The problem with a typewriter
A typewriter produced a finished page as you typed. That was its strength, and also its weakness. A mistake could be hidden with correction fluid or tape, but a larger change, such as adding a paragraph in the middle of a letter, often meant typing the whole page again. Business documents with several drafts, such as contracts, reports and form letters, could take a great deal of repeated typing.
Offices coped with this by organizing the work. Dictation and shorthand let managers speak or write rough notes, and typists, often grouped in a typing pool, turned them into clean copy. Carbon paper and later photocopiers handled duplicates. The skills of the typist, including speed, accuracy and layout, were considered valuable.
Machines that remembered what you typed
Starting in the 1960s, companies developed typewriters that could store keystrokes on magnetic media. IBM is widely associated with an early electric typewriter linked to magnetic tape, introduced in the mid-1960s, and the term “word processing” came into common use around that time. Because several firms and inventors worked on similar ideas, it is better not to treat any single machine as the origin of the whole field.
The key idea was separating the act of typing from the act of printing. A typist could record text, correct it, and then have the machine print a clean version. Revising meant changing only the parts that needed it. Early machines used magnetic cards, tape or later disks to store text, and the user typically saw the words on a small display or only on paper.
Dedicated word processors
In the 1970s, companies built machines intended only for word processing. These had a keyboard, a screen, a printer and storage, and they were sold to businesses, law firms and other organizations that produced a lot of text. They were expensive compared with a typewriter, so adoption was strongest in offices with heavy document loads.
These systems introduced several features that now feel ordinary:
- Text that could be edited on a display before printing
- Automatic wrapping of lines at the page margin
- Saving documents for later reuse, which suited form letters and standard contract language
- Insertion, deletion and moving of blocks of text
For some offices, a central word processing department took on the work that had been done in smaller typing pools. For others, individual secretaries worked at their own machines. Practices differed, and the effect on jobs was mixed, with some roles disappearing and others changing.
Software on general-purpose computers
When personal computers became affordable in the late 1970s and early 1980s, word processing programs for them appeared. Many early programs relied on commands and codes typed into the text, which took time to learn. Over the 1980s, programs improved, and the arrival of the graphical user interface moved toward what became known as “what you see is what you get”, in which the screen resembled the printed page.
A general-purpose computer could do other things as well, such as keep accounts or run spreadsheets, so a business did not need to buy a separate machine for each job. Over time, dedicated word processors lost ground to software, though some stayed in use for years in particular settings. Printer improvements, including laser printing, helped make the results look professional, and floppy disks made documents easy to carry and share.
Effects on work and writing
Revision became cheaper. When changing a sentence no longer meant retyping a page, writers and managers could revise more often. Some people felt this improved their writing; others said it encouraged endless tinkering. Research on whether it changes writing quality is mixed.
Typing became everyone’s job. As managers and professionals began to use keyboards themselves, the line between author and typist blurred. Secretarial roles shifted toward scheduling, communication and administration, and the old typing pool shrank in many organizations. The wider context for this change is discussed under office automation.
Formatting became part of the writer’s work. Fonts, margins and layouts, once the concern of printers or experienced typists, became choices that anyone could make, with mixed results in good taste.
Schools followed. Students began to type assignments, and keyboard skills joined the curriculum in many places.
What did not change
The QWERTY keyboard layout, designed for typewriters, carried over unchanged. Paper remained widely used, as printing became so easy that many people printed drafts to read them. And the aims of writing, such as clarity and getting a message across, were not changed by the tool.
A cautious summary
The shift from typewriters to word processors was gradual. It began with machines that stored typed text, moved through dedicated systems used mostly by large offices, and ended with software on personal computers. Each stage reduced the cost of making changes, and each altered who did the typing. As with many office technologies, the benefits were real but unevenly shared, and the effects on jobs were both helpful and disruptive depending on where one stood.