My Age and the Internet
Admitting yesterday that I'm no mechanic started me on the route of what I'm not too bad doing and that sent me down memory lane.
I completed a 13 week intensive secretarial training course in Autumn 1979, where the most exciting thing was when I was finally (in my last week) allowed to use an IBM Golfball typewriter. I thought I'd arrived!
In my first full-time job though, I was faced with quite a challenge - a Sagem Telex machine. On this I was expected to type ships' manifests onto ticker tape, & this was transmitted to a few different places including head office. In a short time, I was an expert at reading the tape and could easily amend any errors. Some years later, I temped in a Building & Construction company in Dublin, where I spied a Sagem telex in a corner. It had arrived but no-one had the confidence to try it so it had sat for the better part of a year - unused - so I taught everyone in the office what this 'amazing' machine could do. Sometimes I really do find it hard to believe but I've been using a computer for most of the past 30+ years.
I remember my boss in another company watching me as I typed - very simple reason for this:
it was suggested to him that the reason over half the files had disappeared on the 5712 over the Christmas holiday period was because I typed 'too fast'. Actually there was a problem with the software & as far as I know that company went under because of the claims against it.
In another company, there was a telex but when it was switched on, you typed live, which was awesome as I worked in a stockbrokers' where the numbers could be very big and a decimal point was vital. Actually here the telex was one of the originals apparently and to change from letters to numbers required pressing hard on a specific lever to allow use of the numbers keys, and then pressing again to change back to the regular keyboard! The stuff of nightmares, even now, more than 30 years later.
So I may be a disaster when it comes to matters mechanical (as per yesterday's post) but I often wonder if I could still use any of those 'prehistoric' machines now.
Tonight sees the inaugural West Cork Food & Wine Society dinner in The Celtic Ross Hotel. (Review tomorrow all going well).
Until then
Avril
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| www.telemuseum.org/images/sagem-teleprinter-tx20.jpg |
Admitting yesterday that I'm no mechanic started me on the route of what I'm not too bad doing and that sent me down memory lane.
I completed a 13 week intensive secretarial training course in Autumn 1979, where the most exciting thing was when I was finally (in my last week) allowed to use an IBM Golfball typewriter. I thought I'd arrived!
In my first full-time job though, I was faced with quite a challenge - a Sagem Telex machine. On this I was expected to type ships' manifests onto ticker tape, & this was transmitted to a few different places including head office. In a short time, I was an expert at reading the tape and could easily amend any errors. Some years later, I temped in a Building & Construction company in Dublin, where I spied a Sagem telex in a corner. It had arrived but no-one had the confidence to try it so it had sat for the better part of a year - unused - so I taught everyone in the office what this 'amazing' machine could do. Sometimes I really do find it hard to believe but I've been using a computer for most of the past 30+ years.
I remember my boss in another company watching me as I typed - very simple reason for this:
it was suggested to him that the reason over half the files had disappeared on the 5712 over the Christmas holiday period was because I typed 'too fast'. Actually there was a problem with the software & as far as I know that company went under because of the claims against it.
In another company, there was a telex but when it was switched on, you typed live, which was awesome as I worked in a stockbrokers' where the numbers could be very big and a decimal point was vital. Actually here the telex was one of the originals apparently and to change from letters to numbers required pressing hard on a specific lever to allow use of the numbers keys, and then pressing again to change back to the regular keyboard! The stuff of nightmares, even now, more than 30 years later.
So I may be a disaster when it comes to matters mechanical (as per yesterday's post) but I often wonder if I could still use any of those 'prehistoric' machines now.
Tonight sees the inaugural West Cork Food & Wine Society dinner in The Celtic Ross Hotel. (Review tomorrow all going well).
Until then
Avril
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