|
Gizmos by Category Geiger Counters & Atomic Stuff
|
|
Dusty Navigation
More Gizmos A - Z Philatector Watermark Detector Philips LFH0084 Dictating Tape Sinclair Micromatic Kit (Unbuilt) Sony Mavica FD7 Digital Camera |
`
|
All information on this web site is provided as is without warranty of any kind. Neither dustygizmos.com nor its employees nor contributors are responsible for any loss, injury, or damage, direct or consequential, resulting from your choosing to use any of the information contained herein. Copyright (c) 2006 - 2021 dustygizmos.com |
With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to see how fast
things changed in the 70s and 80s, when it came to the written word. Before then
writing was basically something the vast majority of people did with pens and
paper. Others learned to type, either out of necessity or
because it was a part, or all of their job description. Nowadays we are all familiar with QWERTY keyboard, and even if our typing skills are limited to hunt-and-peck, we get there in the end. It was, of course, all thanks to computers and, more specifically,
word processing software, the latter arguably one of, if not the most important
developments in human communications since the invention of the printing press. 
The Sharp PA-3100 shown here dates from the mid 80s. It’s a
mains-powered portable housed in a tough carry case with a folding handle. It
has a Daisy Wheel printer mechanism but only relatively rudimentary
electronics, compared other models on the market, and what was to come. In
addition to controlling the Daisy Wheel the electronics provide several extra
functions, like the 150 character memory. This is enough for its auto
correction system to backtrack the Daisy Wheel and erase up to a single line of
text (using a separate spool of white correction tape). It does have a few
other tricks up its sleeve, rarely, if ever found on older mechanical or
electric typewriters. Like Golfballs a Daisy Wheel can be changed to switch fonts and
character sets. It also has adjustable and proportional character spacing, text
centering, automated super and subscript printing and single or ‘code’ key
formatting options that would otherwise involve a lot of faffing around on a
manual or electric typewriter. It uses a disposable carbon film printer ribbon
cartridge producing up to 50,000 letter-quality characters for really sharp
looking documents. Incidentally, film ribbon cartridges were quite popular for
a while until some bright spark pointed out that they had a fatal security
flaw. Documents could be easily recovered simply by extracting and literally reading the ribbons from
discarded cartridges…
The lack of more advanced word-processing type features was almost
certainly a deliberate marketing ploy. It seems clear that the PA-3100 was
aimed specifically at typists who, for one reason or another, were not ready or
willing to make the big jump to word processing. That’s not as shortsighted as
it sounds, as at the time most WP software was decidedly user-unfriendly. It
usually required a great deal of training in the dark arts of early computers,
most of which had text-based command interfaces. In other words no mice
or easy to understand graphical desktops, just lots of codes and keyboard shortcuts to do
even the simplest things to the text on (mostly green) monitor screens.
I came across this SP-3100 at a local car boot sale and the
outwardly pristine condition, accompanying cartridges and instruction manual
prompted me to ask the stallholder how much? It would have been rude to haggle over the £3.00 asking price, and I wasn’t surprised when I got it
home to find that it was little used and in perfect working order. My guess was
it was either bought by a novice typist, mistakenly thinking ‘Electronic’ meant
something more elaborate, or it was a temporary stopgap or backup machine
for someone waiting for the price of PCs, word processors printers and software to fall, which it did, really quickly, thanks to the likes of Amstrad, Atari, the BBC, Commodore, Dell, Hewlett Packard and IBM to name just a few of the eighties leading lights.