Days of Yore: Office Equipment

As with so many other things, offices have changed a lot over the years. Ancient artists and writers used chisels and other instruments on rock. Cavemen chronicled their hunts and other events on cave walls. Eventually, people started using other materials such as papyrus, parchment, and eventually paper. Scribes copied down text by hand.

Image by Pavel Timofeev on Adobe Stock

Quill

Long before I was born, people used quills (made of large feathers) to write on paper. They had to keep their inkwell handy, as the quill didn't have ink in it, and they regularly had to dip the end of the feather in ink. Some quills had a metal tip. The man in the picture below is writing with one. (These days, they are hardly ever used, though if Harry Potter is to believed, wizards still use them.)

Fountain Pen

Eventually, fountain pens become more common, adding the new feature of ink inside the pen so it didn't have to be dipped regularly. It did have to be refilled from time to time, though. They were not typically made of feathers.

Image by Nomad_Soul on Adobe Stock

Typewriter

My grandpa and I had a running argument (in good fun) about whether the typewriter or computer was better. He insisted that his typewriter had always worked, and he didn't see why he should use a computer. He did comment once that he saw a typewriter in a museum that looked exactly like the one he still used. When I stayed at his house while I was in school, I enjoyed doing my homework on the typewriter because it was a novelty. But for me, being used to computers, it wasn't as efficient. (My grandpa eventually told me he wished he had been more willing to learn the computer, as he did realize near the end of his life that they are very useful.)

Typewriters had a roller on the back where you threaded the paper. There was a ribbon on a spool that you had to replace from time to time. They had the same keyboard (generally) as the average computer keyboard, but you had to push the keys a lot farther down, and it took more muscle. Each key had a corresponding striker that jumped up and hit the ribbon, placing ink on the paper in the shape of the letter you just typed. If you hit the key too hard, the striker could punch a hole in the ribbon, and sometimes the paper! Also, if you pushed too many keys at once, all the corresponding strikers would jump up and sometimes get stuck. If you made a mistake, you had a couple options: you could go back and type "####" over each letter that you accidentally typed, or you could move the paper up and put white-out over it to cover up the mistake, or you could go in after the fact and cross it out with a pen. Those options could end up looking messy, and the other option, which was neater but much more tedious, was to pull the paper out and completely retype everything on that page, hoping you wouldn't make another mistake. White-out came in a couple forms: a white fluid with a brush built into the lid of the bottle to brush the paint-like fluid over the text, or a roll that resembled white, opaque Scotch tape, but narrower, that you could draw over the text you wanted to hide. You had to give the fluid time to dry, but once you were done, you could go back and type over it. When you reached the end of a line, there was a lever that moved the roller and paper down a line and back to the other side of the paper.

For the most part, typewritten reading material looked like this.

Computer

Computers, so named because they compute, seemed much more practical to me than typewriters. I went over changes in computers here, so I won't go into great detail on how they have changed. However, I will say before I was born, they filled up a room and were very expensive. As they progressed they got much smaller, but still a good deal larger than they are now. These days, we can take laptops, tablets and cell phones with us most places we go. A small thumb drive can hold many times the data the massive computers of yesteryear could hold.

No more did we need to #### out mistakes, or white them out, or crumple up the sheet of paper, throw it in the trash, and retype everything. Now if we made a mistake, we could just hit Backspace or Delete. Computers offered so many more options. You can't play Mario Bros or Carmen Sandiego on a typewriter, now can you?

Calculator

I find it interesting that computers and calculators are not the same thing, but both words have similar meanings. Their root words, compute and calculate, are fairly synonymous. They have certain functions in common, as computers can also do math problems. Back in the day, though, an old-fashioned calculator was a lot more portable, and even if you had a computer handy, more practical for doing math.

Mimeograph, 1918
Life magazine
Public Domain

Mimeograph

I remember we had a mimeograph machine at our school when I was in elementary and middle school. I know that many have had varying feelings on machines replacing workers, but I can assure you that mimeographs do not do the function of a mime, and I doubt it could replace Marcel Marceau (though I imagine he may have used one from time to time). That's a mime-o-graph, and as far as I'm aware, it does not exist. It had a similar function to a photocopier, but involved a roller, and the copy was not the greatest quality. You could theoretically mimeograph pictures, but it came out very poor quality. At least in my experience, you could tell a mimeographed sheet because the ink was blue. At school, they generally used them to copy text, and sometimes we would get mimeographed quizzes. As I haven't used one or even seen one since the '80s (possibly early '90s), I forget how they worked, but I was able to use it at the time. 

