How did technology change your working day?

[handypandy]

Catching up on a bit of work today, I was musing to myself today about how far technology has come in my lifetime. In particular, the humble, basic pocket calculator. No, wait, don’t click off ! I’m 58 and as a young salesman back in the late 60’s, I can remember at the end of the office was the Comptometer office. A small office, out of bounds to us youngsters, where the three, elite office women with lightning fingers would operate these mysterious mechanical machines that did God knows what (to us mere mortals).

A couple or three years later, these revered machines, the size of a car engine with as many (if not more) moving parts, were consigned to the scrap heap. Their replacements, a crude if not dissimilar fore runner to the pocket calculator of today, at the time costing the equivalent today of a reasonably top end PC. The mind boggles. If you are of a certain age, how did the technological revolution change your working day?

[PopT]

The Comptometer certainly changed many lives as the Germans used them to count and record the thousands of inmates in the concentration camps.

 

Coming up to present day I remember going into the typing pool in a large steelworks where 30 to 40 girl typists were employed punching out letters on huge heavy typewriters which were very hard on the hads and fingers.

 

The noise in there was frightening as the hammers hit the keys at a fast rate of knots.

 

Better days today!

[Allen]

I remember the typing pool too.....

 

What about the switchboard, where all incoming calls were taken and put through to the relevant office by plugging in them with them extendable wire plug things (what were they called?)

[upinwath]

When I started working as a DJ I had a pair of cloud 9 decks and a massive pile of vinyl to break my back carrying around.

By the end that lot was down to a laptop computer in a small bag.

[biker]

Catching up on a bit of work today, I was musing to myself today about how far technology has come in my lifetime. In particular, the humble, basic pocket calculator. No, wait, don’t click off ! I’m 58 and as a young salesman back in the late 60’s, I can remember at the end of the office was the Comptometer office. A small office, out of bounds to us youngsters, where the three, elite office women with lightning fingers would operate these mysterious mechanical machines that did God knows what (to us mere mortals).

A couple or three years later, these revered machines, the size of a car engine with as many (if not more) moving parts, were consigned to the scrap heap. Their replacements, a crude if not dissimilar fore runner to the pocket calculator of today, at the time costing the equivalent today of a reasonably top end PC. The mind boggles. If you are of a certain age, how did the technological revolution change your working day?

 

I started work at Addo at the top of Glossop Road in 1970 and they sold electronic calculators.Up to that point they cost £600 and could only add,subtract,multiply and divide.By the end of 1973 they cost £40 and were pocket sized not desk size.As I used to repair them ,changing transistors etc,that was the end of my job there.They were then disposable.T.W.Wards had a large open office in their building on Savile Street with dozens tapping away.One problem with the fast typists using our calculators was that they flicked the keys too fast and on one model that introduced a zero which wrecked the calculations.

[PopT]

Plumbers have come along a long way even from my boyhood days. I remember plumbers working in lead, wiping pipe joints with a pot and ladle.

 

The apprentices had to take practical examintations in the workshops after mastering working with molten solder using wiping cloths.

 

Today plastic has replaced the old lead pipes and is so easy to cut, join and handle.

 

Happy Days! PopT

[flyer]

20yrs a builder of special purpose machines such as the little robot (plastic)from star wars fill his body with candy stick a label on his nose kick him out at the end, all at high speed ,all this was done with cam and lever never put a thing on paper,when people came in to copy my machines i would tell them take pictures its all in my head this all ground to a halt with the arrival of computers yuck yuck spit so i did the only thing a person could do , became a manager it took me a few days to get the finger snap down just right, got right in the end,now well retired but a snap and my wife does just as she wants.:hihi:

[Jabberwocky]

I went from pick and shovel to pnuematic drill to a JCB in the 80s, changed jobs and went to computers and from then on every job Ive had were with computers so from grafting hard all day I ended up sitting at a desk or in front of banks of CCTV screens.