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The IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer

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Re: The IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer

#21

I tried to edit 80-page book on paper tape in 1977. It was more than 10 rolls weighing 10 kilos. Finnish Government said NO to such waste. So I edited it on 8 kilo core memory holding few pages, hoping that the core stays intact overnight. Final blow was when professor doubted if he can accept thesis written by a computer. Because it was little bit like cheating.

I was still getting this in middle school in 1990, when several teachers refused to accept anything printed from a computer because "the computer wrote it, not you".

Funny that now we live in an age where their complaint might actually be valid.

Re: The IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember encountering one of these machines in 1973 or 74 when I was on the high school newspaper staff. We visited another high school in our district that had one and I watched it output beautiful proportional, justified newspaper column-width text. I was amazed.

Great experience. I love to hear stories of people who actually used or saw these machines in use.

I just wish I knew what I was looking at at the time!
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