Remembering the Office of the Future: The Origins of Word Processing and Office Automation

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Remembering the Office of the Future:
    The Origins of Word Processing
    and Office Automation
    Thomas Haigh
    University of Wisconsin
                                           Word processing entered the American office in 1970 as an idea
                                           about reorganizing typists, but its meaning soon shifted to describe
                                           computerized text editing. The designers of word processing systems
                                           combined existing technologies to exploit the falling costs of
                                           interactive computing, creating a new business quite separate from
                                           the emerging world of the personal computer.

                       Most people first experienced word processing       using a word processor, we think of a software
                       as an application of the personal computer.         package, such as Microsoft Word. However, in
                       During the 1980s, word processing rivaled and       the early 1970s, when the idea of word process-
                       eventually overtook spreadsheet creation as the     ing first gained prominence, it referred to a new
                       most widespread business application for per-       way of organizing work: an ideal of centralizing
                       sonal computers.1 By the end of that decade, the    typing and transcription in the hands of spe-
                       typewriter had been banished to the corner of       cialists equipped with technologies such as auto-
                       most offices, used only to fill out forms and       matic typewriters. The word processing concept
                       address envelopes. By the early 1990s, high-qual-   was promoted by IBM to present its typewriter
                       ity printers and powerful personal computers        and dictating machine division as a comple-
                       were a fixture in middle-class American house-      ment to its “data processing” business. Within
                       holds. Email, which emerged as another key          the word processing center, automatic typewriters
                       application for personal computers with the         and dictating machines were rechristened word
                       spread of the Internet in the mid-1990s, essen-     processing machines, to be operated by word
                       tially extended word processing technology to       processing operators rather than secretaries or
                       electronic message transmission. To the casual      stenographers. Quickly, however, the term
                       observer, word processing might thus appear to      acquired a more specialized meaning to refer
                       be among the most creative and important appli-     almost exclusively to computerized text editing
                       cations originated by the personal computer.        systems aimed at office applications.
                           But in fact word processing was already the        Computerized word processing does not fit
                       center of a thriving industry well before the       the conventional concept of a distinct inven-
                       personal computer gained general acceptance         tion, attributable to a particular time, place, and
                       in business. Historians have not yet explored       brilliant mind. The creation of a distinct market
                       word processing’s development, and so to pro-       for computerized word processing systems dur-
                       vide a rounded treatment, I examine the story       ing the early 1970s was more a matter of repack-
                       from multiple perspectives. I review the con-       aging, integrating, and marketing technologies
                       ceptual development of word processing and          already devised for different purposes. Word
                       office automation; the development of word          processing software’s core technical capabilities
                       processing’s constituent hardware and software      were taken from text editors, used to manipu-
                       technologies; the relationship of word process-     late program code on time-sharing computer
                       ing to changes in the organization of office        systems since the 1960s. Word processing sys-
                       work; and the business history of the word pro-     tems also drew on techniques in a number of
                       cessing industry.                                   broader, longer established fields in which com-
                                                                           puters were used to store, retrieve, index, and
                       Word processing: Overview                           format textual information.
                          Word processing’s origins are complex and           During the 1970s, the falling cost of inter-
                       various: Consider the genesis of the term word      active computer access made it practical to
                       processing. Today, when someone talks about         apply the same techniques to ordinary admin-

6   IEEE Annals of the History of Computing         Published by the IEEE Computer Society      1058-6180/06/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
istrative work, meaning that word processing’s
invention as a new computer application was
more a matter of marketing than of any software
breakthrough. During the 1970s, the first wide-
ly used computerized word processing systems
were not application programs for general-
purpose personal computers but minicomputer-
based systems and special-purpose computer
packages dedicated to clerical work. By the end
of the 1970s, when someone spoke of purchas-
ing a “word processor,” he or she would have
most likely been referring to a specialized com-
puter system such as Wang Labs’ Word
Processing System. Only later did people begin
to assume that a word processor was a program
rather than a machine.                               Figure 1. Steinhilper’s chart, which he claims to
    By the late 1970s, the computer industry was     have devised in 1955, reflects his original sense of
promoting a new vision—office automation—            word processing as a concept that would put
of which word processing was just a small part.      IBM’s Office Products Division on an equal footing
The most advanced word processing systems of         with its Data Processing Division. (Courtesy of
the early 1980s, such as the famous-in-retro-        Ulrich Steinhilper.)
spect Xerox Star, were created not as self-con-
tained applications for stand-alone personal         tion of personal computers in the early 1980s
computers but as office automation systems for       triggered a 10-year detour away from the net-
networked workstations. In the paperless office      worked office model being promoted by the
of the future, a multifunction networked work-       leading office automation equipment suppliers
station with word processing, email, and graph-      of the period. In a pair of articles elsewhere in
ical and voice capabilities would sit on the desks   this issue, Tim Bergin details the history of per-
of every manager and every professional.             sonal computer word processing packages; con-
    I argue that office automation represented a     sequently, my analysis here is confined to a
decisive break with the earlier concept of word      sketch comparing their abilities with those of
processing, based as it was on the segregation       earlier specialized systems.
of document preparation in the hands of spe-
cialist clerical workers. However, office automa-    Invention of word processing
tion ran into technological, economic, and              The phrase word processing was nowhere to
social problems. Workstations were expensive,        be found in 1960s office management or com-
while managers and professionals proved a            puting literatures, though many of the ideas,
more elusive target than typists for office effi-    products, and technologies to which it would
ciency experts. These systems were not widely        later be applied were already well known. By
adopted, but the broader vision of the elec-         1972, however, discussion of word processing
tronic office they represented was eventually        was common in publications devoted to office
realized when personal computer hardware and         management and technology, and by the mid-
software matured in the mid-1990s.                   1970s the term would have been familiar to
    Instead of adopting specialist office work-      any manager who regularly consulted general-
stations, most companies gradually shifted           interest business periodicals. Word processing
from word processing systems to stand-alone          paralleled the more general data processing,
personal computers. These spread word pro-           which since the 1950s had been the standard
cessing power more broadly, shifting editing         term used to describe the application of com-
work from word processing centers into the           puters to business administration.2
hands of department secretaries and, increas-           Coinage of word processing is usually attributed
ingly, of managerial and professional workers.       to Ulrich Steinhilper, a German IBM typewriter
    Far from breaking new technical ground, the      sales executive. In his memoir, Steinhilper wrote
leading personal-computer word processing            that he devised the concept in the mid-1950s
programs of the late 1970s and 1980s—such as         and promoted it for many years within IBM’s
EasyWriter, WordStar, and MultiMate—merely           Office Products Division. He submitted the dia-
gave an increasingly good imitation of the           gram shown in Figure 1 to IBM’s internal sug-
more expensive and capable special-purpose           gestion program, receiving just 25 Deutsch
systems. From this perspective, the prolifera-       Marks and a reply that the idea was “too com-

