Article View: alt.folklore.computers
Article #621580Re: Old word processors
From: Charles Richmond
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2018 03:53
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2018 03:53
32 lines
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3083 bytes
On 3/24/2018 2:32 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > On Friday, March 23, 2018 at 5:50:34 PM UTC-4, Andreas Kohlbach wrote: > > [snip] >>>> Which again raises the question: if word processors were around before >>>> the 70s, why didn't they supersede typewriters in offices already? >>> >>> First, word processing machines were very expensive, far more so >>> than a typewriter. Back in the early 1970s, I made $2.15/hour as >>> a typist--it was cheaper having people like me bang out reports, >>> even with multiple drafts, than getting something like an MT/ST >>> (which they did have.) > >> Thus they ran on mainframes, with the typists logging in from a cheap >> dumb terminal. > > Back then "dumb terminals" were rather expensive, and too expensive > to replace a typewriter. > The price of "dumb" terminals came down... when the dumb terminals used an embedded microprocessor and RAM. This started happening in the 1970's. Before shift registers were used to hold data and terminals were controlled by discrete logic (SSI and MSI) chips. That made the terminals more expensive to produce. These terminals were still dumb because the microprocessor was embedded and used to control the terminal operation only... -- numerist at aquaporin4 dot com
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X-Received: by 10.28.236.70 with SMTP id k67mr1698560wmh.9.1521949986065; Sat, 24 Mar 2018 20:53:06 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: alt.folklore.computers@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.28.24.196 with SMTP id 187ls792993wmy.8.canary-gmail; Sat, 24 Mar 2018 20:53:05 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.28.153.150 with SMTP id b144mr1354485wme.12.1521949985375; Sat, 24 Mar 2018 20:53:05 -0700 (PDT) Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!a12ni13710wmg.0!nntp.google.com!proxad.net!feeder1-2.proxad.net!feeder.erje.net!1.eu.feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Old word processors Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2018 22:53:08 -0500 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 32 Message-ID: <p976f1$ais$1@dont-email.me> References: <87k1ub4vgf.fsf@usenet.ankman.de> <396ec331-b5a3-4137-ac0f-c45471afccb7@googlegroups.com> <87fu4y4d8m.fsf@usenet.ankman.de> <ed7db516-35d3-43b4-a2fe-9a73d02e38fc@googlegroups.com> <87zi2ysbpy.fsf@usenet.ankman.de> <985b9952-2e0e-4eb9-b7dd-8ca4defadf08@googlegroups.com> Reply-To: nume...@aquaporin4.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Injection-Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2018 03:53:05 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="658462a527e4e759728f3313a270cf9b"; logging-data="10844"; mail-complaints-to="ab...@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18c3DmaMBXInPpxK5UjRHSEFfAHofweWR8=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.6.0 In-Reply-To: <985b9952-2e0e-4eb9-b7dd-8ca4defadf08@googlegroups.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:aBzgE62IZEdS+7X1zvNHlJF9n5M= Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit