NY Times: A Literary History of Word Processing.
“Who was the first novelist to use a word processor?” I’d bet Arthur C. Clarke.
Comments:
The first word processor my late attorney father had was a Singer punch-paper tape system. I learned a bit on that ... cutting and pasting for real. Roughly the same era, I assume. But I was too young (high school) to be earning a living at it.
Mmmm, just guessing...Jerry Pournelle?
Sci Fi writers, right? They’d be there first, I think.
Certainly ‘early adopters’ for home machines, Jerry used to write Chaos Manor column for Byte magazine.
Contrarily, my sister worked for a publishing company in the ‘80s and they had already ‘old’ digital layout and text editing machines.
Yes Garret you’re a little too young to have been gainfully employed during this era. (I’m a 1954 model). The MTST machine used magnetic tape on reels. It was a genuine electronic word processor. It was huge, the MTST machine was as large as, and the same shape as, a large office desk. Right after that, the IBM DisplayWriter became widely used, especially in law offices. The IBM DisplayWriter had floppy disks as big as phonograph records. The monochrome monitor was a very large CRT unit. All these experiences were had by me during 1979 through 1981 while working as a secretary in Denver. Prior to 1979 for me, it was all electric typewriters. During the rest of the 1980s I again saw the IBM DisplayWriter in heavy use in Tucson law offices.
I looked on Wikipedia, but I don’t think I saw your exact MTST model. If you happen across a photo, I’d surely love to take a gander at it.
I’ve been scanning the Word Processor article in Wikipedia. Pretty good article, but not comprehensive. No one-single history enthusiast could know the true scope of all the machines that were out there by the late 1970s before personal computers became commercially available! I was a full-time professional ‘Temp’ in Denver throughout that era, did I ever work in a lot of environments and see an amazing array of secretarial word processing equipment! Gahhhhh! The ‘good old days’—NOT!
It was a distributed Syntex word processing system (one main CPU, five satellite workstations) that made me realize I had an inherent knack for understanding computers. I put my forestry plans on a back burner, and went whole-hog into temping on computers in NYC. $18/hour straight time, $36 overtime, and $54 hour “Lobster”. Early ‘80’s.
Good times. Could work where and how I wanted to, no responsibilities, could afford fine things. Don’t think we’ll see that kind of lifestyle again, sadly.
Someone may live that way again, in some future era of ‘the dawn of revolutionary technology.’ Some technology we cannot even imagine, at this point. Not likely in our lifetimes.
Next entry: Two, tangentially linked. >>
And am I the only member of this community who used to earn a living using an MTST machine?