A few days ago I was running through twitter when I saw Peter Cohen (@flargh) link to a blog post he had written about distraction free writing and the focused simplicity of a 30 year old word processor. Reading the article, I began to reflect upon the word processors that I — personally — have used over the past 35 years and it inspired me to write a little about a few of those that stand-out in my mind. (I should underscore the fact that this post is not meant to be a look at the overall evolution of the word processor, but a look back at my own experiences over the years.)
TI Writer on the TI-99/4A (1983) — My first computer, the TI-99/4A, was nice for games and educational programs, but wasn’t the ideal word processing platform. Wanting to start using a word processor for my school reports (6th grade), I made the obvious choice to go with TI Writer, a combination cartridge and disk program that output to a printer tied to the RS-232 interface card (if you had one). The TI could only generate a 40-column display, but TI Writer delivered a virtual 80-column page that could be viewed using a left, middle, and right panning window — a bit cumbersome, indeed. I had a Smith-Corona TP-1 daisywheel printer hanging off of that board’s parallel port and became one of the very first kids in my class to hand work in done on a home computer. (Screenshot shows the first 1/3 of the 80-column sample document I created for this post.)
Apple Writer II on the Apple //c (1984) — My next computer was the Apple //c which I got right after it launched in early 1984. And it had 80 column text! The go-to word processor at that time was Apple Writer II, which was simple but functional — a dream compared to TI Writer! I had an Apple ImageWriter printer for output. (Screenshot shows a document I recently found on my 32-year-old Apple Writer II data disk.)
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