<p>Ahh, the delicate aroma of the ditto machine - how it lingered on all the test papers!</p>
<p>PS - Men really didn't start learning to type until it became "keyboarding".</p>
<p>carolyn - and remember when it was only "girls" who could type?</p>
<p>Oh, how I bow my head in shame. I was in the 3rd set of girls to be admitted into Brooklyn Tech and the running joke in my house was, she knows how to cast metal (we went to foundry class), run an engine lathe, but she does not know how to type. I am eternally grateful to one of my best friends who did not go to college but had a job as a secretary . She typed my papers through out college. I bought a really nice gift when I graduated because she saved my life.</p>
<p>when I first learned how to type it was on an IMB selectric (the type wheel going around used to amaze me except for when I would hold down the X or . keys by accident and it would just take off). I thought the build in correction tape was the best.</p>
<p>It took me forever to type up all of those key punch cards for basic during college and I cried every the time when I dropped my shoe box of cards and the got out of order.</p>
<p>Sybbie719--I remember key punch cards. Had to use them for my master's thesis statistical analysis. I remember writing stuff on the sides to make it easier to put the cards back into correct order in case of an accident.</p>
<p>My HS graduation present from my parents was an IBM Selectric (I) when it first came out--no correcting tape. In fact, I still have it! With a heavy metal body, that thing was built to last. I also remember corrasible (sp?) bond paper and correct-o-type.</p>
<p>Other memories include onion skin and carbon paper to make copies and using razor blades to make corrections on mimeo master sheets.</p>
<p>
[quote]
JMMom, I was once told that I "typed very well for a man."
[/quote]
I guess that's better than being told you "throw like a girl."</p>
<p>mootmom - hard to imagine that anyone here is older than I (except Greybeard), but I definitely do not remember punched paper tape. </p>
<p>bookworm - had forgotten all about the "one misplaced comma" phenom. Now it all comes back to me - that sinking feeling when the printout they bring out for you is only one page long. And now we get upset if it takes longer than a nanosecond for our screen to come alive.</p>
<p>In one project for my senior year advertising media course, we had to do a lot of simple calculations of reach and frequency. The only calculators on campus were huge affairs bolted down in the psychology building. I envied one girl who actually owned a calculator and used to beg her to let me use it.</p>
<p>I remember spreading all my pages of my papers on a table, scissors in hand, cutting paragraphs and rearranging them-- the oriignal Control-C and Control-V.</p>
<p>punch cards and a funny (OK somewhat sexist) story</p>
<p>I was a freshman in 1977 and my class was 90% male ... and for virtually everyone of the guys the first time we typed was our first computer science project (write a PL/1 program to make change from an amount under $1). At the time Cornell used punchcards which did not come with a backspace feature ... so each of us spent about 1 minute typing 4-5 characters and then making a mistake and having to start over ... it took us each 15+ minutes to type our 10 card program. When I finally got to the front of the line I was among the slowest of the slow ... and a women from way back in line came up to the front, shoved me out of the way, swore for a few seconds, and typed my cards in about 5 nanoseconds ... and then typed the cards for the other 20 kids in front of her because we were all useless males.</p>
<p>"In terms of typing, I became expert of cut and paste. such artistic endeavors"</p>
<p>Ah, yes, back when cutting and pasting involved sissors and a glue pot. On my first job "CPA" stood for "cut and paste artist".</p>
<p>We used cards when I started, too, but the new computer had a tape drive (and I learned to type because it was a requirement to get into programming). </p>
<p>I also remember some friends in the Stat program at graduate school who had jobs for the mainframe with an "X" priority -- only run once a week. Their stat calculations required a solid block (contiguous) of 256K of memory and we had to clear most everyone else off the machine when they ran. Our mainframe only had 1 meg of memory, and that much cost an extra $1 million.</p>
<p>OMIG, I remember in Fortran (circa 1978) one day the keypunch machine got off one character (punched between the numbers) there was almost a riot! After that I always checked my cards to be sure the holes lined up properly. Those people doing Cobol needed carts to carry their card stacks. I was practically the only girl in my high school class to not take typing - I felt like I would not be good at it, and I couldn't stand not doing well "in school", and it interfered with other things I wanted to take.