                                                                                                    October–December 2006   7
Remembering the Office of the Future

                       plicated to explain.” According to Steinhilper,       lished a bimonthly magazine-within-a-maga-
                       the term finally caught on after he used it in a      zine devoted to word processing, its publishers
                       1966 speech to senior Office Products Division        launched a separate twice-monthly newslet-
                       managers gathered at the Miami meeting of the         ter—Word Processing Reports—to spread news of
                       Hundred Percent Club of successful IBM sales-         developments in the field, and its editor, Walter
                       people where he lobbied, unsuccessfully, for          A. Kleinschrod, published a small book on the
                       Word Processing as a new name for the entire          subject in conjunction with the American
                       Office Products Division. In 1971, once the con-      Management Association.5 Other publications
                       cept finally gained traction, Steinhilper was         rushed to offer their own reports on the new
                       awarded an Outstanding Achievement Award              field, and within a few months, a cluster of
                       and a trip around the world for having                conferences, organizations, and consulting
                       authored and promoted it. It had particular           operations had grown up devoted to word
                       appeal to typewriter salespeople within IBM as a      processing.6 The public’s exposure to the con-
                       linguistic means of putting the Office Products       cept of word processing took place almost
                       Division (formerly the Electric Typewriter            simultaneously with the spread of the then-
                       Division) on a more equal basis with the mighty       novel term food processor, a term introduced to
                       Data Processing Division. The word processing         the US in 1973 by Cuisinart to describe a mul-
                       concept cast the two groups as responsible for        tifunctional kitchen device able to chop, blend,
                       different, but equally important-sounding,            and mix.7
                       kinds of business processing. Steinhilper recalls         But what was word processing? Administrative
                       that its genesis came when he realized that           Management set the pattern for the next few
                                                                             years by defining word processing as a general
                         We could confidently state that IBM, with its DP    approach to the reorganization of clerical work
                         division, assisted in many ways in the processing   around new and emerging technologies. In its
                         of pages containing data, but could we say the      earliest days, the concept of word processing
                         same for the written word? Shouldn’t we now, I      did not refer exclusively, or even primarily, to
                         asked, not also follow in the same direction with   the use of full-screen video text editing.
                         the Electric Typewriter Division?3                  Advocates focused on a human rather than a
                                                                             technological goal. They sought to eliminate
                          The first sustained public attempt to pro-         the practice of supplying individual managers
                       mote the idea of word processing to a broad           or small work groups with their own “general-
                       American audience came in the minor office            purpose secretaries” responsible for tasks rang-
                       management and office equipment trade pub-            ing from filing and answering the telephone to
                       lication Administrative Management. In June           making coffee and sorting the mail. In his
                       1970 it published a short article on a new word       book, Kleinschrod quoted findings that such
                       processing center at Auburn University, which         women might spend just 2 percent of their
                       had been “working closely with the local IBM          time taking dictation and 19 percent of it typ-
                       representative” to centralize typing and dictat-      ing and proofing documents. This meant that
                       ing operations. This may have been the earliest       “her typing may not necessarily be all that
                       mention of word processing in the American            good,” that “it’s very hard to establish proce-
                       press. In December 1970, it ran a feature article     dures and controls over what she does,” and
                       on automatic typing systems that included the         that she would spend much of her time sitting
                       following definition:                                 around waiting for something to do.5
                                                                                 The traditional secretary was seen as the
                         “Word processing,” a concept that combines the      enemy of efficiency. The solution was to move all
                         dictating and typing functions into a centralized   typing and dictation work to a centralized word
                         system, is replacing the one-man, one-secretary,    processing center, where it could be handled by
                         one-typewriter idea in a growing number of          highly skilled, specialized typists and stenogra-
                         firms. By organizing the flow of office corre-      phers doing nothing but typing and transcrip-
                         spondence on a more efficient basis, word pro-      tion all day, using the most advanced equipment
                         cessing is becoming to typing what Henry Ford’s     available. Kleinschrod suggested that a word pro-
                         assembly line was to the original methods used      cessing center might achieve “a speedup from
                         for automobile making.4                             500 to 1000 percent” provided that “the place is
                                                                             properly supervised [with] good methods, con-
                          Then in June 1971, Administrative Management       trols and standards.”8 He recommended
                       devoted a special 32-page section to the new
                       concept. Administrative Management continued            a formalized work-measurement, work standards
                       to heavily promote word processing. It pub-             program. This involves the familiar techniques

