Computers were first advanced rapid calculators. Then they were word processors when somebody got the brilliant idea of typing and revising on a monitor (tv-ish) screen and then printing out the final version:
Who made the first word processor?
The term was first used in IBM's marketing of the MT/ST as a "word processing" machine. It was a translation of the German word textverabeitung, coined in the late 1950s by Ulrich Steinhilper, an IBM engineer. He used it as a more precise term for what was done by the act of typing.
All the while, machines were hellish to direct. Trying to use human language, which is surprisingly indistinct and vague, to tell a very black-and-white machine to do something was, and still is, not easy. Various attempts were and are made to arrange for a human to type "print" and allow parts of the machine to convert the command into several steps needed to get the right letters to the right parts of a printer, feed in a sheet of paper (Just one, please, only one) and print while moving the sheet so that everything is not printed on top of itself.
Many types, versions and approaches were created. In my own experience, in 1968, I part-timed as academic computing director of a campus that was just slowly beginning to arrange to have computing facilities available to researchers, almost always those with lots of numbers that needed "crunching" (processing, averaged, graphing, etc.)
Then along came the lovely spreadsheet, The queen of spreadsheets is Microsoft's Excel. My first use of Apple's software called "AppleWorks" was a delight. I had learned a little word processing, very handy for a professor's class handouts, especially a poor slow typist who tended and tends to make an error in each word, from an Atari. Appleworks was a predecessor of Microsoft's Office Suite (Word, Excel and Powerpoint, back then). When I realized that a spreadsheet could alphabetize and put numerical data in order by size and do so in a flash without errors, I wanted my own computer.
We got our first computer, an Apple IIe, in 1984. One of my most used programs then was Think Tank, that could outline quickly and spell everything correctly.
Notice, up to now, no mention of internet, the web, communication, social media like Facebook. No Google. At first, no searching of any kind. Then, Lycos was my favorite. But Google outdid all others - at searching. We used "Fetch" and other programs until 1991 when Tim Berners Lee, bless his heart, pushed scientists and others into using the World Wide Web, a collection of more and more computers wired to send messages to each other. It has taken a long time for people to realize that one way or another, they can now post a blog that much of the world can read (and translate into their favorite language).
True, your computer or smartphone must be connected to this vast internet but with ATT or Verizon or Solarus or Charter or Spectrum, that can be arranged.
Who made the first word processor?
The term was first used in IBM's marketing of the MT/ST as a "word processing" machine. It was a translation of the German word textverabeitung, coined in the late 1950s by Ulrich Steinhilper, an IBM engineer. He used it as a more precise term for what was done by the act of typing.
All the while, machines were hellish to direct. Trying to use human language, which is surprisingly indistinct and vague, to tell a very black-and-white machine to do something was, and still is, not easy. Various attempts were and are made to arrange for a human to type "print" and allow parts of the machine to convert the command into several steps needed to get the right letters to the right parts of a printer, feed in a sheet of paper (Just one, please, only one) and print while moving the sheet so that everything is not printed on top of itself.
Many types, versions and approaches were created. In my own experience, in 1968, I part-timed as academic computing director of a campus that was just slowly beginning to arrange to have computing facilities available to researchers, almost always those with lots of numbers that needed "crunching" (processing, averaged, graphing, etc.)
Then along came the lovely spreadsheet, The queen of spreadsheets is Microsoft's Excel. My first use of Apple's software called "AppleWorks" was a delight. I had learned a little word processing, very handy for a professor's class handouts, especially a poor slow typist who tended and tends to make an error in each word, from an Atari. Appleworks was a predecessor of Microsoft's Office Suite (Word, Excel and Powerpoint, back then). When I realized that a spreadsheet could alphabetize and put numerical data in order by size and do so in a flash without errors, I wanted my own computer.
We got our first computer, an Apple IIe, in 1984. One of my most used programs then was Think Tank, that could outline quickly and spell everything correctly.
Notice, up to now, no mention of internet, the web, communication, social media like Facebook. No Google. At first, no searching of any kind. Then, Lycos was my favorite. But Google outdid all others - at searching. We used "Fetch" and other programs until 1991 when Tim Berners Lee, bless his heart, pushed scientists and others into using the World Wide Web, a collection of more and more computers wired to send messages to each other. It has taken a long time for people to realize that one way or another, they can now post a blog that much of the world can read (and translate into their favorite language).
True, your computer or smartphone must be connected to this vast internet but with ATT or Verizon or Solarus or Charter or Spectrum, that can be arranged.
