New video! A look at a word-processing typewriter
Added 2018-05-05 21:41:55 +0000 UTCThis is a really chill video, just me showing a thing. No script (gasp!), no direction, just a thing. You might call it a mix between a Big Clive video and an LGR thing...
Anyway, I hope you enjoy! Next week's video will be a lot more involved.
Comments
I enjoyed the video. Don't take this the wrong way, but personally speaking I preferred the more polished scripted method. But I get this was just a quicky, and very good all things considered. I sound really snobby don't I? Sorry, I don't mean to! :-)
Gavin Rea-Davies
2018-05-09 16:59:13 +0000 UTCThat was fine, Alec. Interesting, too. I remember those, but never tried one.
Stephen Bell
2018-05-06 07:44:13 +0000 UTCMy grandma had a Smith Corona typewriter from the 1980s that had WordErrase. Don't remember LineErase though. It had a demo mode that would do a q&a via the typewritten page and prompt you to enter questions and then continue by printing more stuff. No screen though. I had a Canon word processor (no typewriter mode) in the early 1990s (maybe 93? I think I was in the 7th or 8th grade). I had it at school due to a disability causing me to take much longer to write by hand and as things got more complicated, the school bought a word processor for me to use in class. It was a Canon and had some kind of a tape-based printer (maybe thermal? same stuff as a Brother label maker). It saved out ASCII text files and I had a plastic box of floppies in my book bag and I'd carry it from class to class. I'd load in a piece of notebook paper and hit print and it'd print right there in the classroom. They finally bought me a battery before high school so I was not chained to a power plug anymore.
Jason Wellband
2018-05-06 03:34:36 +0000 UTCThe first computer "printer' I had was an Olympia wheel-writer typewriter with an RS232 port. Connected to my IBM PC-XT (the one with - gasp - two 5-1/4" floppy drives and a 486 processor plus a color VGA monitor) and the Olympia would serve as a printer. One character at a time, one line at a time, one sheet at a time. This was in the late 1980s. Woo hoo! Hot stuff!
Roger Beal
2018-05-05 23:00:40 +0000 UTCYep, I suppose compared to pretty much any PC on the market at the time, this was a downright bargain!
Technology Connections
2018-05-05 22:32:16 +0000 UTCPeople who were not around in the 80's or early 90's have no conception of just how expensive computers were, back in the day - It wasn't uncommon for a nice PC to be $2995 in the 80's, now figure that up in 1980's dollars adjusted for inflation (perhaps $7000) - like the price of a nice used car! - It's no wonder these little word processor typewriters were popular! - and it was like a miracle to produce a document with no ugly white out fluid or correction tape overstrike mess. It made your work look very professional!
Bill Basch
2018-05-05 22:22:38 +0000 UTC