8   IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
of task analysis, methods-time measurement,              This sense of word processing as a broad
  standard allowed hours—techniques long used          approach, including a variety of specific tech-
  in the factory and in certain clerical areas and     nologies, typified the early 1970s. IBM liked to
  now being expanded to encompass WP.8                 apply the term to as many of its office products
                                                       as possible. In the same 1971 Administrative
The technologies of early word                         Management issue, an advertisement (see Figure
processing                                             2 next page) from IBM’s Office Products Division
    Although word processing was primarily a           suggested that its “range of word processing
managerial rather than a technological con-            machines” included dictating machines, type-
cept, its sudden popularity owed much to a             writers, and copiers.11 According to one IBM
growing sense in the early 1970s that technol-         document, the next year the Office Products
ogy was about to transform the office. Because         Division “announced that all of its dictating
the new technology was bound to be compli-             equipment would be known as ‘input process-
cated and expensive, this appeared to support          ing equipment’ since the term better describes
the idea that clerical work would have to be           the equipment’s function within the total word
specialized and centralized to take full advan-        processing concept.”12 A 1974 report noted that
tage of its potential. Early news stories on word      the division was “calling virtually everything it
processing liked to point out that each factory        makes a piece of word processing equipment—
worker was responsible for an average of               from a dictating machine on up to an office
$25,000 worth of equipment, whereas the poor           copier.”13 Although dictating machines gradu-
clerical worker had only $2,000 worth of capi-         ally slipped from definitions of word processing,
talization behind her.9 Thus, the stories              discussion of word processing equipment con-
claimed, rising office labor costs reflected a fail-   tinued to include electronic typewriters and
ure to invest.                                         other devices without large video displays well
    An Administrative Management editorial in          into the 1980s.14
January 1970 set the tone: “By the end of the              Automatic typewriters were already a famil-
1970s,” it suggested, “we should have climbed          iar office technology by the 1970s. They cou-
out of the Gutenberg rut. Paper—memos, letters         pled a typewriter mechanism with an automatic
and other business forms—will have been                control unit. The technology received its first
replaced to a large extent by electronic commu-        widespread use in printing telegraphs, where a
nications devices.” This bold claim was based on       message entered on a keyboard was printed on
the potential of dictating machines, calculators,      a typewriter mechanism hundreds of miles
and microfilm, rather than any clearly articulat-      away. One of the first automatic typewriters
ed expectations for the use of computers in the        intended for clerical use, the 1917 Hoven
office. However, the author did anticipate com-        Automatic Typewriter, used a wide tape roll and
puterized word processing with the rather vague        a mechanism modeled on a player piano to
prediction that “[t]ypewriters will continue to        type up to 130 words a minute.15 These
become more automated. They will be hooked             machines were useful when preparing letters
into a growing number of [electronic data pro-         that included a mix of standard paragraphs
cessing] systems.” 10                                  with individualized elements. Other models
    Two technologies were particularly associat-       gradually appeared, including the pneumatic
ed with word processing: dictating machines            1935 Robotyper.
and automatic typewriters. In its seminal 1971             The 1950s saw widespread use of a more
special issue, Administrative Management includ-       compact breed of automatic typewriter driven
ed feature articles on both. “System Stage 1:          by six-track paper tapes, such as the Friden
Dictating Machines Sound Off Four Ways”                Flexowriter. Although Flexowriters are best
reviewed developments in dictating technolo-           remembered today in their role as I/O devices
gy. Technological advancements in dictating            for many early computers or as terminals for
technology meant that desktop (and even                corporate communication networks, they could
handheld) cassette machines were common by             also be used in a freestanding mode to record
the early 1970s, but word processing advocates         and play back text typed on the keyboard.
were particularly excited by the ability of cen-           In 1964, IBM’s Electric Typewriter Division
tralized systems, hooked into telephone switch-        introduced the IBM MT/ST or “Magnetic Tape
boards, to provide a “continuous flow” of              ‘Selectric’ Typewriter”. This machine coupled a
material from executive desks to busy tran-            Selectric or “golf-ball” typewriter with a bulky
scribers. “System Stage II: Automatic Typing           cabinet holding an electronic control mecha-
and Text Editing Devices” concerned itself with        nism that recorded keystrokes onto magnetic
automatic typewriters.                                 tape cassettes. Each tape could store 28,000

                                                                                                   October–December 2006   9
Remembering the Office of the Future

     Figure 2. This 1971 IBM advertisement was one of the first to reflect the adoption of the phrase “word processing machines”
     by its Office Products Division as a new term for its dictation equipment, automatic typewriters, and copiers. (Courtesy of
     IBM Archives.)

                          characters. One novel feature was the ability to    although this could be overcome by linking
                          insert special codes on the tape to mark the        two machines together to copy the document
                          start and end points of standard blocks of text.    from one tape to another, up to the point
                          The biggest advance, however, came in its abil-     where editing was required. Things improved
                          ity to correct simple typing mistakes. When a       with the MT/ST Mark IV, which merged two
                          mistake was made, the operator would simply         tape drives into a single unit to make editing
                          backspace the typewriter and retype the correct     easier and to automate mail-merge operations
                          text over the error. This left a mess on the        (one tape would hold the outline of a standard
                          paper, but after finishing the page the operator    letter and the other a list of names and other
                          would insert a blank sheet and wait, as the         data to be inserted into personalized copies of
                          machine rewound the tape and retyped the            the letter).
                          corrected version at the rate of about 175 words        Another Selectric, the MC/ST (Magnetic
                          a minute. The operator needed several months’       Card/Selectric Typewriter), introduced in 1969,
                          experience and had to learn many special con-       used small magnetic cards with a capacity of
                          trol sequences to become fully productive. The      5,000 characters. Neither model was particu-
                          term power typing was often used to describe        larly cheap—in 1972, the tape version sold for
                          this new, more flexible kind of automatic typ-      $7,875 and the card version for $7,150 (though
                          ing.16 The machines were also sometimes called      many customers preferred to rent rather than
                          editing typewriters.                                buy). A more expensive machine, the MT/SC or
                             When the first word processing centers were      “composer,” could take the MT/ST tape and
                          established in the early 1970s, most relied on      output it using proportionally spaced letters
                          IBM MT/ST machines. As a text editor, the           and other then-novel formatting options.
                          MT/ST had some flaws. In particular, it was         Because the Selectric typewriter mechanism
                          hard to edit text once it was recorded on tape,     was widely available, many IBM competitors