Those were the days!</p>
<p>I was a copywriter for an art and photography studio in the mid-1970s. I became friendly with the keyline assembly artists who in my opinion were the hardest workers at the company. They showed me how to CUT AND PASTE for real! I used to send my spec'd copy to the typesetters and treasured my long plastic pica stick with the name of the printing company.</p>
<p>It may seem funny now but I would have done much better in college had I been abel to afford the 50 cents a page it cost to get a paper typed. I always figured the "rich" kids who could afford to have thier papers typed had a huge avantage. PC's have sure evened the playing field in that respect.</p>
<p>Old?</p>
<p>If I used to take notes like this
then I must be > 50
else an ex COBOL jock</p>
<p>Speaking of lecture notes, they were available for all the large, boring core classes at State U. back in the late 70's. Senior year, roomie & I needed a sociology core class to graduate, and each had an unused pass/fail to boot.</p>
<p>So we decided to conduct an experiment. Can two slightly brain-addled undergrads get a good grade while never attending class, except for tests? This soc class was perfect in that it had no discussion groups, only lectures, attended by 100-200 students. No papers to do, just two mid terms & a final. We ordered the lecture notes for the nominal sum of $3.75 apiece TOTAL FOR THE SEMESTER, mailed to our fraternity house 3 times a week. Only vaguely knew what the professor looked like. Bottom line is that roommate aced the class, and I missed an A by a couple points. Stupid us for taking it pass/fail. In retrospect, it was not unlike what the online University of Phoenix does now...</p>
<p>Can you imagine if we caught our D/S attempting this stunt now? For what we pay? I'd be livid! Ah, I guess it's 'do as I say not as I do'.</p>
<p>The comment above about calculators brought up a horrible memory that I had honestly blocked from my mind:</p>
<p>Remember slide rules?</p>
<p>Shudder.</p>
<p>Yup--my dad (a civil engineer) taught me how to use a slip stick to multiple and divide when I was just a kid. In fact, I still have his old slide rules.</p>
<p>took typing during a summer session at my high school in rural Louisiana. Class was held in the attic of a trade school, no A/C. If you've lived through a La. summer sans A/C, you should have no fear of hell. </p>
<p>Manual typewriters, etc. It was one of the best skills I could learn. It saved me more money than I like to think about when I wrote my dissertation in 1974 - there were dedicated word processors like the IBM Displaywriter (8" floppies that were really floppy) but no grad student could get within a country mile of one. I still recall the admin assistant to the graduate dean who would hold each page of a dissertation up to the light and look for "whiteouts." No presentation to my committee held such terror as that lady created.</p>
<p>As I was taking statistics and computer languages, I bought a calculator, a TI SR-10, it cost $150 in 1973 dollars. Besides 4 basic functions, it could do a square root!!!. </p>
<p>I would have killed, well, not really, for the level of wordprocessing my old c. 1980 Apple //+ allowed.</p>
<p>Times have changed for the better, for sure.</p>
<p>I hate to admit we used to think like this, but dating a girl that could type made you a celebrity in my fraternity.</p>
<p>There was a freshman in my entry from the south side projects in Chicago. He was the U.S. high school typing champion (don't ask), and averaged 190 words a minute, as I remember. Needless to say, he had work. But dropped out after first semester. (The college had not thought out what it would be necessary to take an African-American kid from the south side of Chicago and plunk him down among mostly wealthy white ones, surrounded by mountains on four side, and have him succeed.)</p>
<p>At my school, they offer notes taken by a professional service for the most popular lectures. Every week you pick up the notes for the previous week. It costs about $50 for the semester, a little more than the $3.25 jnm123 paid, haha.</p>
<p>I first started using a computer when I was in the Justice Department in 1988 or so. We used WP 4.2.</p>
<p>To this day, I still firmly believe that WP 5.1 (DOS) was the best computer program ever written. The white on blue with type you could actually read.</p>