The Origins of Word Processing and Office Automation

Remembering the Office of the Future: The Origins of Word Processing and Office Automation Thomas Haigh University of Wisconsin Word processing entered the American office in 1970 as an idea about reorganizing typists, but its meaning soon shifted to describe computerized text editing. The designers of word processing systems combined existing technologies to exploit the falling costs of interactive computing, creating a new business quite separate from the emerging world of the personal computer. Most people first experienced word processing using a word processor, we think of a software as an application of the personal computer. package, such as Microsoft Word. However, in During the 1980s, word processing rivaled and the early 1970s, when the idea of word process- eventually overtook spreadsheet creation as the ing first gained prominence, it referred to a new most widespread business application for per- way of organizing work: an ideal of centralizing sonal computers.1 By the end of that decade, the typing and transcription in the hands of spe- typewriter had been banished to the corner of cialists equipped with technologies such as auto- most offices, used only to fill out forms and matic typewriters. The word processing concept address envelopes. By the early 1990s, high-qual- was promoted by IBM to present its typewriter ity printers and powerful personal computers and dictating machine division as a comple- were a fixture in middle-class American house- ment to its “data processing” business. Within holds. Email, which emerged as another key the word processing center, automatic typewriters application for personal computers with the and dictating machines were rechristened word spread of the Internet in the mid-1990s, essen- processing machines, to be operated by word tially extended word processing technology to processing operators rather than secretaries or electronic message transmission. To the casual stenographers. Quickly, however, the term observer, word processing might thus appear to acquired a more specialized meaning to refer be among the most creative and important appli- almost exclusively to computerized text editing cations originated by the personal computer. systems aimed at office applications. But in fact word processing was already the Computerized word processing does not fit center of a thriving industry well before the the conventional concept of a distinct inven- personal computer gained general acceptance tion, attributable to a particular time, place, and in business. Historians have not yet explored brilliant mind. The creation of a distinct market word processing’s development, and so to pro- for computerized word processing systems dur- vide a rounded treatment, I examine the story ing the early 1970s was more a matter of repack- from multiple perspectives. I review the con- aging, integrating, and marketing technologies ceptual development of word processing and already devised for different purposes. Word office automation; the development of word processing software’s core technical capabilities processing’s constituent hardware and software were taken from text editors, used to manipu- technologies; the relationship of word process- late program code on time-sharing computer ing to changes in the organization of office systems since the 1960s. Word processing sys- work; and the business history of the word pro- tems also drew on techniques in a number of cessing industry. broader, longer established fields in which computers were used to store, retrieve, index, and Word processing: Overview format textual information. Word processing’s origins are complex and During the 1970s, the falling cost of inter- various: Consider the genesis of the term word active computer access made it practical to processing. Today, when someone talks about apply the same techniques to ordinary admin- 6 IEEE Annals of the History of Computing Published by the IEEE Computer Society 1058-6180/06/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE istrative work, meaning that word processing’s invention as a new computer application was more a matter of marketing than of any software breakthrough. During the 1970s, the first widely used computerized word processing systems were not application programs for general- purpose personal computers but minicomputer- based systems and special-purpose computer packages dedicated to clerical work. By the end of the 1970s, when someone spoke of purchas- ing a “word processor,” he or she would have most likely been referring to a specialized computer system such as Wang Labs’ Word Processing System. Only later did people begin to assume that a word processor was a program rather than a machine. Figure 1. Steinhilper’s chart, which he claims to By the late 1970s, the computer industry was have devised in 1955, reflects his original sense of promoting a new vision—office automation— word processing as a concept that would put of which word processing was just a small part. IBM’s Office Products Division on an equal footing The most advanced word processing systems of with its Data Processing Division. (Courtesy of the early 1980s, such as the famous-in-retro- Ulrich Steinhilper.) spect Xerox Star, were created not as self-con- tained applications for stand-alone personal tion of personal computers in the early 1980s computers but as office automation systems for triggered a 10-year detour away from the net- networked workstations. In the paperless office worked office model being promoted by the of the future, a multifunction networked work- leading office automation equipment suppliers station with word processing, email, and graph- of the period. In a pair of articles elsewhere in ical and voice capabilities would sit on the desks this issue, Tim Bergin details the history of per- of every manager and every professional. sonal computer word processing packages; con- I argue that office automation represented a sequently, my analysis here is confined to a decisive break with the earlier concept of word sketch comparing their abilities with those of processing, based as it was on the segregation earlier specialized systems. of document preparation in the hands of specialist clerical workers. However, office automa- Invention of word processing tion ran into technological, economic, and The phrase word processing was nowhere to social problems. Workstations were expensive, be found in 1960s office management or com- while managers and professionals proved a puting literatures, though many of the ideas, more elusive target than typists for office effi- products, and technologies to which it would ciency experts. These systems were not widely later be applied were already well known. By adopted, but the broader vision of the elec- 1972, however, discussion of word processing tronic office they represented was eventually was common in publications devoted to office realized when personal computer hardware and management and technology, and by the mid- software matured in the mid-1990s. 1970s the term would have been familiar to Instead of adopting specialist office work- any manager who regularly consulted general- stations, most companies gradually shifted interest business periodicals. Word processing from word processing systems to stand-alone paralleled the more general data processing, personal computers. These spread word pro- which since the 1950s had been the standard cessing power more broadly, shifting editing term used to describe the application of com- work from word processing centers into the puters to business administration.2 hands of department secretaries and, increas- Coinage of word processing is usually attributed ingly, of managerial and professional workers. to Ulrich Steinhilper, a German IBM typewriter Far from breaking new technical ground, the sales executive. In his memoir, Steinhilper wrote leading personal-computer word processing that he devised the concept in the mid-1950s programs of the late 1970s and 1980s—such as and promoted it for many years within IBM’s EasyWriter, WordStar, and MultiMate—merely Office Products Division. He submitted the dia- gave an increasingly good imitation of the gram shown in Figure 1 to IBM’s internal sug- more expensive and capable special-purpose gestion program, receiving just 25 Deutsch systems. From this perspective, the prolifera- Marks and a reply that the idea was “too com- October–December 2006 7 Remembering the Office of the Future plicated to explain.” According to Steinhilper, lished a bimonthly magazine-within-a-maga- the term finally caught on after he used it in a zine devoted to word processing, its publishers 1966 speech to senior Office Products Division launched a separate twice-monthly newslet- managers gathered at the Miami meeting of the ter—Word Processing Reports—to spread news of Hundred Percent Club of successful IBM sales- developments in the field, and its editor, Walter people where he lobbied, unsuccessfully, for A. Kleinschrod, published a small book on the Word Processing as a new name for the entire subject in conjunction with the American Office Products Division. In 1971, once the con- Management Association.5 Other publications cept finally gained traction, Steinhilper was rushed to offer their own reports on the new awarded an Outstanding Achievement Award field, and within a few months, a cluster of and a trip around the world for having conferences, organizations, and consulting authored and promoted it. It had particular operations had grown up devoted to word appeal to typewriter salespeople within IBM as a processing.6

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