10   IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
used it as the core of their own competitive           1920s.21 That movement, in turn, was inspired
automatic typing systems.17                            by Frederick W. Taylor’s Principles of Scientific
                                                       Management.22 The basic idea had changed lit-
Early word processing in practice                      tle over 60 years: the office would work most
   Enthusiasts depicted word processing centers        efficiently when it resembled a factory in which
as good news for operators, who could now              workers were paid on a piece work or incentive
upgrade their typing skills and earn more              bonus basis to perform highly specialized and
money, and for the surviving secretaries, or—as        repetitive tasks, slavishly following the optimal
some thought they should now be called, once           work procedures designed by experts. Expensive
freed from typing and transcription duties—            technology, scientific management adherents
“administrative support” specialists. Business         believed, could be justified only when com-
Automation, a leading trade magazine for busi-         bined with a fundamental redesign of work pro-
ness computer users, claimed in 1972 that              cedures to optimize their effectiveness.
                                                           Indeed, the prescriptions made by word pro-
  [t]he personal relationship of bosses and secre-     cessing experts of the early 1970s were identical
  taries will be changed through the elimination       to those made by office management experts of
  of dictation and typing as we know it today.         the 1910s with respect to an early generation of
  Secretarial duties will change greatly as tran-      dictating machines. Both insisted true business
  scription of dictation and the production of let-    benefits of the new technology would come pri-
  ters and documents is shunted more and more          marily from work centralization and specializa-
  into a central word-processing center, freeing the   tion that the new machines would demand.
  secretary of much present-day typing drudgery.18     Back in the 1920s, William Henry Leffingwell
                                                       (often called the “father of scientific office man-
    These ideas were common in early discussions       agement”) had hailed the dictating machine as
of word processing. The New York Times first           an invention with the power to revolutionize
reported on the idea in October 1971, suggesting       the office. He seized on it to justify the elimina-
that word processing had been the new buzz-            tion of shorthand stenography and in-person
word at the Business Equipment Manufacturer’s          dictation, and its replacement with a central-
Association trade show. Under a picture of IBM’s       ized pool of typists who would handle a con-
latest automatic typewriter, the Times defined         stant stream of wax recording cylinders
word processing as “the use of electronic equip-       delivered by messenger boys.23 This would cen-
ment, such as typewriters; procedures, and             tralize work in the hands of specialists, who
trained personnel to maximize office efficiency.”      could be monitored and paid on a production
The paper also suggested that this could be the        bonus system—exactly the objectives espoused
“answer to Women’s Lib advocates’ prayers”             50 years later by word processing experts.
because it would eliminate traditional secre-              In reality, the word processing center suf-
taries.19 The same month, a Chicago Tribune report     fered from many of the same disadvantages as
gave a similar definition, opening with the claim      the centralized dictating pool of a half-centu-
that “Women’s Liberation has hit the technolo-         ry before. In response to its first coverage of
gy field in the guise of a new theory called ‘word     the topic, Business Automation published a let-
processing.’” The report, which relied heavily on      ter written by a word processor operator from
quotations from IBM managers, suggested that           Evanston, Illinois, identified only as “D.W.”
“The basic unit of word processing is the IBM          She complained about her physical condi-
Selectric typewriter, adapted to magnetic tape,”       tions: MC/ST machines were noisy and the
that “the other mandatory tool” was a centralized      word-processor staff spent their entire work-
dictating system connected to telephones, and          ing day in cramped conditions looking direct-
that putting secretaries into a typing pool not        ly at a wall. But her bigger complaints were
only boosted productivity but also meant the           cultural. She was paid the lowest salary in the
women were given higher salaries with “more            office and cut off from its social life, writing
responsibility, less pressure.”20                      that “the people in the office regard those of
    Nothing about the idea of centralizing typ-        us who run the machines as part of the
ing and dictation was novel, except for the            machines rather than as human beings like
name—word processing—itself. Advocates of              themselves!” Early reports claimed that the
word processing, such as Administrative                shift to word processing reduced employee
Management magazine and the American                   turnover, but D.W. disagreed. The work
Management Association, were part of a com-            required people who were good typists, could
munity we can trace back to the scientific office      spell, and would not become bored—a combi-
management movement of the 1910s and                   nation she found rare. “Word processing

                                                                                                     October–December 2006   11
Remembering the Office of the Future

                                                                            advances in the packaging and application of
                                                                            existing technologies.
                          What we would now think                               To understand how this occurred, and
                                                                            where the technologies of computerized word
                              of as word processing                         processing came from, we must step back in
                                                                            time to explore a parallel history dating to the
                          technology has a separate                         computer industry’s early days in the 1950s.
                                                                            The sudden emergence of computerized word
                         history from the concept of                        processing in the office was made possible by a
                                                                            far more gradual evolution in computerized
                                  word processing.                          text manipulation. From a business viewpoint,
                                                                            computerized word processing was invented in
                                                                            the 1970s. From a technology viewpoint, how-
                        removes nearly all of the remaining rewards of      ever, word processing’s various capabilities had
                        secretarial work. ... In the last year two-thirds   all been demonstrated by the end of the 1950s
                        of the word processing personnel in my office       (though not all in the same system): displaying
                        have left.” She was particularly prescient in       text on a video screen, storing text for easy
                        her suggestion that the new technology would        retrieval on a tape or disk, printing formatted
                        trigger endless rewrites, dashing hopes for         text on a printer within established margins,
                        paper savings.24 IBM’s early attempts to pres-      numbering pages, editing text by inserting or
                        ent centralized word processing centers as a        deleting characters, and applying operations
                        breakthrough for feminism do not appear to          such as search and replace.
                        have resonated with the women involved,                 Even in the 1950s, processing letters as well
                        however successful they initially were in grab-     as numbers was not in the least novel.
                        bing newspaper headlines.25                         Admittedly, the first programmable computers,
                                                                            such as the Harvard Mark I and the ENIAC,
                        Computerized word processing:                       were designed with numbers rather than letters
                        Technical roots                                     in mind. But the nature of the stored-program
                           The original sense of word processing to         digital computer as a general-purpose proces-
                        mean a centralized pool of typewriter and dic-      sor of encoded symbols meant that storing and
                        tating machine operators to boost clerical pro-     manipulating a string of letters was scarcely dif-
                        ductivity is now long forgotten. But, as we have    ferent from manipulating and storing a string
                        seen, when word processing first gained popu-       of numbers. Getting letters in and out of a com-
                        larity in 1971, no companies were promoting         puter was not a problem: punched card
                        computers as general-purpose text editing sys-      machines had added letters to their repertoire
                        tems suitable for routine office work. The devel-   in the 1930s, and teletype machines could also
                        opment of what we would now think of as             handle textual input and store messages on
                        word processing technology, the use of com-         paper tape.
                        puters to manipulate text, has a separate histo-        Early systems followed the lead of teletype
                        ry from the concept of word processing. Only        machines in using just 6 bits of memory to
                        in the mid-1970s did people start to associate      store each character, restricting systems to
                        computers with word processing, and by late         uppercase letters and a handful of punctuation
                        1970s this was perhaps the fastest growing and      characters.26 By the 1960s, however, the
                        most fiercely contested segment of the entire       EBCDIC coding scheme created by IBM for its
                        computer industry. This was not the result of       System 360 machines and the ASCII standard
                        any single conceptual breakthrough or techni-       favored by much of the rest of the industry
                        cal innovation. Rather, computerized word pro-      gave computer equipment an easy way to han-
                        cessing was the recombination of existing           dle the full range of English characters in both
                        technological capabilities, prompted by long-       upper- and lowercase and a full range of punc-
                        term declines in the cost of computer memory,       tuation marks.27
                        disk storage, and processor power and a general         Computers thus had no absolute technical
                        shift toward distributed and interactive systems    barriers preventing them from reading, analyz-
                        based on minicomputer and microprocessor            ing, and printing text. However, this capabili-
                        technologies. Unlike some other breakthroughs       ty was never applied to general-purpose office
                        in computer applications, such as the spread-       work. It then seemed no more sensible to use a
                        sheet or relational database, the word proces-      computer to edit than to travel to the shopping
                        sor was the historically inevitable result of       mall in a supersonic fighter jet. Only the plum-
                        dozens of minor and largely anonymous               meting cost of interactive computing could

