Happy birthday IBM Selectic

[shenley]

IBM's Selectric typewriter (the golf ball typewriter) is 50 years old this Sunday. IBM chips in with Golfball anniversary ? reghardware. These really were revolutionary devices and when I started out in IT, all of the secretaries had one and loved them. I

[unixman]

Ah the Selectric! I really wanted one of those when I was at uni in the late 1970s but I couldn't afford one. It would have made typing my thesis much easier. I purchased a Royal KMM of 1939 vintage, which I still have and it still works perfectly. What a shame I don't use it very often. I wonder how many thousands of pages it had typed over the years? I have an Adler Tippa too. Both the Royal and Adler are manual typewriters and hard work if you use them all day. They used to breed secretaries tough in the manual era! It's all far too easy these days; type your letter into any word processing package and not only will it check the spelling to you, but the grammar too (assuming that you trust the grammar algorithm).

 

What is the other machine "Miss Jones" using in the main article picture?