-writing, editing, and production of

documents, as letters, reports, and books,

through the use of a computer program or a
complete computer system designed to
facilitate rapid and efficient manipulation of
text.

WORD PROCESSING

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WORD PROCESSOR

a program or machine for storing,

manipulating, and formatting text entered
from a keyboard and providing a printout.

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HISTORY

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HISTORY

Word processing did not develop out of

computer technology. It evolved from the
needs of writers rather than those of
mathematicians, only later merging with
the computer field.
The history of word processing is the story
of the gradual automation of the physical
aspects of writing and editing, and the
refinement of the technology to make it
available to individual and corporate
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users.

HISTORY

The first major advance from manual

writing as far as the individual was
concerned was the typewriter.
Christopher Latham Sholes, with the
assistance of two colleagues, invented the
first successful manual typewriter in 1867.
The main drawback of this model was that
it printed on the underside of the roller, so
that the typist could not view his work
until he had finished.
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HISTORY

Improvements of typewriter:
The shift key, which made it possible to
type both capital and lower-case letters
with the same keys (1878)
Printing on the upper side of the roller
(1880)
And the tab key, permitting the setting of
margins (1897).
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HISTORY

Typewriting was put within the reach of

individuals by the development of portable
models, first marketed in the early 1900s.

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HISTORY

Thomas Edison patented an electric

typewriter in 1872, but the first workable
model was not introduced until the 1920s.
In the 1930s IBM introduced a more
refined version, the IBM Electromatic.

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HISTORY
The M. Shultz Company's introduction of the
automatic or repetitive typewriter, perhaps the
greatest step from the typewriter towards modern
word processing.
Automatic storage of information for later retrieval.
Player typewriter
It became possible to produce multiple typed
copies of form letters identical in appearance to
the hand-typed original, without the intermediary
of carbons, photocopiers or typesetting.
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HISTORY

Flexowriter uses paper tape

This had a key that allowed the deletion of
mistakes from the tape and copies by
punching a "non-print" code over the code
for the character erroneously typed.
Long passages of text could be deleted or
moved by literally cutting the tape and
pasting it back together.
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HISTORY
1961 IBM introduced the Selectric typewriter
Replaced the standard movable carriage and
individual type strikers with a revolving type ball
This could print faster than the traditional
typewriter.
1964 IBM brought out the MT/ST (Magnetic
Tape/Selectric Typewriter), which combined the
features of the Selectric with a magnetic tape drive.

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HISTORY

Magnetic tape was the first reusable

storage medium for typed information.
On the tape, information could be stored,
replayed, corrected, reprinted as many
times as needed, and then erased and
reused for other projects.
This development marked the beginning of
word processing as it is known today.
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HISTORY

It also introduced word processing as a

definite idea and concept.
The term was first used in IBM's marketing
of the MT/ST as a "word processing"
machine.
Since the invention of the MT/ST, advances
in technology have made word processing
systems less expensive to produce
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HISTORY

1969 IBM introduced MagCards, magnetic

cards that were slipped into a box
attached to the typewriter and recorded
text as it was typed on paper.
used to recall and reprint text
only about one page-worth of text could
be stored on each card.

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HISTORY

1972 Lexitron and Linolex developed a

similar word processing system, but
included video display screens and tape
cassettes for storage.
With the screen, text could be entered and
corrected without having to produce a
hard copy.

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HISTORY
Floppy disk marked a new stage in the evolution of
storage media.
Developed by IBM in the early 1970s for use in
data processing
Vydec, in 1973, seems to have been the first
manufacturer to produce a word processing
system using floppy disks for storage.
Previous storage media could only hold one or two
pages of text, but the early disks were capable of
holding 80 to 100 pages.
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HISTORY
Floppy disks could also be used to hold programs.
The most important advance in word processing was
the change from "hard wired" instructions built into
the machinery to software on disks.
When the programs were part of the equipment they
were difficult to change and expensive to upgrade.
Programs on disks could be updated more
economically, since a rewritten program could be
loaded into and used with the same hardware as the
old one.
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HISTORY

Disk programs made it practical to develop

packages for use with personal computers, first
made available in completely assembled form in
1977
the separation of the software from the
hardware also opened up the field to individuals
Word processing is now "one of the most
common general applications for personal
computers."

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HISTORY

Over the next ten years many new features

were introduced
One important innovation was the
development of spelling check and mailing
list programs.
Another advance, introduced by Xerox in its
Star Information System, allowed working on
more than one document at a time on the
same screen.
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HISTORY

Some programs now even incorporate

bookkeeping and inventory functions,
combining word processing with data
processing and completing the marriage of
the word processor to the computer.
The combined field is known as
information processing.

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END

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