12   IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
turn an absurd luxury into an expensive tool          processing capabilities such as search and
with economic justifications in specialized           replace, and even indexing, were just special-
fields, and eventually into an inexpensive office     ized applications of these techniques.
commonplace. The business data-processing                 Computerized word processing systems
applications of the 1950s and 1960s squeezed          made it possible to store entire documents on
textual information into rigidly defined and          disk and retrieve them as needed. Again, this
rather short fields such as “title” or “last name,”   capability was not novel, but had previously
each corresponding to particular groups of            been too expensive to apply to office corre-
columns on the punched input card. These              spondence. Information retrieval grew as a
would show up in the appropriate places on            research area alongside the computer’s spread
paychecks, invoices, and printed reports. This        during the 1950s and 1960s. While the term
parsimony in text handling and storage is hard-       was also applied to systems based on punched
ly surprising. Computer time was expensive,           cards, microfilm, and other technologies, by
and space on disk drives and magnetic drums           the late 1960s a number of online computer
was limited.                                          systems were being created to manage large
                                                      volumes of text for corporations or govern-
Early text processing                                 ment agencies with significant money to
   Some specialized text processing applica-          spend. These systems, used interactively
tions did develop during the 1950s and 1960s,         through teletype terminals, were usually
generally where one or both of the following          restricted to the retrieval of abstracts or cita-
conditions were met. First, the application           tions based on user-provided keywords. Among
involved much analysis and manipulation of            the best known were the Dialog system (created
the encoded text, rather than simply storing or       for NASA by Lockheed) and the Orbit system
editing it. Second, those involved had access         produced by the System Development
either to a vast amount of money or to com-           Corporation (SDC).
puter facilities they were not required to pay for.       Time-sharing services made it possible to sell
   A key feature of word processing systems,          remote access to text retrieval systems. The
the automatic manipulation of text (literally,        Lexis database, launched commercially in
the processing of words), was pioneered in            1973, offered full-text retrieval from a collec-
other systems early in the history of digital         tion of more than two billion characters of
computing. During the early 1950s, the                legal and tax rulings. This service targeted two
machine translation of natural languages was          of the few groups able to support the huge costs
viewed as a promising area of research. This, of      involved: lawyers and tax professionals. A min-
course, involved storing, processing, and print-      imum subscription of $2,500 a month in 1974
ing documents, although as a necessary pre-           helped make Lexis the first major commercial
liminary step rather than an end in itself. In        success in online text storage and retrieval.31
1954, IBM demonstrated a working, if highly
limited, system able to translate a small num-        Enter the text editor
ber of technical phrases.28 Although further             The direct technological ancestor of the
progress was disappointing, this was the first        word processing program was the text editor.
widely publicized application of the computer         In contrast to high-margin applications like
to natural-language text processing. Also dur-        Lexis, simply storing and editing ordinary doc-
ing the 1950s, the widespread adoption of             uments such as letters and manuals showed lit-
assemblers and, from 1957, of high-level lan-         tle commercial value as an application for
guages such as Fortran made the automatic             expensive computer time. Nevertheless, text
parsing of computer languages a more success-         editing applications seemed to surface with
ful kind of text processing.29                        some rapidity whenever creative programmers
   One of the best-known early applications of        were given unrestricted interactive access to a
text processing was the analysis of literary texts.   computer. The reason for this is straightfor-
From the 1950s on, computers were used to             ward: programmers write programs, program
cross-reference the occurrences of phrases with-      source files are text, and—given the chance—
in texts and to develop numerical descriptions        most programmers would rather use a terminal
of the prose styles associated with particular        to enter the code directly into the system rather
authors, shedding new light on long-running           than wait for it to be punched onto a paper
disputes over biblical and Shakespearean texts.       card for batch input. Eventually, interactive-
Specialized “string processing” programming           computing costs dropped sufficiently to make
languages, most notably Snobol variants,              interactive editing of the kind pioneered by
emerged to aid textual applications.30 Word           programmers feasible for office work.

