> On Jul 8, 2016, at 3:43 PM, Fred Cisin <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 8 Jul 2016, Paul Koning wrote:
>> I may have missed it, but I haven't seen the IBM MT/ST mentioned. That's
>> certainly a rather old system, dating back to 1964 according to Wikipedia,
>> which says it's the oldest word processor (and references an article about
>> WP history).
>
> The original post that started this thread referred to a URL
> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/how-to-write-a-history-of-writing-software/489173/?platform=hootsuite
>
> It suggested that one significant contender for that author's "FIRST author
> to write a book on a word processor" was Len Deighton. In the late 1960s he
> bought one. He wrote first drafts on his typewriter, then his secretary,
> Ellenor Handley, retyped it into his MT/ST and edited it there.
> Specifically, a novel entitled "Bomber", published in 1970.
>
> If the MT/ST was released in 1964, then even with its high price, it seems
> odd that so many years would go by before anybody used it for a book
> manuscript.
I can think of any number of reasons. $10k, in 1964? That's half a house.
Its user interface may have been ill suited for the job; after all it was
designed for business documents. Finally, the tape capacity was 25 kbytes,
which is only a few percent of the size of a typical book. Len Deighton was a
very successful writer by 1970; he may have decided to spend piles of money on
a new tool because he could. But few writers strike it rich; they'd buy a
good typewriter because it's a mandatory tool, but few would want to spend more
than that.
paul
