“An electronic substitute for the fountain pen” is not exactly how I’d pitch a new invention in 1980. The replacement for the fountain pen was the ball point. On the other hand, if any investors are interested in my new digital replacement for the 8-Track cassette, you know where to find me.
Hand-held Microwriter
If you can’t type, yet want to write perfect letters or memos without the help of a secretary, Microwriter could be the answer. It resembles a large pocket calculator, but has only five main keys, which fit the relaxed finger positions of your right hand. Individual alphabet letters are formed by an easily learned finger code, in which one or more keys are pressed for each character.
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Spell check your document in under four minutes!
The only complete document proofreading system: GRAMMATiK + PROOF READER = NO ERRORS
GRAMMATiK – Beyond Spelling Checking
PROOF READER – The Aspen Software Company Spelling Checker
For CP/M®, TRS-80®, and 8086/8088 Word Processors.
Don’t settle for a partial proofreading program. There are other spelling checkers available, but only Aspen Software offers a complete document proofreading system.
The Aspen Software Company spelling checker is Proofreader. We’ve been improving Proofreader since it was first released in early 1981. The newest version is fully menu driven, and so simple to use thai you probably won’t even need the comprehensive user’s manual that’s included. Read the rest of this entry »
The CDC 6000 series was designed by Seymour Cray.
How do you decide who gets priority on your computer?
new 6000 SERIES Systems make “priority” a thing of the past
YOU CAN MAKE EVERYBODY “FIRST IN LINE” — because the new CONTROL DATA® Series 6000 Systems do things differently than any other computers available today. Their massive memory and incredible speed allow simultaneous access by a number of different users with different programs.
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In 1982 Martin Amis, yes that one, wrote a book about video game culture called “Invasion of The Space Invaders”. In it he included a Steve Jobs quote from when he was still an Atari employee. It is classic Jobs:
“The computer,” says Atari’s Steve Jobs, “is one of the pinnacles of Western rational thought. They bring together physics, electronics, chemistry and mathematics; they bring logic, and philosophy, information theory, all that. And the people working on these computers possess a passion about the discovery and creation of something. It’s a passion that I have only seen matched in people pursuing what they consider to be the truth of their existence. It’s the same purity of spirit I have experienced in monks.”
Also check out his thoughts in this interview with Byte Magazine done when the Macintosh was introduced.
The hip young heroes of Atari, for instance, are convinced that they stand on the very brink of evolutionary breakthrough. The development of the video games is seen as roughly equivalent to mankind’s slow crawl from the primal broth of creation. Any day now, it seems, homo sapiens will once more be toweling himself down on the fresh dunes of tomorrow. “The computer,” says Atari’s Steve Jobs, “is one of the pinnacles of Western rational thought. They bring together physics, electronics, chemistry and mathematics; they bring logic, and philosophy, information theory, all that. And the people working on these computers possess a passion about the discovery and creation of something. It’s a passion that I have only seen matched in people pursuing what they consider to be the truth of their existence. It’s the same purity of spirit I have experienced in monks.” So perhaps the foul-mouthed, grimacing youths of the arcades aren’t just improving their geometrical and spatial awareness: what they’re really doing is searching for the meaning of life.
