Letters to the Editor
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the IBM Composer
Gang, I'm old enough that my first post-college job had me laying out a small trade newsletter with text I "typeset" on an IBM Composer (though the person who trained me called it the "compositor"). Typed in the text, printed out proportional-font, right-justified columns (with sub- and supertexts as needed--it required changing the Selectric-style ball out and back again, which the machine knew to stop for; more commonly I had to swap font balls back and forth for italics). Cut out the columns and pasted up the pages using a light board, hot wax, and a roller, and sent it to the printer to photoengrave the plates and print the newsletter, but that's just because it was a newsletter.
Because I also printed out some pretty darn fancy-looking regular old letters with the thing. Didn't take much longer than just typing them and the bosses loved that print-style look. Justified what they'd spent on the Composer.
This was 1980. The company had had the machine for years. Per this link, IBM introduced its first Composer in 1966.
http://www.mallasch.com/journalism/article.php?sid=1480
They were spendy, but if you had the budget and you wanted the pretty, you had one. The output looked pretty much EXACTLY like CBS's memos.
But a couple of people saying "I think it looks like a Word document" keeps trumping everyone who says we used to do it with stone knives and bearskins. But--we did. You could do things with that primitive, expensive, but perfectly mainstream equipment. (And in my high-school job I sold Imsais and Altairs! I remember the thrill when we first got the 64K expansion boards! Damn I'm old!)
AND all of this is a ridiculous diversion from the merits of the Bush National Guard story, which is sourced up the wazoo. I'm amazed at the right-wing blogosphere's ability to derail stories by saying "Hey, somebody said she had blue eyes, not brown, so you better stop reporting I had an affair with her." Because that's pretty much how this went, and now we're recapitulating it in this letter column.
I'd love to see a trial that laid out in public all the source material they had for this story. Bush has done so much worse than skip out on Guard duty by now, but, still. The way CBS dumped this story out of sheer--cowardice?--pandering?--remains disgraceful.