The irony is that the more efficient and better the machines are, the more workload you are expected to finish in a shorter amount of time.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

11 ай бұрын

Hi Tim, yes, it did seem to work that way. Always pressure to do more, and the machines keep getting better! ~

I used this equipment working for Underwriter's Laboratories back in the early 70s. The engineers' handwriting was so bad we couldn't read it, then they started dictating into tape machines and we transcribed that, typing onto these cards. It was all very high tech.

I love these films. I worked in a major bank for 19 years and saw progress from the late 80s onwards. We spent an awful lot of time sorting and indexing stuff. The benefit did not weigh against the laborious time doing it. Never saw punch cards but the bank did use them in regional IBM check/cheque reading centers. Crazy now I can scan a check on my phone and the bank will clear it electronically. More like this please.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

3 жыл бұрын

Hi Graeme, thanks very much for your feedback and interest in this topic. I bet you did see lots of automation progress from the 80's onward. I hope you will explore the other videos on our channel. Lots here on vintage electronic banking, computers, IBM, GE, Univac and many others. Thanks for watching! ~ Victor, at CHAP

I used the Mag 1 and 2 back in the '80s and I loved them! Yea, that was a bazillion years ago.....

I still have an IBM Selectric Mag Card typewriter and card reader machine.

what is so amazing about this video was the diversity. good job IBM!

Used the MT/ST for a ship proposal to USN. 3 shifts a day for a couple months. Was fantastic. Went to work for IBM afterwards.

I ran the Mag Card and later, the Mag Card II as a full-time job putting myself through college. I much preferred the original Mag Card because it imprinted the cards as I typed, as did the older MT/ST . There was no correction on the typewriter as the Mag Card II had; one would simply backspace, type over the error with the correct character and go on. If a 'good' copy of the typing was needed it was easy, as with the MT/ST, just to put another sheet of paper in and the typewriter would print out a perfect copy. The later Mag Card II self-corrected like a Correcting Selectric II. Problem was, it stored up the page of typing and didn't record on the card until the page was done, holding the work in an internal memory. I can't count the times that (and it was a new machine) it would decide after I generated a page, to not record the card and I'd just get an error light. I was generating research texts at the university and had files of those cards with manuscripts. I also can't count the number of times that I'd get a file with the cards out and they wouldn't play back. Fortunately, I also got a new IBM Memory Typewriter, the one with the dial to store on, and it virtually never acted up. And yes, I had excellent IBM service. Good days back then, and being a guy who could average around 125wpm, I had people coming in my office just to watch me type!

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

Жыл бұрын

Great story, thank you for sharing! Wow, 125 WPM is smoking fast! I bet you were really something to watch on the keyboard. ~ VK

@loveisall5520

Жыл бұрын

Actually, it'd appear weird, I suppose, today as well as back then. As a boy in kindergarten my parents gave me an old Underwood 3; that'd be 1961. From that time on, I looked at typing like so many look at playing the piano. I first took touch typing as a summer course in junior high and literally wore out a new Smith-Corona Electra in green by graduation from high school. By high school I was writing class notes every day in school and typing them up as a form of studying--made me an honor student, and I continued that practice in college, selling my typed notebooks to other students on occasion. So, by entering the Univ. of Texas in 1973, I found a job transcribing in a hospital 'cause my typing test there was around 125wpm. Knowing Latin, learning medical terminology was a snap. By the latter part of the seventies, still in college (professional student--) I was earning roughly $30/hour doing production typing/transcription, typing up theses and dissertations in my spare time on an IBM Executive. I finally got out of college in the early 80's and formed and operated my own medical transcription business in the city where I lived, only closing it when I got into upper management in the company where I worked. I can't conceive, as an old guy of 66 years, not being able to type. I always enjoy remembering the time that I was typing and being a medical office manager as a first career. Remember: the IBM MT/ST, introduced in 1964 as the first modern word processor, cost $25K+ way back then, and I'm so honored to have been able to operate that amazing machine.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

Жыл бұрын

Very interesting story and background! I would certainly agree that having a strong background in typing skills was extremely valuable, and seems to have become a rare skill these days. Knowing Latin is also a great background to legal work too. My friend was a paralegal and high-speed typist. He never had a problem finding a good job. ~ Thanks very much for your fascinating feedback! ~

Love this! My first experience with electronic computers / calculators was in early 1968 when my dad -- who at the time worked as a sales engineer for Hewlett-Packard -- brought home an HP 9100A desktop programmable calculator for me to play around with. I was 9 at the time; I am 63 now. The HP 9100A cost $4900 when it was introduced. I love this "legacy" computer technology. Please ... more of this!

