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Subject:Re: Washington Post style guide from 1970s? From:Marguerite Krupp <mkrupp128 -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>, TECHWR-L Writing <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 18 Feb 2016 02:15:06 +0000 (UTC)
That's pretty much what we thought at the time, Robert! Thanks for reinforcing it.
Marguerite
From: Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>
To: TECHWR-L Writing <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2016 6:40 PM
Subject: Re: Washington Post style guide from 1970s?
They made the change in 1978. Paper and ink was surely a bigger
expense overall, and would have been a factor whether or not the WP
had made the switch from hot lead to a big computer system yet, as the
NY Times did that year:
The part about the 1978 state-of-the-art technology starts around 22:40.
On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 2:42 PM, Michael Wyland
<michael -at- sumptionandwyland -dot- com> wrote:
> Dan and Marguerite:
>
> One guess is the cost of data storage. 40-50 years ago, a modest to midrange hard drive could cost somewhere in the $100,000 range in 2016 dollars. Storing each character (including spaces and punctuation) cost real money.
>
> I managed a computer shop for an oil & gas investor in Dallas in the 1980s. We had an HP3000 computer with 1MB RAM (on 256KB boards about 8" x 11" in size) a 40MB reel-to-reel tape drive, and a 120MB hard drive the size of a washing machine. Cost, including eight terminals and basic software? $250,000 in 1982.
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