Dyer retired
Gold Member
Bird,
The only reason I liked the IBM selectric was because of the carbon ribbon, but you either got a good one of those machines or a lemon. I think they were the first completely assembled by machined production line (no human hands until inspection) to be produced? I remember the Pharmacy I worked at in H.S. got a brand new selectric that was acting up. It turned out that they had tried to sell the Pharmacy a refurbished machine at a new price (I seem to recall them being pretty pricey even for back then?) Needless to say, IBM made good and feigned any knowledge of this machine not being brand new, but I suppose they got away with it more than they got caught.
When I graduated the Academy, we had to do everything in triplicate using the old carbon paper. Talk about making a guy slow down on typing and learning to hate reports. Of course, if you made a mistake, the "white out" worked for the original copy, but massacred the other two copies. The harder you tried, the worse it got....start all over. It always ended up, pre-FLSA, that you ate the time and ended up doing all your reports on your own time. I laugh now because young Troopers in 20 years will be saying, "Hey, are you old enough to remember when they had those things called pagers?" State Police here just got rid of all pagers and are transitioning to Blackberries, so technology I used is already headed for the museum. I wouldn't have changed a thing....except maybe for the pay, ha!
This may shock you, but my BX 1800 does not have a PDA, pager, Cell phone, GPS, radar, metal detector, side seeking sonar, or "On-Star" set up. Not sure how long I can hold out, but I try not to stray too far from the driveway with it, so I should be o.k. for a while.
Dyer, retired and feeling old
The only reason I liked the IBM selectric was because of the carbon ribbon, but you either got a good one of those machines or a lemon. I think they were the first completely assembled by machined production line (no human hands until inspection) to be produced? I remember the Pharmacy I worked at in H.S. got a brand new selectric that was acting up. It turned out that they had tried to sell the Pharmacy a refurbished machine at a new price (I seem to recall them being pretty pricey even for back then?) Needless to say, IBM made good and feigned any knowledge of this machine not being brand new, but I suppose they got away with it more than they got caught.
When I graduated the Academy, we had to do everything in triplicate using the old carbon paper. Talk about making a guy slow down on typing and learning to hate reports. Of course, if you made a mistake, the "white out" worked for the original copy, but massacred the other two copies. The harder you tried, the worse it got....start all over. It always ended up, pre-FLSA, that you ate the time and ended up doing all your reports on your own time. I laugh now because young Troopers in 20 years will be saying, "Hey, are you old enough to remember when they had those things called pagers?" State Police here just got rid of all pagers and are transitioning to Blackberries, so technology I used is already headed for the museum. I wouldn't have changed a thing....except maybe for the pay, ha!
This may shock you, but my BX 1800 does not have a PDA, pager, Cell phone, GPS, radar, metal detector, side seeking sonar, or "On-Star" set up. Not sure how long I can hold out, but I try not to stray too far from the driveway with it, so I should be o.k. for a while.
Dyer, retired and feeling old