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

2 жыл бұрын

Hi Daniel, thanks very much for your feedback on the Mag Card video! The original cost of the HP9100A was quite amazing! Had not realized that. I bet your dad had an interesting career at HP. Hope you will enjoy some of our other vintage computer videos as well! We enjoy sharing these bits of tech history! ~ Victor, CHAP

Groovy soundtrack.

🎶 We've come a long ways, baby!!! 🎶

Fascinating. I wasn't alive then, so there are whole gaps in the history of computing that I don't have the memories for. I would have thought that there was one giant leap from typewriters to on-screen word processing. Nope!

I would not have guess word processors existed in the 1960s

Now just imagine their reactions when them "new-fangled" word processors come along!

I love mid-century office styling.

To whomever is speaking: you have a beautiful voice!

In 1980 I operated one of these while in the army and it was amazing. I could put out so many labels for IV's I made.

I've got several mag-card like cards at my mom's house. Back in the end of the '90s, i was emplyee of a printing house as a stundent, for a month. The owner of the company had a machine which was a little awkward, and old-fashioned, and we never used. I suppose the machine was a Selectric II with a Mag Card reader. There were a lot of ball heads under a cabinet, and a drawer full of these cards. The cabinet was in my boss' office, actually he was my father, who worked for this company. So, one day i grab two-three ball heads, and several packs of this cards, and went to home. :) Now this is a history, and we can call myself as a thief... I cannot do anything with the ball heads, just made them an eye for a toy :). The cards are in my cabinet, in my mom's house. The cards similar to those in this video. The ball heads are the same as in the Selectric I / II typewritrers - I looked after the old tech. :)

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

2 жыл бұрын

Hi Zetor2000, that is a fascinating story! Sounds like you made good use of the tech and had fun with it as well. Thank you for sharing that memory! ~ Victor, at CHAP

Thank you for this bit of nostalgia! I began my career with IBM Selectrics, and remember the mag card system, though didn't have an opportunity to use it much. Graduated to word processors and the IBM Wheelwriters before finally getting a PC, and have never (well, almost never) looked back.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

3 жыл бұрын

Hi me68206, thank you. Very glad you enjoyed it! ~ Victor, at CHAP

Your shows keep me appreciating [modern] computer technology. Hence, I learned typewriting when I was 12 years old, and worked as a typist, since 1970 as a high school student. Your shows are encouraging and inviting. They were made for keyboard specialists like me.

Pretty ingenious system, actually.

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

Ай бұрын

Yes, pretty clever for that time period especially! Thank you!

Clever technology, lovely styling and built to last.

As technology progressed, the company fired most of their secretaries and Jane had to do the work of 4 and that still wasn't enough to make her boss happy.

Great channel! Any chance finding old CAD films from the sixties and on?

@denniseldridge2936

3 жыл бұрын

Ha, you've reminded me of the CAD system I worked with in the 80's at a tiny PCB layout service bureau in Mass. I believe the system was called Telesys, and was based on the venerable PDP-11. I've scoured the Internets for any info on the system, but have so far come up empty. From what I remember, the displays were housed in a tall, boxy structure not unlike an arcade video game console. You'd sit at the unit, which had a smaller monochrome CRT for operating the software and drawing, using a pen. The result was displayed on a very large colour CRT directly ahead of you. To be honest, this system was extremely good, and lent itself to a highly efficient workflow. The search continues...

@thesteelrodent1796

Жыл бұрын

I worked at MAN (the marine division), where I drew on CADAM in the mid/late 90s. It was developed by IBM for Boeing (think in the 70s judging by how it worked) and I was told in the early versions it still used a light pen to do everything. We had digitizers when I got to use it, but by then Boeing had moved onto something else, so MAN bought all the remaining CADAM hardware from Boeing. Some of the 8050 terminals we got from Boeing were very temperamental and would sometimes drop the connection to the mainframe, which was a massive hazzle for our IT guys because they were not easy to get back online once the connection failed. CADAM was a great system for 2D drawing, way better made than AutoCAD, but because it was made for 2D it was no good for anything else and its 3D capability was limited to building an isometric drawing from the 2D projections. In 1998 MAN began transitioning to 3D modelling and within a few years all the mainframe hardware was gone

I can't imagine the stress of having to type a page without the ability to hit backspace.

