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I wrote papers in graduate school using a typewriter before switching to a Mac Plus. It was a Smith-Corona and used a cartridge "ribbon" and a special "correcti
by adamc 2y ago
I wrote papers in graduate school using a typewriter before switching to a Mac Plus. It was a Smith-Corona and used a cartridge "ribbon" and a special "correction ribbon" that lifted off the text (instead of using white-out).
It wasn't a Selectric, though, so mostly you just used it as a typewriter. Selectrics were expensive and mostly used in business rather than by individuals.
Even the IBM Selectrics were nothing like as good as having a word processor, which is why the transition was so fast. A friend of mine was in commercial real-estate in that period (mid-1980s) and discovered that with a computer, he could type his own offer letters and not have to bother with a secretary. My brother's law firm went through something similar. In a handful of years, there was huge adoption.
- ghaff 2y agoA student organization I was an officer in had a Selectric with a correcting ribbon and I ended up using it for a lot of papers latterly. The newspaper had Royal typewriters and I used those. We did a bunch of literal copy/pasting and then stuff was typed into a huge typesetting system. Grad school (starting 1979), there was a mainframe with DecWriter terminals and that was a big improvement but still nothing like terminal GUIs.
- Clamchop 2y agoSelectrics never had any word processor-like functionality aside from the ability to erase. They were very expensive for being just amazing pieces of mechanical engineering but the daisy wheel products worked well enough and could be infused with a little computerized help because they were already electronic.