Carbon Paper

Another way of making copies was using carbon paper. It was maybe half the thickness of a normal sheet of paper, and generally black or charcoal-colored, and glossy. You would put a sheet of paper on the table, put a sheet of carbon paper over it, then put another sheet on top. You could then write on the top sheet, and the pressure of your writing instrument would also place what you were writing on the bottom sheet thanks to the carbon paper in between. You could also thread a couple sheets into a typewriter with carbon paper in between to type two copies at once. If you were writing with a pen, you had to make sure to press hard to ensure that what you were writing would transfer onto the lower sheet. This was often used on contracts so you only needed to sign one sheet (and not again on other copies), and then you would keep a copy and the person you were doing the contract with would keep the other. It is still sometimes used with checks. These days, the word is generally used when you "cc" (carbon copy) someone in an e-mail. You can also "bcc" (blind carbon copy) people if you don't want your recipients to know who all is getting the e-mail.

Photocopier

In my lifetime, photocopiers have changed, but not as much as other machines. They generally produce higher quality copies now than they used to (especially with pictures), and some can now copy in color. They have also become more digital over the years. In my experience, they have always produced better copies than mimeographs.

Image by Nomad_Soul on Adobe Stock

Bookshelf

I covered books here, so probably don't need to repeat myself too much, but with ongoing automation and the internet, books aren't as common in offices as they used to be. The same goes for bookshelves. Someday I dream of having an office with a bookshelf that opens on a secret passage. I've never been in an office like that (as far as I know), but I love reading about them and seeing them in movies!

Filing Cabinet and Rolodex

I covered filing cabinets and Rolodexes here, but you don't see them in offices nearly as much these days as in the past, with computers, electronic files, and more people trying to conserve paper in an effort to help the environment. The Rolodex has largely been replaced by Microsoft Outlook on the computer, as well as cell phones.

Telephone

I covered telephones here. They were in just about every office in the past. Most offices still have them, but these days they are often built into the computer as software, rather than a physical device. It made the transition to working from home when COVID hit a lot simpler. It's also nice to be able to use headphones with a mouthpiece attached, rather than having to balance the receiver between my head and shoulder if I want to type with both hands!

Fax

I remember when we got our first fax machine (short for facsimile) in the Philippines. My mom was the secretary for our mission agency. Our office was in a Manila highrise, and while my brother and I watched the new machine in our office, the adults went to an adjoining office for another mission agency on the same floor. Pretty soon the fax machine came to life and a paper came out of it with a handwritten note saying something to the effect of "Hooray! It works!"

It was nice when we could fax things from our office for free. Most places charged per page, and that could add up. I'm kind of glad we don't use fax much any more, but it was pretty nifty. Early in my career, I had to fax timesheets at the end of each week. It was a challenge on the occasion where the person who approved the timesheet signed in red ink, which doesn't transmit well by fax.

Elevator

Storey time! (Get it? I'll see myself out.) While the elevator isn't exactly equipment, they have changed over the years. During my lifetime, they haven't changed much, but I once had a temp job in Seattle's Smith Tower, which still had the old-fashioned elevator with an attendant. (I hope they still do. It's an experience that I recommend.) Rather than pressing a button by the door, you would tell the attendant which floor, and they would turn a large crank to take you there. When I was younger, all elevators I used had buttons beside the door (inside the elevator) that you could press for the floor where you wanted to go. Outside the elevator, they have a button that you press to tell it whether you want to go up or down. (Side note: A fun conversation that sometimes happens in the Philippines: "Bababa ba?" "Bababa." ["Is it going down?" "It's going down."]) Most elevators are still like that. However, some of the newer ones have a bank of elevators, and the buttons are outside the elevator on the wall. You punch in the floor, and it tells you which elevator to go to when it arrives. It then whisks you where you need to go. As always, the elevator is a very uplifting experience, unless you're going down, which can be a bit of a downer!

Elevator Attendant, 1917
Martha Washington Hotel
Public Domain

These days, most of the above things can be done on a cell phone and/or computer. My phone has a scanning feature and a camera that often works really well for sending documents and other things that I would have photocopied, mimeographed or faxed in the past. With my Kindle and Audible apps on my phone and tablet, I can read and listen to books. I can file documents on the computer (and on my cell phone, though the computer is generally more efficient for that). While I still use pens (though not generally quills or fountain pens), I don't use them as much as I used to, though my phone has a stylus that works similar to a pen when I write on my screen. Not all phones have that. However, I have yet to see an elevator that operates by means of a cell phone. I imagine someday there will be an app for that.

Days of Yore: Telephones

Once upon a time, telephones only had one function, and they could not be taken everywhere. I realize this may be surprising to some people today. Years ago, people called others by picking up the receiver on the candlestick phone (so called because the phone was shaped rather like a candlestick). There was often no way to dial a person's number on the actual phone, so when the caller picked up the receiver and put it to their ear, the voice of the operator on the other side asked who they would like to call. The caller then spoke into the mouthpiece attached to the main body of the phone and asked them to connect them to the person they were calling. The operator would then connect them.

Businessman using a candlestick phone
1913

Telephone Operator at her switchboard
everettovrk on Adobe Stock

That was before my time, but there were some remnants. By the time I came around, people generally used the rotary phone. The numbers were arranged in a circle, with a hole over each number. You would put your finger in the hole for the first digit, dial it around, wait for the dial to go back into place, then repeat the process until you had dialed the whole number. (They still call it dialing, even though it isn't generally literal dialing any more.)

