Article by Hon Member David Bradley

Transformation means different things depending on the focus area under review.

Folk interested in history of communication enjoy watching some excellent shows on TV covering analysis of ancient civilizations.  The decoding of ancient hieroglyphs continues in various parts of the globe.

Having just had Remembrance Day in 11th November; one of the items that we were reminded of was decoding of classified military secret messages.

When we started RC Waterfront we actually called the Club Secretary the Captain’s Writer.  (The crew Member of a vessel that assisted the Captain with correspondence and the never ending paper-work of signing on and off of crew members; controlling the pay records and manifests of cargo etc.)

The huge transformation began when Johannes Gutenberg pioneered the printing press around 1436.  Prior to those days books were written and copied by hand.  From the manual setting up of letters the next evolution was the Sholes and Glidden manual typewriter in 1870 that brought new-found document production to the office.  Carbon paper had been patented by Ralph Wedgwood in 1801 and we were on the road to office automation.

Adding a motor took touch typing to new heights with the electric typewriter.  Word processing began when the old office typing pool in which several typists spent their working day typing correspondence, was equipped with keyboards and the documents were stored on a dedicated computer.  Wang was one of makers that took the City of Cape Town into the new world.  It also led to the first data loss because of faulty back-up more than a year’s work was lost.  This led to an immediate relocation of the Wang in the Information Tech space that at the time only ran financial systems on main-frame computers on behalf of treasury.

Where to now – wait for the next chapter?