                                                                                                   October–December 2006   13
Remembering the Office of the Future

                            The core functions of a text editor are iden-     research centers during the mid-1960s. Most
                        tical to those of a word processor: text must be      systems let programmers enter and edit source
                        entered, manipulated, saved, and processed.           code using a teletype unit. This code was saved,
                        Text editors are not simply precursors to word        at least temporarily, on a disk or drum for input
                        processors but an earlier and continuing appli-       directly into a compiler or assembler. This
                        cation of the same technologies for a different       meant that any useful time-sharing system
                        purpose. By the early 1970s, the most advanced        required a text editor, and each major time-
                        text editors offered interactive full-screen video    sharing research group appears to have pro-
                        editing of text, search and replace, edit files too   duced more than one.
                        large to fit in the computer’s available core             A memo MIT’s John McCarthy had written in
                        memory, and most of the other key features of         1959, proposing the construction of the first
                        later word processing software.                       time-sharing system, identified compelling
                            The main difference between the two in            advantages of the new approach: interactive
                        terms of core functionality is that word proces-      debugging and the abilities to “write the pro-
                        sors usually add greater control over the for-        gram in source language directly into the com-
                        matting of printed output because their output        puter” and to “check out a program directly after
                        is intended for humans rather than computers.         writing it.”35 In 1962, the first published paper to
                        But the key distinction is more cultural than         describe a working time-sharing system includ-
                        technical: text editors are used by programmers       ed discussion of its text editing abilities.36 The
                        to write programs and edit system files; word         finished version of this system, the Compatible
                        processors are used by everyone else to do            Timesharing System for the IBM 7094, included
                        everything else.                                      both Typset, an editor, and Runoff, a program to
                            Among the first programmers free to experi-       output and justify text files. At SDC in Santa
                        ment with online text editing were the young          Monica, California, another center of time-shar-
                        computer enthusiasts of Massachusetts Institute       ing innovation during the early 1960s, pro-
                        of Technology, memorably chronicled by Steven         grammers created an editor called Edtext.
                        Levy in Hackers.32 In the early 1960s, they found         Online text editing spread beyond the labo-
                        themselves in the almost unique position of           ratory, along with time-sharing. QED, among
                        having direct use of a reasonably powerful com-       the most influential of the early text editors,
                        puter, the first production model of the DEC          was developed during the mid-1960s by Butler
                        (Digital Equipment Corporation) PDP-1, with-          Lampson and Peter Deutsch for the SDS 940
                        out having to worry about paying for or justify-      computer at the University of California,
                        ing their time on it. Among the many novel or         Berkeley.37 Like other editors of the period, it
                        quirky programs they created was Expensive            was designed for use with teletype systems rather
                        Typewriter, written by Steve Piner. It made seem-     than video displays, meaning that each line in
                        ingly profligate use of the computer to achieve       the document was numbered, and users typed
                        basic text-editing capabilities and ease prepara-     commands to print, delete, move, or edit parts
                        tion of programs stored on paper tape.33 MIT          of the document. To edit a file, the user would
                        computer scientist John McCarthy wrote anoth-         select a particular line and then specify the
                        er editor, Colossal Typewriter, for the same          required changes. QED boasted some impressive
                        machine. Another program, TJ-2, could format          features including search and replace, multiple
                        a text file to fit a page with margins and justifi-   buffers between which text could be copied (giv-
                        cation, sending output either to a tape or direct-    ing capabilities similar to those we think of today
                        ly to a teletype. Although it did not allow           as cut and paste), and the ability to label blocks
                        onscreen text editing, it did use the PDP-1’s vec-    of text for easy reference. QED spread widely, in
                        tor screen to display candidate words for auto-       part because Berkeley’s system provided the fun-
                        matic hyphenation, which the user could               damental technology for two of the earliest com-
                        manipulate with a light pen.34                        mercial timesharing services, Comshare and
                            Few computer users of the 1960s could hope        Tymshare. Tymshare, for example, used an
                        to tie up a whole computer while they edited a        improved version of QED called Editor.
                        program. However, time-sharing operating sys-             When we think of a word processor now, we
                        tems lowered the cost of interactive computing        tend to assume that it includes a video screen
                        and thus spread online text editing somewhat          showing many lines of text, around which the
                        more widely. These allowed several users to           user can move a cursor to insert or edit materi-
                        simultaneously access a single computer, each         al. Like interactive text editing in general, inter-
                        using a teletype unit to control the computer         active text editing on video screens was applied
                        and run programs. Time-sharing systems                to the editing of computer source code some
                        became increasingly popular in computing              years before it was widely used for office work.

14   IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
With the spread of more powerful video screen          application of Unix was the formatting of
terminals during the 1970s, editors acquired           patent documents. Unix tools were used in Bell
full screen or screen oriented capabilities. This      Labs to produce large technical manuals direct-
meant that users could move the cursor to any          ly on phototypesetting hardware, and soon
line on the screen and edit, insert, or replace        found a broader audience. A 1981 survey called
the text already there.                                the troff/nroff combination “probably the most
    The editors discussed earlier were all line edi-   widely used text formatters in the world.”41
tors, designed to work with teletype systems.              Text formatting systems based on embedded
These could be used with any kind of terminal,         control codes were widely used in the publish-
and so remained a standard part of every oper-         ing industry, continuing practices established
ating system.38                                        with earlier typesetting hardware. Tools like
    The most celebrated video screen text editor       this provided similar output to later word pro-
of all, Emacs, originated at MIT as an extension       cessing software, but followed the earlier pat-
of the institute’s earlier TECO (Tape Editor and       tern in which separate application programs
COrrector) editor, first developed circa 1963 for      handled the text editing and the formatted
the PDP-1 by Daniel L. Murphy as a replace-            document output. The ultimate expression of
ment for Piner’s Expensive Typewriter. Using           this stream of development is Donald Knuth’s
TECO to edit involved writing short programs           TeX document description language, created
in an exceptionally terse programming lan-             during the 1970s and 1980s.42 TeX proliferated
guage to perform operations such as search and         among computer scientists and mathemati-
replace. This appealed to programmers, the pri-        cians, who continue to love its programmabil-
mary users of text editors. Many versions were         ity, its elegant and precise control over the
produced, and TECO evolved more as a pro-              formatting of output, and its masterful han-
gramming platform and language for the cre-            dling of equations. Most administrative users,
ation of editors rather than as an editor.             however, showed little interest in a system that
    Emacs, which stood for editing macros,             essentially required them to write their docu-
began as a standardized collection of TECO             ment as a kind of computer program and then
macros for full-screen editing created in the          compile it to view the output.
mid-1970s by Richard Stallman of MIT’s artifi-             The users and creators of systems such as
cial intelligence lab.39 Though Emacs evolved          Unix, Emacs, and TeX systems differed notably
into a freestanding editor, this heritage meant        from those of word processing systems, and
that it included its own programming language          viewed their tasks differently. Their creators
(a version of Lisp) and users could extend or          often viewed textual manipulation (including
customize it. Over time, Emacs acquired a wide         editing and formatting) as a problem to be
range of extensions to do, for example, syntax         solved through the creation of flexible and pro-
checking and automatic code indenting, and             grammable system building tools. Some aspects
more unusual things such as playing games              of their work, particularly advanced search-
and browsing Internet newsgroups.                      and-replace capabilities, eventually made their
                                                       way into word processing, but despite techni-
Text formatting system                                 cal similarities to word processing systems,
   Meanwhile, computer systems were also               these text editing tools were never designed for
making strides in the output of formatted text.        the general-office population.
Around 1967, Ken Thompson and Dennis
Ritchie at Bell Labs produced new implementa-          Computerized word processing
tions of QED, including the specification of              Having surveyed the origins of computer-
elaborate rules for search-and-replace opera-          ized word processing technologies, let’s return
tions.40 A few years later, the same team created      to the office of the 1970s to see how and why
the Unix operating system on a small, almost           they were first applied to office work to create
obsolete PDP-7 system. Unix developed a sys-           what we would now think of as the word
tem tool philosophy in which powerful but spe-         processor. Text editing software reached the
cialized software tools could be interconnected        office through several distinct waves of com-
by linking their input and output text streams         puter technology: commercial time-sharing
together via an innovation known as a pipe.            systems from the late 1960s onward, minicom-
The operating system kernel did little, but it was     puters from the early 1970s onward, and spe-
accompanied by powerful and portable tools.            cialized word processing computer systems
Unix tools, most notably roff and its successors       from the mid-1970s onward. Of these, the spe-
nroff and troff, took textual input and format-        cialized computer systems were by far the most
ted it for printed output. In fact, the first useful   important in establishing a market for com-

