electronic typewriter later in life at my grandparents house, which was used rarely and only for her accounting business as it was so expensive when they first bought it.
As far as I know my experience was pretty much normal for my peer group - as my school had a similar setup. As a kid in school, it was amazing going from having to totally re-type a rough draft to being able to make some casual edits and hit print. Hours saved for each paper, especially with the typing skills I had back then!
- wjnc 2y agoMost 70s-80s advanced typewriter were just not regular household material. Even among white collar jobs. My parents (and mini me) worked on very mediocre type writers, until my dad got a PC from work with WordPerfect. Interesting from an economical perspective is that the 'top' typewriters were a lot more affordable than early pc's. People just didn't buy them. What they had was good enough, regardless of features. My dad ended up so enthusiastic for PC's to later spend more than a monthly wage on a PC for the family (actually: me). Every two years. Incredible, especially compared to the afforability of digital devices nowadays. Word processing software was to writing as smartphones were to photography, or as the book press was to writing. Perhaps not transformational on a per feature basis, but transformational on grounds of the possibilities and market it unlocked.