Dropped out of NYU Grad. Film School (1980). Worked on independent movies until I went broke. With no money coming in, took a typing test. Was placed at large PR firm. They offered me steady work. I became first male secretary.
For the first time in my life, I become so depressed that I seek out psychiatric help.
I stay at PR firm for about a year. What I remember best – how kind the “real” secretaries were to me. I was the fifth in the group of five secretaries and when they saw how awful it was for me to be a “servant” to bosses who were younger than me: Dave, we have a meeting with the client at 10:15. Make sure we’ve got bagels and coffee. You know – the usual thing.”
It was easy enough to order the platter. Or have the in-house staff make it up. But I found it difficult to walk into the conference room and “serve.” Sometimes, one of the other secretaries (Marla or Trish) would do this for me. Or give me some tip that I needed to know.
This picture wasn’t of any of the secretaries in my group. Though as the time machine continues to go backwards, I will turn up some of those as well.
What is that remarkable machine the secretary is working on? It has a keyboard like a computer and a slot for paper like a printer. Very cool.
Les. She was using the predecessor to the computer, called a printcom or as it was commonly known, a selectric. It was half computer and half printer. The idea was that when you clicked the keyboard, a cpu that was embedded in a little metal sphere, would spin to the correct place and make a print of the individual letter, one letter at a time by pressing the raised letter against a strip of inked cloth.
More interesting (click to see the larger view) is that there’s a dictionary on the desk. That was a large book that told you what words meant.
I’ve heard of dictionaries, but I thought they were just ancient forms of spell check.
But if we can’t spell it, how do we look it up! that was the cry from us kids back in the 60′s, trying to have the teacher spell it for us. Really enjoying this early work Dave.
I always enjoy your photo-archeology, Dave!
I believe your comment about how kind the [women] secretaries were to you. As a young, liberal guy back in the 70′s, I always tried to treat them with respect, and I found that most of them were very capable and always helpful. (BTW, even now, as an old, curmudgeonly conservative, I try to treat everyone with respect.)
At the International Projects Dept (turn-key power plants) of GE at Lex & 51st, we actually had an IBM product that was a Selectric coupled to a special-purpose computer about the size of a standard file drawer standing on its short side. You fed it magnetic cards, and it was supposed to record what you typed and allow you to go back and make corrections. No video screen involved, you just were supposed to line things up on the typewriter platen. This was about 1978, and I believe the product was called “Magnetic Card Selectric Composer.”
Trying it out to type part of a technical proposal one weekend, I found it to be one of the most frustrating devices I’ve ever used… feh!
I have some slides I took during those years working at GE – you’re inspiring me to (a) find them and (b) scan them and maybe (c) put them on my blog as photo-archeology.