                                                                                                  October–December 2006   15
Remembering the Office of the Future

                        puterized text editing. Over the 1970s, word          tapes as input for decades. Some major publish-
                        processing centers increasingly adopted com-          ers and newspapers had been using computers
                        puterized word processing systems produced by         to prepare tapes for typesetting systems since
                        firms such as IBM, Wang Laboratories, and             the 1960s, and interest was growing in photo-
                        Vydec to replace automatic typewriters like           typesetting systems in which lines of text were
                        IBM’s MT/ST. In this way, the original concept        generated optically under computer control.46
                        of word processing as the centralization of typ-      Advances in printing technology, combined
                        ing and dictation work around new technolo-           with the relative affordability of minicomput-
                        gies gradually merged with what we now                ers, made text editing and computer-controlled
                        consider word processing technologies.                phototypesetting viable for a much broader
                           At end of the 1960s, commercial time-sharing       range of publications.47
                        services gave businesspeople outside corporate            But with different programming, a minicom-
                        data processing departments their first real          puter could work much like an automatic type-
                        chance to work interactively with computers.          writer, such as IBM’s popular MT/ST. This opened
                        In principle, this opened up online text editing      a potentially huge market since, unlike larger
                        tools to a broad audience, though the combi-          computers, minicomputers could be sold direct-
                        nation of the high hourly rates charged by            ly to small companies or to small departments
                        time-sharing services and the slow teletype           within larger companies. Business Automation
                        machines used by most people to access them           profiled a Boston law firm that replaced its three
                        meant that this was not a particularly compelling     MT/ST-typewriter-based systems with a DEC PDP
                        application. This did not stop Administrative         8/E minicomputer in 1970. Although Selectric
                        Management from promoting the idea in a 1970          typewriters were used for editing and input, out-
                        article (shortly before it discovered the concept     put of large documents was much faster thanks
                        of word processing), when it suggested that           to a high-speed printer. The new system had sev-
                                                                              eral advantages. Because it was interactive, it
                          automated text processing [was] a recently devel-   could warn when errors were made and prompt
                          oped office application for time sharing. …         the user for input, making it much easier to learn
                          Revisions and editing are quickly and easily        than the MT/ST. And because it used disk rather
                          accomplished without having to retype the           than tape cartridges to store documents and
                          entire document.43                                  standard paragraphs, a much larger library of
                                                                              standard paragraphs could be maintained and
                           At least some people in the business tech-         accessed with greater ease. The firm later added
                        nology community believed that document               a second disk drive and a video terminal, allow-
                        editing was likely to become an important             ing onscreen editing of documents. Of course,
                        application of computer systems once inexpen-         the minicomputer had the additional advan-
                        sive and convenient computer access was com-          tage that it could run software to perform other
                        monplace. One firm, Browne Time Sharing Inc.,         tasks such as accounting.48
                        specialized in online text editing and process-           Law firms were the most enthusiastic
                        ing services.44 Browne launched its service in        adopters of such systems. Their work centered
                        1969, using an IBM 370 mainframe connected            on the regular production of long, intricate
                        to dial-in telephone lines, and marketed to users     technical documents incorporating standard
                        needing to make frequent revisions to long doc-       elements. This had to be done quickly and
                        uments. Its main business was as a financial          accurately. The expensive and novel technolo-
                        printer, and it provided its clients with high-       gy of word processing could pay its way more
                        quality printed copies of their remotely edited       easily here than in almost any other environ-
                        documents by overnight delivery.45                    ment. Lawyers charged high hourly rates, and
                           The spread of affordable and increasingly          legal secretaries and paralegals were much bet-
                        powerful minicomputer systems during the late         ter paid than typical office staff. For such firms,
                        1960s and early 1970s broadened access to             word processing was what would later be called
                        interactive systems. Beyond disseminating             a killer application—a piece of software so com-
                        interactive text editing for programming pur-         pelling that it justified the purchase of a com-
                        poses, this situation also made it practical to       plete minicomputer system merely to run it. By
                        consider minicomputers’ application to docu-          1982, more than two-thirds of law firms had
                        ment preparation, and appears to have hap-            installed word processing systems.49
                        pened first in technologically oriented firms
                        and among those using computers to drive              Special-purpose word processing systems
                        high-quality output systems.                              Minicomputer-based systems soon faced
                           Typesetting machines had been using paper          stiff competition from the new market for

16   IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
video-based specialized word processing hard-
ware.50 Lexitron, a start-up firm, offered the first
stand-alone word processor with a video screen             By the mid-1970s, many
in 1972. The document being edited was held
in memory and displayed on the screen, then               firms had the expertise to
saved to magnetic tape or printed at the end of
the session.51 Linolex, a creator of video termi-          design a word processor
nals and keyboards, added word processing
capabilities to its terminal technology to create                        system.
specialized systems. However, it was Vydec, a
small start-up firm founded by a former
Hewlett-Packard engineering team, that creat-          few years, eight-inch floppy drives and disks
ed the template for stand-alone, video-screen-         were readily available from several manufac-
based word processors. Its product, launched in        turers. Their main application was as a versa-
1973, was the first to display a full page (up to      tile, inexpensive replacement for punched
66 lines) of text on the screen and included           cards and paper tape, becoming the standard
floppy disk drives and a daisywheel printer.           medium for information storage and exchange
Though expensive, at $18,000, the machines             on less-powerful computer systems. The flop-
established the existence of a niche market in         pies had significant advantages for word pro-
which Vydec initially faced little competition.52      cessing over the IBM MT/ST and MT/SC
All of these machines sold slowly at first, as the     magnetic tapes and cards. Likewise, the falling
start-ups focused their limited resources on           costs and rising capabilities of video displays
organizations with heavy editing needs, such           meant that a screen able to display a full page
as federal government agencies. According to a         of text was no longer prohibitively expensive.
March 1975 report, Vydec had installed almost          The word processing software was stored on
300 video word processing systems, Lexitron            disks, and would run automatically when the
1,000, and Linolex almost 700.53                       machine was turned on.
    While the original Vydec system was some-              Just as important, though less celebrated,
thing of an engineering feat, the technologies         was the daisywheel printer. Previously, com-
needed to duplicate its capabilities became            puters had been coupled with adapted type-
widely available over the next few years. By the       writer mechanisms such as the Flexowriter or
mid-1970s, many firms had the expertise to             IBM Selectric for slow, high-quality output and
design a word processor system by assembling           with large, expensive “line printers” to produce
a number of off-the-shelf components. Word             high-speed output on continuous paper.
processors were sold by many companies,                Daisywheel printers gave typewriter-quality
including Redactron, Dictaphone, Lanier, CPT,          output at several times the speed of a Selectric
NBI (Nothing But Initials), and Addressograph-         and with greater reliability under heavy loads.
Multigraph. The hardware, essentially the same         In 1972, Diablo (later acquired by Xerox)
used to produce a personal computer, was sim-          launched the first daisywheel printer. It faced
ilar to that needed to create a video terminal,        stiff competition from Qume, a rival firm
but it was bundled into a different product. The       begun by the technology’s original inventor.54
most obvious of the new components, the                Word processing systems usually incorporated
microprocessor, shrank the central processor           a printing mechanism built by one of those
unit of a simple computer to fit on a single chip.     two firms.
    The original Vydec model did not use a
microprocessor, but in 1975 another start-up,          Word processing market matures
NBI, produced a microprocessor-based word                  The small, specialized firms that pioneered
processor and other manufacturers were quick           the market faced growing competition over the
to follow. Expensive hand-woven magnetic core          next few years, most notably from Wang
memory, the standard memory technology of              Laboratories. Wang had been selling specialized
the 1950s and 1960s, was quickly replaced in           electronic devices, such as desk calculators and
smaller computers with DRAM (dynamic RAM)              control equipment, since the 1950s. Its 1971
chips, first sold commercially by Intel in 1970.       model 1200, like IBM’s MC/ST, was a typewriter
This dramatically lowered the cost of a memory         controlled by magnetic tape. Although not par-
unit able to store a few pages of text for editing.    ticularly ambitious technically—its control unit
    Another key technology was the floppy disk.        is said to have been adapted from that of a desk
Floppy disk drives were first sold in 1971 to          calculator—this earned Wang a foothold in the
store microcode for IBM mainframes. Within a           market.55 Wang had been selling computers

