RE: History of TW before the PC and the Internet

["Teri A. Ward" <taw0200 -at- eeidf002 -dot- ca -dot- boeing -dot- com>]

>Harry Bacheler wrote:
>
>2)  Equipment
>
>In> the early days (1970's), you documented your own stuff,
>
>(in the 1970's) Equipment - Remington, Underwood, etc, typewriters.
>

At the risk of revealing myself to be _positively ancient_,
I was a technical typist (anyone remember "repro typists"?)
and technical editor in the L.A. aerospace world during the
1960's. Most of the technical writers wrote longhand on yellow
legal pads, although a few had learned to type and would type
their drafts on IBM Selectrics. They would also make sketches
of the graphics they wanted. The drafts then went to the 
"tech pubs" department (typists and tech illustrators), who
would create the final documents using typewriters with
proportional fonts (IBM Executive and later IBM Composer) to
emulate that expensive, typeset look. 

The typewriters had interchangeable keys. If we needed a greek
letter or mathematical symbol, we physically removed one of 
the keys, put in the appropriate symbol key, hit it once, then 
put the original key back in. Hoo boy! But then again, no one
ever got carpal tunnel syndrome!

Ok, ok, back to lurk mode ... but first let me plant a quick
kiss on my Sun workstation with its 19" monitor!

Tammie Ward
Technical Writer/Web Designer
The Boeing Company, Seattle