1979: Will WORD PROCESSORS start a HOME WORKING revolution? | Past Predictions | BBC Archive

for most companies this is still the

office of today an army of clerks

secretaries and typists use their skill

to route messages in and out of filing

systems and into the hands of managers

and there's another army of postmen who

carry those messages across the country

how very different it will be in the

office of tomorrow command letter to all

branch managers

message figures for holding account now

required my office by 1400 hours please

signed casey managing director

now i can read that message here on my

screen and you can also read it on your

screens at home and so too would all my

branch managers if i were simply to give

the command

send

the message would be transmitted down

telephone lines to all their offices

where it would appear simultaneously on

all their screens no army of clerks and

secretaries no postman no paper

science fiction not a bit of it systems

like this are in operation in offices

all around the country at the moment the

secret ingredient the nerve center of

this office of the future is a machine

called a word processor

so what is a word processor why is it so

powerful

well it's another spin-off from the

silicon chip revolution where every day

more and more power costs less and less

a word processor is just a computer

dedicated to handling text words it can

be a full-blown mainframe computer

costing many thousands of pounds or it

can be a microcomputer like this one

one program that runs in the computer is

called a text editor and this helps you

manipulate what you've already written

in very powerful ways for instance i've

just typed this nursery rhyme into the

machine and as you can see there are one

or two deliberate mistakes now in an

ordinary typewriter that would have

meant that i've had to rip out the whole

page and those who type will know that

it always seems to happen just when

you've reached the end of a page but

with the text editor i can simply ask

the machine to make the alteration for

me so here we go change

fred

to mary

everywhere it occurs

and there it actually occurred on two

lines and we've got fred back to mary

let us now ask the machine to print

for us the entire

revised nursery rhyme in its more

recognizable form

you can move lines and paragraphs change

sentences correct spelling mistakes

without ever having to type the complete

text again and when you're finished the

computer will file it for you

not on paper but on a magnetic disk

now this

is a floppy disk contained on here there

are very very neat files all under their

own file headings and instantly

retrievable one box of disks like this

can hold the equivalent of many many

shelves full of cumbersome paper files

bradford metropolitan council lead the

field in this country they installed

this wordplex system in 1977 and it was

working fully by july last year

the central memory can store 37 000

pages of a4 text

the council's halved the number of staff

needed to do the work and the

directorate's output has gone up by 40

that's because the biggest savings come

from using standard letters

is the property occupied yes

do you know the occupant's name yes

could you give me it please this young

couple are going to be married they've

chosen their first house and have come

to the council for a mortgage

this one transaction needs 25 different

letters to be sent out in the bad old

days it's a job that would have kept a

typist busy for two and a half hours now

one girl with a word processor can send

out all those letters in two minutes

no filing clerks no rows of dusty old

files and a saving in this one

department of sixty thousand pounds a

year

i'd just ask you to sign here please

would you

texas instruments call this their branch

manager in a briefcase

inside is a bubble memory in which you

can store 80 000 characters or letters

of the alphabet but and this is a

fascinating bit you can ring up the head

office computer or word processor and

then put the telephone into these rubber

cups at the back

the machine will automatically transfer

the text at high speed and receive any

messages back

and that could put offers typing very

firmly into the home

f international is a multi-million pound

computer systems house with more than

600 freelance operators you won't find

many of them here the chesham head

office though because most of the people

at the sharp end of the job work from

home

linda english works for f international

as a computer programmer she has a

modern well-equipped kitchen

two children and a bubble memory

terminal

the final act of writing a computer

program is to send hundreds of lines of

text to the computer you're programming

linda can write and store the program

she's working on at times most

convenient to her when the children are

asleep or at school when the job is done

the computer is only a phone call away

linda is in the forefront of perhaps the

biggest revolution for working mothers

since the pill

the office in the home is rather like

having your cake and eating it

because the machines can matter away to

each other by telephone you won't have

to write your letters of the future on

paper and you certainly won't have to

post them

already exciting things are happening

elsewhere in europe in this field look

at the french very very imaginative they

have are providing

over 30 million terminals in homes free

of charge despite the fact they're going

to cost something like 40 pounds each

because it's cheaper than producing

telephone directories and once that

terminal is in once it's there the

incentive is to use it for other things

obviously so it's marvelous marketing

it's cheaper over time for the french

than to bring out telephone directors

every two years you just plug into the

central computer you find your numbers

but at the same time you can find all

sorts of other things you will be using

word processors and text processes as

information units as links in an

information chain

not just to type and when that happens

when you can get the technology into the

home when you can get the technology

away from the office where you have word

processors and text processors talking

to other text processors at that point

you don't need the middle man or woman

do you

in the future inevitably we'll all be

part of a worldwide information society

so does it mean we'll all have to learn

to type

well not exactly

meet micro pad the latest british

breakthrough you write and ballpoint pen

or pencil on a pressure sensitive

surface

a microprocessor inside interprets your

writing and sends it to the text

processor

the processor in turn can play your text

back onto micropad's own display

or it can send any other message for

that

matter but no matter how fast you

scribble typing is much faster and up

until now there's been no alternative

but to learn to type on what is really a

very cumbersome device

but now a clever inventor has teamed up

with hambro life assurance and a

microprocessor to produce this

at present it's made in this small

factory and mitchum it's a light

battery-powered highly portable

electronic typewriter

by

the

its inventor sai enfield is an author

and film director he directed the film

zulu and in fact his latest book zulu

dawn was actually written on the

microwriter

the soldiers

as you see you type using the fingers of

only one hand

the added cleverness of the machine is

the way you learn to type by relating

the shapes of the letters to the fingers

you actually use

for instance the letter i is thumb and

forefinger and describes a vertical line

spite

tailings

with these pictorial mnemonics i learned

to touch type fairly adequately in half

an hour with a little practice you're

soon doing it automatically faster than

you can write it'll hold about six pages

of a4 text at a time

you can plug in a cable and save the

words on a miniature tape recorder for

later use or feed it into your own text

processor at home

it's the first real breakthrough in

keyboard input since the typewriter was

invented exactly a hundred years ago

until we get intelligent voice

recognizing machines even primary

schools may well be teaching reading

writing

and micro writing

already f international have had

enquiries from husband and wife teams

who want to work from home and hold down

one full-time job between them this

gives rise to a really intriguing

development as more and more of this

kind of activity finds its way out of

the office and into the home we see the

industrial revolution turn full circle

the old cottage industries gave way to

factories and organized labor and what

we're now witnessing is the rebirth of

those cottage industries

our old friend the silicon chip far from

destroying traditional concepts like

home and family is actually helping to

rebuild them the pessimists feared that

what all this technology was leading to

was dull zombie-like standardized people

in fact if anything it's helping to make

people more free and individual

if we do it all wrong then it could be

an absolute disaster it's the biggest

aid to totalitarianism you could ever

come across if you think about it and

that must be avoided at all costs on the

other hand it's the greatest boon to

decentralization and people fulfilling

themselves and that is the sort of way

we've got to go but it's up to us so

being an optimist uh i'm quite excited

by it

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