The Wang word processor hit the markets in 1976. Prior to that, there were other word processors, but I don't know anything about them.As I recall, the word processor that had the corner on the legal market at that time was Vydec -- a large, brutish machine whose biggest drawback was that each page had to be stored individually (no automatic pagination). If you forgot to save the page, you lost everything, and there was no way to get it back other than to retype it.
As I recall, the word processor that had the corner on the legal market at that time was Vydec -- a large, brutish machine whose biggest drawback was that each page had to be stored individually (no automatic pagination). If you forgot to save the page, you lost everything, and there was no way to get it back other than to retype it.
We got a Compugraphic word processor/typesetter for use in our newspaper's newsroom in the early 1980s, and they may have had some predecessor models available in the 1970s, though those machines were pretty crude.
I might accept the idea of a Compugraphic being in regular use in a USAF PAO office of the period, but probably not by a fighter squadron's clerk. Of course, it might also be possible that someone in a newsroom with some old equipment around might have been willing to help fake some anti-Bush *evidence*....
Timeline of a few technologies of the period, wordmanglers and otherwise:
1972Friden JustoWriter
Compugraphic 4961TL mini-computer with Intermec OCR paper tape keyboards
Varityper 1010 Cold Type composition system
1973
Compugraphic CompuWriter II with MagSet magnetic tape cassettes
Varityper headliner
1974
Compugraphic ACM 9000 area composition system
Mergenthaler VIP Variable Input Phototypesetter
CompStar 191 photosetter
Addressograph Multigraph 710 editing station with 64 character CRT
1975
Harris 2200 Display Ad workstations
Autologic APS CRT typesetter
Volt Information Sciences Yellow Pages pagination software
DEC PDP-8 minicomputers
1976
CCI-400 multi-terminal composition system with Lear Siegler dumb terminals and paper tape punches
Data General Nova 2 minicomputer running CCI OS
1977
Imsai 8080 microcomputer
Apple II personal computer
1978
Infomix text programming language
VisiCalc spreadsheet program
DEC PDP-8 timesharing system running RTOS real time operating system
Prime minicomputer running PRIMOS
Mergenthaler Linotron 202 CRT typesetter
Shaffstall media conversion system
Xerox 9700 laser printer
1979
DARPANET timesharing account
DEC VAX minicomputers running VMS
Information International Inc. VideoComp CRT typesetter
Penta minicomputer typesetting system
Kurzweil OmniFOnt OCR system
1980
Radio Shack TRS 100 color computer
Data General Nova 3 minicomputer running CCI OS and RDOS
CompuScan OCR system
C and Pascal programming languages