Through the Years

By Becky Rude

In this column we will share excerpts and other trivia from past newsletters. Here are some excerpts from newsletters in the 70s that illustrate how things are different or the same. You decide!

The First Paperless Office

Recently I was assigned to edit computer documents "online." Although I was familiar with computer documents, editing online gave me a "work shock." …

I first felt the shock when, instead of being given a typed draft of a document from an author, I received a "copy" of the document transferred from his file in a local computer (not connected to the network) to my file in the same computer….This was a new experience. I had no draft in my hands! I carried the tape to the network computer, and typed a message to the operator to read the tape into my computer file….I then typed a message to all network users that the document was now available.

This document—a user's manual for a computer program—was published from "draft" to final copy with no typed draft, no composition, no layout, no last-minute Sno-pake corrections, no printing plates, and no clerical processing and distribution.

--Pacifica Log, February 1977, no author listed

Inklings of the Internet

A Wall Street Journal article (November 3, by Burt Schorr) from Washington, D.C., carried the headline, "Computers' Marriage to Communications to Yield Big Benefits—if It Ever Occurs."

Slanted principally to business applications, the report observes that such a marriage "would allow instant, world wide delivery of computerized business messages, from sales orders to interoffice memos," and also would give instant credit information and transfer of bank funds.

…The principal roadblock to widespread marriages of the two, in the U.S., is the weighty and complex "permit" problem now before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

…Former FCC chairman Richard Wiley has offered a radical solution that AT&T may not like. He advocates Congress deregulate all communications terminal equipment thus putting other equipment suppliers on equal footing with AT&T and stripping all phone companies of present regulated-monopoly advantages.

--Pacifica Log, December 1977, by John Knight, Chairman

What Can You Do with a TV and a Pay Phone?

At our February meeting, Rick Meyer of Processor Technology Corporation led us through the not-too-intricate passageways of automated document management. Rick displayed the text from a floppy-disk file on an ordinary TV as he demonstrated the new text-processing system he is developing with ADAPT, Incorporated. Using one of Processor Technology's own microcomputers (about as big as two bread boxes), Rick showed us how he can manipulate and change text, insert corrections and indentions, and specify type sizes and leading. As Rick changed the text, the editor program in the microcomputer automatically moved the existing words from line to line and page to page…

Then, Rick and Lloyd Goodwin, of ADAPT, fed the processed file through a pay phone to ADAPT's computer in San Francisco. There the text is phototypeset according to Rick's commands, and the finished galley is mailed back to Rick in Pleasanton.

--Pacifica Log, March 1978, Forest Weld, Log Editor

Some Things Never Change

Bradley's Laws of Technical Communication

  • On any job, the priority varies directly as, and the time allotted varies inversely as, the hierarchical level of the requester.
  • The ease of copyediting varies inversely as the square of the hierarchical level of the author.
  • The probability of an unforgivable error in your final copy varies directly as the fourth power of the hierarchical level of the recipient.
  • When proofreading his own copy, the author sees only what he meant to write, but not what he actually wrote.
  • To an author, editing defaces a masterpiece; but to an editor, editing creates beauty and order out of chaos.

--Pacifica Log, February 1978, Bob Bradley, Technical Writer and Editor at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory

The Devil Mountain Views -- Jan/Feb 2002
(ebstc.org/newsletter/front.html)
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