9 It "greatly increased typing speeds and quickly gained wide acceptance in the business community." 10 In the 1930s IBM introduced a more refined version, the IBM Electromatic. Thomas Edison patented an electric typewriter in 1872, but the first workable model was not introduced until the 1920s.
7 Typewriting was put within the reach of individuals by the development of portable models, first marketed in the early 1900s. Businesses, which had hitherto had their records and correspondence written and copied by hand, found their paperwork could be done more quickly and legibly on the typewriter. 6Įventually, at first in the corporate sector, the typewriter began to catch on. These included: the shift key, which made it possible to type both capital and lower-case letters with the same keys (1878) printing on the upper side of the roller (1880) and the tab key, permitting the setting of margins (1897).
5Īcceptance of the typewriter was slow at first, but was facilitated over the next several years by various improvements. 4 The main drawback of this model was that it printed on the underside of the roller, so that the typist could not view his work until he had finished. It began to be marketed commercially in 1874, rather improbably by a gun manufacturing company, E.
3Ĭhristopher Latham Sholes, with the assistance of two colleagues, invented the first successful manual typewriter in 1867. The fact that almost nothing is known about his early version today is evidence of its lack of success. Henry Mill, an English engineer of the early eighteenth century, is credited with its invention. But the first major advance from manual writing as far as the individual was concerned was the typewriter. The invention of printing and moveable type at the end of the Middle Ages 2 was the initial step in this automation. 1 The history of word processing is the story of the gradual automation of the physical aspects of writing and editing, and the refinement of the technology to make it available to individual and corporate users. It evolved from the needs of writers rather than those of mathemeticians, only later merging with the computer field. Word processing did not develop out of computer technology. It reflects the industry situation of that time, and should not be used either as a guide to current industry standards or to the present state of the art. 61 class at Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California. But after that it's speedy.Note: This paper was written in December, 1986 for a CIS 50 - Sec. It does take about 30 seconds to load, though.
PS - Office for Mac will in no way slow down your machine.
To do so seamlessly you need MS Office for Mac, I'm afraid. From your OSX side you can "drag" your Windows Word docs right into OSX and open them with any of the above mentioned word processors.
One more thing - BootCamp in OSX allows you to install any copy of Windows that you own (and therefore MS Office). MS Office for a Mac works well but I found it disappointing that the bells and whistles don't LOOK like MS Office. To do this perfectly you will have to purchase MicroSoft Office for OSX (expensive unless your workplace offers you an employer version, then it is cheap like dirt). TextEdit and Bean will open MS Word files but not perfectly. Another free & excellent OSX WP is "Bean". In addition to everything said here - OSX TextEdit has plain text (can be configured to act much like Notepad) and rich text.