One for the older ones - history of wordprocessing use by writers

[keithpeter]

Hello All

This chap is writing a history of writing on wordprocessors. By 'writing' I mean material produced for publication, fiction, journalism &c

The newspaper article (http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=60BFE9536013B0969C9FCFA483430F0 8.w5?a=884740&single=1&f=19)

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum's Web site (http://mkirschenbaum.wordpress.com/)

It struck me that some around here may have specialised knowledge of early wordprocessing and typesetting (Unix style). His contact details are on his site.

This author provides a sound recording of a recent talk, in a wide range of formats, including ogg, which has to be encouraged!

[jjex22]

Afraid I don't have the required knowledge - just not old enough I fear, but having a look around the links reminded me of us getting our first ever computer - an Oliveti M24 - DOS with Lotus 1-2-3 and xywrite! ah the old green screen! it's in my parents loft - their convinced it'll be "worth something one day" lol maybe they'll be right... it's not exactly a Lisa! (the monitor cable is the same sort as you used to get on the old Sega Master System and the keyboard weighs more than my laptop!)

Ah memory lane! I'll be interested in the software he turns up - I remember when I was a kid, until windows 95 at least, everyone seemed to use a different word processor round our way!

[forrestcupp]

I thought you wanted to know about the real early word processor typewriters from before people really used computers a lot for that type of thing.

I used to have an old Smith Corona electric typewriter that had a built in word processor with a small screen that showed one line at a time. I think it could store a couple of paragraphs at a time before it had to be typed. It was an awesome typewriter. It had autocorrect tape built into the ribbon cartridge.

[malspa]

I thought you wanted to know about the real early word processor typewriters from before people really used computers a lot for that type of thing.

I used to have an old Smith Corona electric typewriter that had a built in word processor with a small screen that showed one line at a time. I think it could store a couple of paragraphs at a time before it had to be typed. It was an awesome typewriter. It had autocorrect tape built into the ribbon cartridge.

I had a Smith Corona like that, too! That's what I thought of immediately when I saw this thread. My screen showed something like four lines of text at a time. That machine served me well for quite a long time.

[thatguruguy]

Wow. I remember those.

[oldos2er]

I thought you wanted to know about the real early word processor typewriters from before people really used computers a lot for that type of thing.

Do you mean a line editor? Those would make grown men cry.

[keithpeter]

Do you mean a line editor? Those would make grown men cry.

Made me cry and I wasn't a grown man then :)

I remember the special purpose wordprocessor machines that had editing and a few lines of display but never owned one. I went from punched cards to an Amstrad green screen with the funny fat floppy discs...

The geezer is more interested on the impact of text editing on the work of paid writers. If anyone knows anyone who was doing journalism or writing for magazines or novels or whatever around those years, he'd be interested.

[Docaltmed]

The first newspaper I worked for used an integrated publishing system in which the stories the reporters wrote were submitted on paper and then transcribed into the "word processor." The copy desk was saddled with both copy editing and formatting responsibilities, which they complained of as being a little much. But that's the copy desk for you, they bitch about any little thing.

The copy was then printed out on photographic like paper, and the whole schmeer was handed off to the art department, who physically cut and pasted the stories and headlines to fit into the dodgy layout the ME had smudged up during one of her more sober moments (hopefully). Usually about 2 hours before press, the Art Director had to step in and fix the mess with the help of myself (City Editor, doubling as reporter) and the News Editor.

The glue would still be drying at about the time the courier from the printer showed up with a big portfolio case, grab everything off the table, and then me, the NE, and the AD would all scarf some beers out of the newsroom fridge and have a cold one before heading home.

Ah, those were the days.

I soon graduated to Wang word processors, which were a short-lived product (but incredibly important transition to modern publishing methods), and then wrote on xywrite for the next 6 years. I became renowned in-house as a xywrite guru, as it had a very flexible and powerful macro language, and I wrote a bunch of macros, primarily for the copy desk. That was mostly because I had the hots for a petite brunette on the desk. We almost connected but never did, but that's a long story for another venue.

