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Re: Good Old (Tech) Days....WAS "Can this career be saved?"
Subject:Re: Good Old (Tech) Days....WAS "Can this career be saved?" From:beelia <beelia -at- gmail -dot- com> To:salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com Date:Tue, 7 Jun 2011 19:50:39 -0700
I still have a bunch of those 5-1/4" discs in a closet. I wrote my master's
thesis on an IBM Displaywriter word processor, which actually took 8" disks
(yeah, I still have it).
Every once in awhile I wonder why I've kept all that stuff, and who on earth
would want it. I still have 8 or 9 PCs, but you guys with Commodores and
TRS-80s have me beat. My first one had Windows 3.1 installed.
I also have an Apple Mac LC-1 and the first Apple LaserWriter (filled with
dried-up toner). I coveted, but did not purchase an Osborne 1. Good thing,
too - I could barely lift that "first portable computer".
And now, I invite all of you creaky old-timers to join the club. Get
yourself a proper commemorative t-shirt so we can celebrate our survival
together:
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Chris Morton <salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> In 1978 my boss showed me these remarkable 5-1/4" floppy discs, each
> containing a few fonts comprising a typeface family. These were for a
> Compugraphic typesetter. Ads were created with rubylith, clip art, glue
> pots, X-Acto knives and waxing units. On Friday afternoons I'd change from
> my role as a salesperson/rough layout artist to negative stripper and
> aluminum plate burner, all destined for the Web (decidedly NOT the www
> variety) press.
>
> In '86 I set myself up as an independent, PostScript-enabled, PC-based
> electronic publishing house, centered around a hot-rodded AT-compatible.
> This was back when FEW people—outside of the Palo Alto/Menlo Park elite and
> company employees at Apple, Adobe, Aldus and QMS—considered DTP to be truly
> viable, *especially* from a PC!
>
> > Chris
>
> On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Becca <becca_price -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
>
> > At my first writing job, writers were to *write* and secretaries typed -
> > that was a big uproar in the STC in those days. It was a big day when the
> > company purchased a (I think) Word Star unit that the secretary actually
> got
> > into like a cockpit to do the data entry and formatting. The output was a
> > long thin strip maybe 3-4" wide that we put through a hot wax machine to
> be
> > able to do our layouts and pasteups.
> >
> > Am I really dating myself?
> >
> > -Becca
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >
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>http://www.doctohelp.com
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