                                                                                                  October–December 2006   17
Remembering the Office of the Future

                        since the 1960s, and in the late 1970s its com-     design philosophy as the unavoidable result of
                        puter and word processing product lines began       his having been deprived of resources after
                        to converge. In 1975, Wang launched the             falling from favor with the firm’s autocratic
                        Wang Computer System (WCS) range, consist-          founder.60 The Wang system of menus and
                        ing of three models: the 10, 20, and 30.55,56 The   prompts was indeed easy to learn, though some
                        systems were integrated into custom-built           complained that expert users remained hob-
                        desks, and were aimed at technical applications     bled by the designers’ assumption that secre-
                        and small business administration.                  taries required a highly structured interface.
                           Wang took a similar approach to selling its          Lanier Business Systems, which overtook
                        Word Processor System, launched in 1976. The        IBM and Dictaphone in the market for dictat-
                        Wang Word Processor range likewise included         ing systems during the mid-1970s, also estab-
                        three models coded 10, 20, and 30. The screens      lished itself as the leading supplier of
                        and cases of the workstations used on this          stand-alone video-based word processing sys-
                        range closely resembled those of the WCS            tems. Its “No Problem” word processor, intro-
                        machines, though internally they used Intel         duced in 1977, was promoted as easy to use
                        8080 microprocessors rather than the custom         and, as the name suggests, with a certain folksi-
                        logic of Wang’s earlier computers.57 The model      ness.61 This must have worked, because by 1978
                        10 was a stand-alone model with a daisywheel        it was outselling all its competitors with about
                        printer and single floppy disk drive, used to       one-fifth share of this fragmented market seg-
                        load the bundled word processing software and       ment.62 (Lanier later stumbled when it applied
                        to hold documents. The model 20 supported           a similar approach to the computer market with
                        up to three workstations and their three print-     its Computereze product line and by 1982 had
                        ers, networked via a proprietary coaxial system     lost its lead in stand-alone word processors).63
                        to a single “storage station” with twin floppy          In contrast, IBM was slow to compete effec-
                        drives. Editing of one document could contin-       tively in the market for video-screen-based
                        ue while another printed in the background.         word processors, something contemporary
                        The model 30 built a hard disk drive into a cus-    observers tended to attribute to internal poli-
                        tomized desk and supported up to 14 worksta-        tics, and in particular to a reluctance to under-
                        tions and printers.58                               mine its lucrative MT/ST automatic typewriter
                           Although Wang’s stand-alone model 10 was         business. In 1976, IBM held an estimated 80
                        competitive with existing products such as the      percent of the word processing market, based
                        Vydec systems, it was models 20 and 30 that         almost entirely on the monthly leased pay-
                        made Wang synonymous with high-end word             ments it received for around 150,000 magnet-
                        processing systems. These machines created a        ic-card- and –tape-based Selectric systems.64
                        new class of “clustered” word processing sys-       IBM gradually enhanced these machines,
                        tems. It was many years before standard per-        offering several new models based on mag-
                        sonal computers could share files with              netic cards and revamping its product line to
                        comparable ease and effectiveness. From the         add small electronic memories able to store
                        user’s viewpoint, these systems provided capa-      8,000 characters for instant retrieval.65 IBM
                        bilities similar to those based on multiple ter-    also added communications functions to its
                        minals connected to a minicomputer, referred        machines, allowing them to transmit text to
                        to, in that era, as shared logic systems.           its computers. Its MT/ST machines were repo-
                           Wang was renowned for the quality of its         sitioned as companions for newer models
                        support and documentation, and like its earlier     such as ill-fated System 6, launched in 1976,
                        calculator systems, its word processing systems     which offered an expensive high-speed inkjet
                        were designed to be used by small-business peo-     printer, floppy disk storage, and communica-
                        ple rather than technical specialists. They were    tion capabilities, but only an inadequate six-
                        easy to set up, and relied on menus rather than     line video display.64
                        the command languages common among other                IBM’s dominance eroded fast over the next
                        text editing and formatting systems of the era.     few years, though by the end of 1979 it was still
                        Harold Koplow, leader of the design team,           estimated to hold around 60 percent of the
                        began by writing the user manual for the sys-       overall word processing market.66 Only in 1980
                        tem with his colleague Dave Moros, refining it      did it finally offer a credible modern word
                        until it described a system he believed a secre-    processor with the Displaywriter word process-
                        tary could use with minimal training.59 Only        ing system, which used floppy disks to store
                        then did programming and design begin—              documents and load programs and, as its name
                        although Koplow later claimed this strategy         suggested, included a video screen for editing.67
                        was not so much the result of a user-centered       In response, Wang launched the relatively

18   IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
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