Hacker News Reader

> recycle all the CRTs

I'm really glad to be done with those. Ugh. Back around 1970 my dad said the world was waiting for two great inventions:

1. A TV you could hang on the wall like a picture

2. A typewriter that you could back up and correct mistakes on. (Few people likely remember Whiteout. Glad to be done with that, too!)

And great inventions they turned out to be :-)

View on HN

If he said that in 1970 he only had 3 years wait for item 2. The IBM Selectric II Correcting was introduced in '73.

Correcting by stamping white ink over a letter was indeed a marvelous improvement, but nothing like what came later with a word processor. Later word processors, like the Wang in the late 70's, destroyed Selectrics, and obsoleted the job of "secretary".

I remember my Mom typing his thesis over and over on the Royal typewriter. What a boring, dehumanizing task that was.

My dad abandoned his typewriter when he bought a Trash-80. I abandoned my typewriter when I discovered the printer in the computer center at Caltech around 1975. I'd use runoff, a marvelous program that is a precursor to HTML.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com