Wow, back in the day, in offices where actual secretary’s with typewriters and file cabinets were used. No chance of a “data leak” from a hacker.. Ahh, the days well before the word processors, internet, PC’s, smart phones, and leaks.

Cyber snooped the address of the EI company 341 poplar st, erie pa, wow have times changed to a once proud business location.

Quiete ingenious. Can you guess a modest worker reaction if someone tells them that they have ti type all over agains because the hiss keep making little changes? People worked like crazy back on the date.

Im a huge computer history buff, and now I'm wondering about the technical details of how this worked. I saw that it uses tracks, so its like audio tapes, but the data is treated differently - the voice recorders would record audio data while the typewriters would record digital data (maybe using audio tones). Any chance we could find out how those devices were made and worked on a technical level?

@someonesomewhere1240

3 жыл бұрын

Practically all magnetic memory (and optical too) is stored using tracks. They just have sections of alternating magnetic field to store a bit, rather than the analogue stream for audio data.

@fredfarnackle5455

2 жыл бұрын

I worked for IBM in Sydney, Australia from 1972 until 1974. I used to service them. The mag card units had a read/write head that 'scanned' from side to side and advanced or backtracked one track, depending on whether you were reading or writing the electronics would automatically switch from one mode to the other and the mechanism would either move the card back or forward one or more tracks. It used to work quite well and part of our service kit was a bottle of mag tape developer that had very fine 'iron filings' in a suspension of volatile liquid. To physically read the bits on the card (1'and 0's) we poured some developer on the card and when the liquid evaporated you were left with a perfect picture of all the bits and could see where the problem was. I got a call one day to a busy office who were complaining that they couldn't read some magnetic cards. Ran the usual diagnostics and all looked good, so I asked to see one of the cards they couldn't read. After I developed it I saw a perfect outline of a paper clip on it in magnetic 'filings'. It turned out that a typist had taken to using one of those paper clip holders that held a bunch of clips by magnetism. Pulling a clip out of the container very neatly magnetised the clip which she then attached to the card and a sheet of paper. It was very satisfying writing out a "billable" for $$ due to operator error. You wouldn't believe some of the "billables" i wrote during that two years - not just mag card units, on all of IBM's office products.

Even the old technology had an elegant charm, in addition to the quality of the materials used, unlike the current crap that is launched every year with the sole purpose of forcing consumerism. Have you ever bought your cell phone, your car, your TV of the year?

Not sure I agree. The Schultz Auto-Typist had editing capabilities.

"We can't get rid of paperwork. That's unrealistic." That man has no vision. Sure, a lot of the work couldn't (and still can't) be avoided, but the need to type everything out on paper was just about over when this was made. The paperless office was already possible by the late 70s, but people's habits are hard to change and the laser printer only made things worse. That's still a problem today; people are way too fond of printing everything out even though there's no need for it.

OMG - $7000 in 1969!?! Googling for inflation calculators tells me that's about $50,000 in today's money. And did they buy *three* of them? (The boss guy narrator definitely said "magnetic typewriters", with an "s"). Plus 4 dictation machines? They could have easily hired "another girl" - or two - for what they spent on the technology.

Nice! :-)

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

3 жыл бұрын

Hi Robert, thank you for the visit! ~ Victor, CHAP

7:59, wait, coping machine in 1960s?

@RapperBC

Жыл бұрын

Of course; Xerox machines were invented in the late '50s! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_914

@thesteelrodent1796

Жыл бұрын

those machine essentially photographed the page and projected that photo onto paper to create the copy. They were very different beasts from the machines that came along in the 80s.

@dneumet

Жыл бұрын

@@thesteelrodent1796 Late 1970s I worked an after school job in an office that used "wet" copying technology. It wasn't like a mimeograph (ever sniff those pages when they are fresh off the machine?) but a method of copying that competed with the Xerox dry copies. The copies came out sort of shiny. It was cheaper to buy and operate vs. dry toner.

We have been seduced by computers. I know how much work got done before computers, it was a lot. But then they could do a lot of math in their head, now cashiers need a calculator to subtract 9.99 from 10.00

Here's the funky organ soundtrack: kzread.info/dash/bejne/qa6DzsN7YJSbobQ.html

Hair in the gate.