The Perfect Marriage Word Processing & the Web

Almost a natural Looking at the early computers we see a keyboard and a display… What was missing was a way to put words on the screen at will. A keyboard….. Just like a typewriter… A screen, almost paper. A way to store the words. A way to change the words.

Just like a Pencil Write, erase and file. That is what we did before the computer. Writing was a task Editing was worse Rough draft Final draft

Why did it take so long to invent the telephone? … there was no one to call…

Electric Pencil, 1976 Having never heard of a "word processor", Michael Shrayer thought he should be able to use his computer to write documentation for programs he had written. He wrote the Electric Pencil for the Altair in December 1976, and the version for the Sol-20 became especially popular. (Wikipedia)

No software business… Or computer stores for that matter. There was no market, even for a good idea. Michael did not continue development so others picked up the ball. From 1976-78, Apple’s computer went from a kit to a full blown computer.

Printers were crude Printers were noisy, the paper was pin fed in large sheets that had to be torn apart. The printed image was made of tiny dots, hence the dot-matrix printer. Printer ribbons were messy and expensive and the darn print heads wore out, usually when you really needed something printed.

1984 & 1985 Two important inventions and the end of the neighborhood printshop

The Macintosh The Macintosh computer was introduced in 1984. There had been personal computers for about a decade, but this one had a GUI. GUI stands for “What you see is what you get” Not really, it stands for Graphic User Interface

Why important? For the first time word processors showed the user what the finished product would look like. It became “desktop publishing” The WYSIWIG made it easy to create beautiful documents on the screen.

Big Deal, you say? The best is yet to come. On the heels of the first Macintosh came the first personal laser printer, the Apple LaserWriter

The LaserWriter Made true publishing quality printing available to everyone with a Mac and printer. Brochures, menus, playbills and whatever else needed printing could be created on a Mac, printed on a LaserWriter and duplicated in the office. Saved enough to make it practical.

My Take… This changed the print shop, a place where invitations and brochures were set up and printed, to a copy shop where banks of copiers reproduced Macintosh/LaserWriter output. Some of them even had computers in the shop that you could put your disk in. (Remember disks?)

Never the Same Creating newsletters, schedules and anything that took print shop setup before, now could be done on a computer. We got used to this quickly and never looked back.

Word Processors From the WYSIWIG Mac, the PC looked antique. Quickly Windows became graphical and all word processing became WYSIWIG. Word processors all began to look the same, a lot like MS Word. Microsoft piled features on it until it became bloated, but excellent.

Great Product Word is the center-piece of a great set of apps call Microsoft Office. Office became an important profit center for Microsoft. They even make a Mac version. Office clones, although quite good, never caught on. I think because they are the same wine, but in a new bottle.

Enter Google Docs Word Processing on the web started slowly but its lightning fast growth has been astounding. Google bought Writely, an online word processor in 2005 and teamed it with its own, highly inadequate but interesting, spreadsheet to create Google Docs. (Wikipedia)

Cost Trumps Features… Google never promised massive feature rich program, but it is free. Features are added regularly and the Google docs get better every day. Millions of users praise new features and say ho hum to missing features. I don’t know how you can have a word processor that won’t merge with data, ho hum.

We Have Saved A Fortune Not paying for Docs has been a boon to schools and other institutions. The added benefit of not paying for storage or updates and you have perfect storm. Even Microsoft has an online office product that is… free. (just late)

What is the Lesson Word Processing was made for the computer, or vice versa. The computer was made for the web. The marriage of the word processor and the web is Google docs. We don’t even have to buy in. (It is free.)