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> By the late 1970s or early 1980s, typewriters had electronic memory. They had error correction "tape" so you could erase mistakes. Sure, there were electroni
by michaelt 2y ago
> By the late 1970s or early 1980s, typewriters had electronic memory. They had error correction "tape" so you could erase mistakes.
Sure, there were electronic typewriters where you could type an entire line or two into memory before printing it. And, as you say, typewriters with whiteout reels that allowed you to backspace.
But if you've started a new paragraph, and you realise you want to go back and edit the previous one, and everything else needs to move down a line to accommodate? Good chance you're throwing the page away and starting from scratch.
Or you're cutting and pasting in the literal sense, using scissors and glue.
Typewriters were difficult enough that "typist" was a professional job - and many workers wouldn't do their own typing, instead recording messages onto tiny tape cassettes for a typist to type up later on. There were even foot-pedal-controlled cassette players, so typists could type with their hands and control the dictaphone tape with their feet!
- Kon-Peki 2y agoEarly word-processing software changed very little of that. I maintain that this kind of software was like typewriters on steroids, with a screen. WYSIWYG software was an entirely new paradigm, and changed everything.
- adamc 2y agoEven Word Perfect was much, much better at this than a typewriter. What made it hard to use was that you had to memorize a bunch of special function keybindings, as I recall. Yes, GUI word processors were much better than this, but even Word Perfect looked compelling compared to using a typewriter. I wrote a bunch of papers using a typewriter. Standard operating procedure was to plan out the complete paper, basically as a tree of bullet points (I used index cards), and then turn those into sentences at the typewriter. All the writing/reorganization had to happen before you sat down to type.
- tiahura 2y agoyou had to memorize a bunch of special function keybindings Keyboard templates were pretty ubiquitous.
- taylodl 2y agoEarly word-processing software changed very little of that - the problem was cultural, not technological. Big offices had a typing pool where professional typists would type up memos and documents. It took a while for that culture to change where people realized they could, and should, do their own typing. Small business led the way because they couldn't afford a dedicated typing pool.