What gets me about this video, in addition to the obvious technological progress, is the social change.
First we’ve got the very visible Raquel Welch pinup. That obviously wouldn’t fly today and I’m a little surprised it did then.
But second, and this kind of blew my mind, the speaker seemed so proud of consuming 1,000 lbs of paper each day. In 2023, that almost seems more out of place than the pinup in a training film!
The Welch photo[1] seemed especially out of place to me because everything else in the video is so straight-laced. I don't see hardly any other personal items anywhere. That said, Raquel Welch held enormous cultural cache, equally admired by men and women (at least to hear it from both my parents). So if you're going to get away with any pinup of that era, she would be the one. Her obit in the times from earlier this year:
In 1973 few people, even at AT&T, had an always-on, interactive connection to a computer. Indeed, a lot of those machines were batch, not interactive. Even programmers would get a printout of the last run, along with errors, and go back to their desk to debug, then book time on the card machine or (if lucky) a terminal (as in ASR-33 printing terminals; there were a few video terms, but something like the DEC VT-52 hadn't been introduced and the VT-100 wasn't on the drawing board) to do the next iteration.
A decade later, when I was spending quality time in data centers, casual misogyny was still the norm.
Comments
What gets me about this video, in addition to the obvious technological progress, is the social change.
First we’ve got the very visible Raquel Welch pinup. That obviously wouldn’t fly today and I’m a little surprised it did then.
But second, and this kind of blew my mind, the speaker seemed so proud of consuming 1,000 lbs of paper each day. In 2023, that almost seems more out of place than the pinup in a training film!
The Welch photo[1] seemed especially out of place to me because everything else in the video is so straight-laced. I don't see hardly any other personal items anywhere. That said, Raquel Welch held enormous cultural cache, equally admired by men and women (at least to hear it from both my parents). So if you're going to get away with any pinup of that era, she would be the one. Her obit in the times from earlier this year:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/15/movies/raquel-welch-dead....
1. https://imgur.com/a/a0wK4sR
In 1973 few people, even at AT&T, had an always-on, interactive connection to a computer. Indeed, a lot of those machines were batch, not interactive. Even programmers would get a printout of the last run, along with errors, and go back to their desk to debug, then book time on the card machine or (if lucky) a terminal (as in ASR-33 printing terminals; there were a few video terms, but something like the DEC VT-52 hadn't been introduced and the VT-100 wasn't on the drawing board) to do the next iteration.
A decade later, when I was spending quality time in data centers, casual misogyny was still the norm.
Misogyny? We loved Raquel! Old dinosaur here.
I'm just plain impressed someone could actually recognize who that was. It's pretty blurry!