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Touch tone phones replaced the rotary phone about the same time as adding machines went from many columns of numbers to 10.

Why didn't someone think to put the numbers for the calculator and phone in the same places? It would have saved me hours of re-adding numbers!

Yes!! Ditto & mimeo machines!!

They were part of our college curric as well. We learned how to actually use them, rather than just sniff the *dittos* we picked up for the teacher from the office

Why didn't someone think to put the numbers for the calculator and phone in the same places? It would have saved me hours of re-adding numbers!

Yes that would have been GENIUS.

Not only did we have to do timed-writings (typing) for speed & accuracy, we were timed using adding machines (giant calculator with paper roll - not the old manual one).

I miss the # keypad on my laptop...

This has nothing to do with office but I remember researching for papers up to freshmen year of high school with actual books at the library and microfiche for magazine and news paper articles. I used to be weird and LOVE the microfiche machines.

And having to type those dittos - if you made a typo you had to use a single edged razor blade (specified for those who have never used less than a twin blade ) to scrape off the error and then re-insert the whole thing into the typewriter and try painstakingly to line it up perfectly so as to type the correction... Or just throw the whole thing out and start over, but that was frowned upon!

Teachers of the 70's had perpetually purple fingers from ditto machines. Or if you were fancy you used a THERMOGRAGH.

I think I've finally gotten the purple out from under my fingernails.

This has nothing to do with office but I remember researching for papers up to freshmen year of high school with actual books at the library and microfiche for magazine and news paper articles.

This was me thru all of college... I was married several years before internet was "invented" and home computers were user friendly.

I had a hand-me-down IBM computer that I could "word process" on using a word processing program called Final Word which required two 5 1/4 Floppy Disks... and any special things like underlineing or bolding required putting the code into the document. I got that my last year of college.

I used to run the mimeograph machines for my teachers as a teachers assistant in High School... Photocopies were too damn expensive still.

As late as the late 90's I didn't have internet at work... I had a computer on my desk that did basic programs for computing HUD-1 Statements and other programs that were proprietary to our company... but still had to type a lot of forms on a typewriter.

We did have fax machines... in fact we had a bank of them and a person who's only job was to send faxes....

And we had photocopiers that were automatic feed... that was awesome, until they jammed... damn things always jammed right in the middle of coping a huge file.

I was lucky, due to my heavy volume of phone work, I got to wear a head set instead of holding the receiver in the crook of my neck all the time... It was awesome!

I think people weren't in such a hurry back then... people knew they'd just have to wait for documents in the mail... Things just had a slower pace.

Ama, for your homework this evening, watch Mad Men.

This ^^^.

In 1980 we had one of the first fax machines. It took one sheet of paper that you had to clip onto a cylinder that went around and around and around.

It actually started to smell like burning paper before the page was sent.

Then you'd strap on page 2 and rinse and repeat.

Different world.

I worked for my dad after school. I did double-entry bookkeeping in a beat-up binder with those pale green pages. And yes, I did have a passbook for my savings account.

I got an electric typewriter for graduation. It was a huge deal.

This thread is awesome, btw .

I have no idea what any of you are talking about. I was born in 1987.

But I took my exams and did all my course work when I was 16 without the help of google, we used actual books and encyclopedias. The internet wasn't what it is now. We stored all our essays on floppy disks.

We stored all our essays on floppy disks.

We stored ours on floppy looseleaf paper

We stored ours on floppy looseleaf paper

And

re-insert the whole thing into the typewriter and try painstakingly to line it up perfectly so as to type the correction

omg yes, that was horrible!

This is awesome! When I got my first office job, they had this nifty new machine called a fax. the bad news was that no one else had one, so there was no one to send a fax to!

I remember ditto machines and carbon paper, but I came of age with WordStar, WordPerfect, and Lotus123.

It's amazing how computers have changed the office environment.

My very first job was with our local cable company...I was 22 and was in charge of the dispatch/repair department. I have no idea how I got that job...lol!! But turned out to be very good at it

Anyway, we had over 78,000 subscriptions and I had to use a microfiche to look up each and every subscription anytime a customer called regarding their account.

My college was still using the card reader machines when I was a freshman. I bought a stack of cards to use as bookmarks from the bookstore every year.

I think I told this story before but my first computer was a Commodore 64. The Fortran teacher at HS had a Vic 20 and could not understand why I ever would need 64 entire K of RAM.

And my dad got angry with me because I wanted to replace the cassette tape drive with a floppy disc drive. He didn't understand why I was in such a rush that I couldn't line up the cassette tape to the spot where it needed to be for the program I wanted.

I was the first person in the plant to get an answering machine. The plant manager would not let anyone have them because he thought nobody would answer when he called. We used to carry pagers that would talk like an announcement.

I saw one of the first electronic calculators in 1970 - 4 functions, $200 - probably 25% of a month's pay for a new college graduate. I thought the lack of affordability would kill them.

I grew up with electro-mechanical calculators and comptometers (basic multiplication, IIRC). The good thing about the calculators was that they printed out the number you input on cash-register receipt paper - that allowed you to check the calculations.

I sent out department store charge account statements in one of my jobs. We had 2 metal address plates for every customer - 1 for backup. I fed the plates into a machine, placed a blank statement form on the right spot, stepped on a switch, and the name would print on the blank statement. The AR dept. then put in the numbers - typing, IIRC.

Between HS and college, I got a job handling mail and document reproduction - Pitney-Bowes postage machine, photocopy (pre-Xerox process - really photos), ditto, and mimeo machines. The work was skilled enough to pay 50% above minimum ($59 and change every week, plus overtime).

After college, I also worked in a mail room of a bank for a brief period - once I carried a PB machine to get postage added - the check was for over $900,000.00. Once I put close to $250,000 of postage on a package. (My salary was $75/week.)

In college, one of the research aids documented what academic libraries held what documents and periodicals. If you saw a ref to a document ou wanted to follow-up on, you used the aid to find out where the doc might be and then wrote letters to request inter-library loans. A couple of times, I got letters from my library introducing me to another library and asking them to let me see specific materials - it was faster and more fun than requesting stuff via inter-library loan. (Now a lot of that stuff is digitized and available online.)

LD phone calls used to be very expensive and unusual, so people wrote letters and waited for response. Imagine being 300 miles away from one's SO and having to wait for the mail to carry love letters back and forth....

[This message edited by sisoon at 8:52 AM, May 21st (Wednesday)]

Got one of these 'computers' in 1972 from Radio Shack. More like an electronic slide rule. You put on headphones, used the first two dials to set up the 'problem' and then solved for it by turning the third dial until you heard a tone. Note the shipping weight of 6 pounds!

I think I have most of you beat ...

[This message edited by TrulyReconciled at 8:51 AM, May 21st (Wednesday)]