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TV-like machines replace secretaries

Broadcast Date: Aug. 26, 1978

There are no secretaries at this Canadian National Railway office. No typewriters, either. Management has replaced the old-fashioned machines with time-saving "word processors." These green-screened machines, operated by specially-trained staff, resemble small television sets with keyboards. Operators perform twice the work of one secretary using a standard typewriter. With the new invention, entire paragraphs can now be moved around within one document and mistakes erased by backspacing and retyping.

TV-like machines replace secretaries

• Word processors, computer systems for electronically editing, displaying and storing text using a keyboard, were first used in Canadian offices in the late 1970s. Magazines advertised assembly-required personal computers for the home in the early 1970s.
• The PC's first word processing program, written by programmer Michael Shrayer in 1976, was called the Electric Pencil.

• In 1642, France's Blaise Pascal created an outline for an early computer called a "digital calculating machine."
• Computers were used in the Second World War by the German, British and American armies to crack secret codes.
• In 1965, an American computer system called the National Data Center created anxiety about privacy loss and civil liberties infringement. People worried it would create a dystopian state abusing personal information.

• Computers accelerated the sharing of information, especially by way of the Internet, which in some cases has contributed to stock market uncertainty, such as the 1998 Asian Crisis.
• Scelbi (SCientific, ELectronic and BIological), the first advertised personal computer, was created in Milford, Connecticut in 1974 and contained one kilobyte of memory.
• In 2002, a powerful home PC had one gigabyte (1 million kilobytes) of RAM (random access memory.)

Also on August 26:
• 1875: English novelist John Buchan is born. As Baron Tweedsmuir, Buchan would become Canada's 15th governor general in 1935. He institutes the Governor General's Awards for literature in 1936.
• 1958: The Board of Broadcast Governors is established to independently regulate broadcasting in Canada, after the passing of the Broadcast Act. Up to this point, the CBC had regulated the industry.

• 1991: Canada extends full diplomatic recognition to the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Canada never recognized the 1940 Soviet annexation of the Baltic states and had not retained diplomatic ties because of the overwhelming control exercised by the Soviet Union.

TV-like machines replace secretaries

Medium: Television

Program: The National

Broadcast Date: Aug. 26, 1978

Guest(s): Caroline Lai, Stan Lewis, Bill Mackenzie

Reporter: Robert Fisher

Duration: 2:44

Last updated:
March 8, 2010