Anyway, while I was a Senior Editor for this publication, I was on the road about 1 week a month, covering stories. I had an Osborne CP/M machine with a Z80 processor, dual floppies and 640k of memory. Back off Jack, that sucker was *mine*! It was about the size of a suitcase large enough for Charlie McCarthy and 2 friends, but what the hell, it was portable. I would file my stories from the road using those damn mickey mouse earcups on the handset and a modem only slightly faster than the postal service. Sometimes I couldn't get through the hotel PBX system, so I would rip off a floppy and overnight it back to the Home Office.

One of my favorite memories, though, was one time when I was actually in the office with a skeleton staff from the editorial side, as virtually everybody, from the Editor-in-Chief on down was off covering some event.

Well, wouldn't you know that only minutes -- and I mean minutes -- before we were to go to press, a huge story hit the wire, and guess who had to write it up? What a riot. The ME was screaming at the desk to rip up the front page to make room for my story as the art department ran around flapping their wings trying to come up with some graphics, and in the middle of the pandemonium, as I have a phone on my ear and I'm harassing the crap out of some poor secretary to put me through to the CEO because he really, really wants to comment on my story before he looks like a total corrupt idiot (which he was), the idiot publisher comes wandering out of his corner office and starts yelling at me to get my hind end off the pot and finish the #$#%^&! story because I was costing him $1,000 for each minute we kept the printing press idle.

I cupped my hand over the phone, told the publisher in no uncertain terms what he could do with certain parts of his anatomy, snapped at the secretary, got the quote I wanted, jammed the story together, shoved the whole mess off to the hot brunette and then took a deep breath.

I got an editorial award that year, not for that story but for another one, but I regarded it as hazard pay for putting up with that whole circus.

Best of all was after that, I had about 1 million credits in the Favor Bank with the news editor for saving his sorry behind because he got caught napping on this story. After that, any time I wanted an extra page for one of my feature reporters, I got it.

[keithpeter]

Anyway, while I was a Senior Editor for this publication, I was on the road about 1 week a month, covering stories. I had an Osborne CP/M machine with a Z80 processor, dual floppies and 640k of memory.

Hello Docaltmed

Put some dates on that, and perhaps cite a few of your newspaper stories, and you should send it to the geezer who is writing the book. You are probably one of very few people who actually used an Osborne in the field.

As a reporter with sub editing responsibilities, did you find that the Osborne lead to a change in the way you wrote your copy? Or did the modem and accoustic coupler simply speed up the submitting of stories?

I think that's the kind of thing the chap is after. I think you should pop the whole thing on a blog somewhere.

Sort of like this...

http://www.chriskern.net/history/computersAndCulturesAtVoa.html

We actually need some industrial history around all this technology before it all ends up in landfill.

[t0p]

After many years of churning out stuff on a manual typewriter, I graduated to a dedicated word processor - something makes me think it was made by Amstrad or Olivetti, but I don't really know. It was a nice looking thing - kinda like a microcomputer in appearance, but instead of a proper monitor it had a 3 line LCD display. Good quality printing, but the ribbon/ink cartridge thing was proprietary and very expensive. Best thing about it though: a floppy (3.5") disk drive, so I could perfect my garbage typo-wise before I printed it out. But the files were in some proprietary format that I couldn't get into a few years ago when I found some of those disks and tried to check them out.

[PhilGil]

I had two portable word processors in the days before I got my first PC. One was typewriter-like with an editable, single-line display and some sort of thermal-process print head. It was small and light.

The other was a Brother WP-26000 (http://chriscocca.com/2011/01/18/brother-where-art-thou-on-craigslist-seriously-a-post-about-word-processors/) word processor, an almost-computer with a multi-line CRT display, daisy wheel printer, rudimentary spreadsheet software and a floppy drive. The keyboard was hinged to the front of the device, so it could be folded up and the entire device carried by an attached handle. Portable electronics were defined differently 20 years ago - that sucker was heavy.:)

[forrestcupp]

Do you mean a line editor? Those would make grown men cry.

Yeah, but they were awesome back in the typewriter days. I thought it was amazing that I could type a few lines in and correct my mistakes before it typed it out. Unless you were in typing mode, there was no need for the correction tape. I was pretty amazed by the thing.