Almost immediately after we moved back to San Diego, Don and I decided to get a divorce. With the help of my brother and his wife, I bought a condo near Don's house. I started looking for a job, and soon found one at a company with Computer in its name, although the work I was doing as a technical writer didn't require me to use a computer. At first, I didn't even have any access to a computer.
Then, while I was working for a client of the company at a Navy research lab, we learned about a computer we could access directly, by phone line, and we decided that we'd set up a "paperless office," a dream that remains unfulfilled in any office I know of.
This particular computer was called a PDP-11. I don't know any of its technical capabilities, but I remember that to access it by phone, we used a 300-baud modem, which was so slow it was almost unbearable. However, the computer did have a CRT terminal and keyboard, instead of punch cards and reels of magnetic tape for input and output. My job was to type in the information for the projects we were working on, and format the documents so the manager could easily view them on his terminal. Formatting the documents was very tricky. It required including a lot of codes in the document for line indents, line spacing, and so on. And, of course, in the end, the documents always had to be printed and stored in file drawers. So much for the paperless office.
Then, while I was working for a client of the company at a Navy research lab, we learned about a computer we could access directly, by phone line, and we decided that we'd set up a "paperless office," a dream that remains unfulfilled in any office I know of.
This particular computer was called a PDP-11. I don't know any of its technical capabilities, but I remember that to access it by phone, we used a 300-baud modem, which was so slow it was almost unbearable. However, the computer did have a CRT terminal and keyboard, instead of punch cards and reels of magnetic tape for input and output. My job was to type in the information for the projects we were working on, and format the documents so the manager could easily view them on his terminal. Formatting the documents was very tricky. It required including a lot of codes in the document for line indents, line spacing, and so on. And, of course, in the end, the documents always had to be printed and stored in file drawers. So much for the paperless office.
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