Rotary Phone
(This one is fancier than the
ones we generally used)
Photo by Himanshu Ranpara on Unsplash

I remember when we got touchtone phones. I thought they were cool! We didn't have to turn the dial and then wait for it to scroll back. We could just push buttons for the numbers. Dialing was faster!

Though I am told there weren't as many issues with party line in the '80s in the US, we had it in the Philippines, and I know it was a thing in previous decades in the US. With fewer phones in the world and only so many slots in the operator's switchboard, several houses were on the same connection. The individual phone number only went to one house, but sometimes we would pick up the phone and hear a conversation in progress at other houses. We had to hang up as quietly as possible so as not to disrupt the conversation, and wait for them to be done before making our call. Sometimes it took several times checking before they were done. (In an emergency, you could ask them to call each other back later, but that was generally considered rude, so I don't recall ever doing that.) It was a bit annoying at times. We also sometimes had to be careful what we said over the phone, in case someone at a different house happened to be listening in.

By the '90s, we still had a phone operator, but their role had changed considerably. By this time, they didn't just answer when you picked up the phone. If you wanted the operator, you had to dial "0". I generally called the operator when I wanted to find someone's phone number, particularly if they weren't in our city, and maybe weren't in our phone book.

Speaking of phone books, the phone company would deliver heavy brick-like phone books to our house annually. Most of the book had thin white pages with a long list of names and phone numbers, arranged alphabetically. It worked pretty well, unless several people had the same name. Good luck if you needed to call John Smith! The end of the book, the pages were yellow, and were thus called the yellow pages (I know, super imaginative name). They had phone numbers for businesses, and also included more information on the businesses, such as addresses and sometimes logos. Radio and TV commercials for USWest Dex phone books advertised that they were "The one that gets used." A choir in the ads sang, "Used! Used! This one gets used! This is the one that we use!" (or something like that) to the tune of the Anvil Chorus from Verdi's Il Trovatore.

As phones continued to advance, they introduced the wireless phone. This was very cool, as we didn't have to stay in one place due to the phone cord. I was jealous of people who had one. (One time I was talking to my friend Dan on the phone on April Fools Day and told him that we had one, following it up with "April Fools!" It was among my more lame April Fools jokes.)

When I was in high school in the mid-'90s, one of my friends in our choir had a new kind of phone that he carried with him. It was called a cellular telephone. The fact that he had one told me that he must be rich.

As cell phones became more popular, we started talking about cell phones and landlines to differentiate between cell phones and the old-school ones connected to the wall.

There were several phone companies. American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) went way back to 1885, way before my time. (In fact, some of my ancestors hadn't even immigrated to the US yet at that time.) There was USWest, which later became Qwest, which later merged with CenturyLink, which is now part of Lumen Technologies. When I got my first cell phone in 2000, I went to the VoiceStream kiosk in the middle of Northgate Mall (see my previous Days of Yore post about shopping). VoiceStream would later be purchased by T-Mobile. Bell Atlantic (named for Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone) and GTE merged into Verizon in 2000. T-Mobile acquired Sprint a few years ago. There were others.

Cell phones started out pretty large, about the size of your average brick. Nokia phones were known for being indestructible. Eventually, the Android came out. Previous to that, my only association with Androids was in Star Trek. (They were also called Droids, which I associated with Star Wars.) Somewhere around that time, Apple introduced the iPhone. Having never been a big Apple fan, I opted for Android, but people I know with iPhones love them. As smartphones started to eclipse "dumb phones", they got smaller. Then they started getting larger, as apps on the phones gave the option of watching shows, taking pictures, playing games, and more. Many "dumb phones" could take pictures. I remember taking pictures on my old flip phones. Some "dumb phones" also had the option of playing games. Smartphones, however, opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Read all of my Days of Yore posts so far and you'll see many of the ways I use mine. My grandpa was amazed at all the ways I used my telephone, when he just used his to call people.

Image by Sakurambo, Public Domain

Cell phones also gave the option of texting. They had the same arrangement of buttons as the touchtone phones, and the letters on them allowed for writing texts to people. At first texting was rather labor intensive. To type an A, you just needed to press 2. To type a C, you had to press 2 three times. To type an S, you had to press 7 four times. One of my last "dumb phones" had a nifty keyboard that you could pull out. That made texting easier. With the advent of smartphones, they had keyboards built in. That made texting considerably easier, though smartphones still prove to be not so smart when they decide their predictive text and autocorrect make much more sense than what you explicitly typed. 

Shockingly, I don't use the old style of phone any more. I use my cell phone! I sometimes even use it to call people. I have a candlestick phone that works (it is a bit more modern than the traditional ones, in that it has touchtone buttons arranged like a rotary phone), but it's mainly a decoration now. I bought it as a prop for a play. For a long time we used it in case our power went out and our other phones that depend on electricity didn't work. We don't even have a landline any more.