Word Processors

The earliest wordprocessors were simply electronic typewriters which appeared in the 1970s. They had electronic keyboards (just like computer keyboards) and a display which would show one or two lines of text. You would type a single line and it would be displayed on the screen. If the line you had entered was correct then, by pressing "Return", the line was typed on to the paper.

The second generation of word processors were really the predecessors of today's micro-computers. They came with three software packages: Wordstar for Editing, Lotus-123 for spreadsheets and DBaseIII for database. Assembly Language compilers like Cobol, Basic and Fortran were separately available.

The problem with these machines was that they did not have a Mouse so one had to remember hundreds of commands which were executed through "control codes" so they were really not very popular.

Windowing operating systems changed all that though MS Word, Excel and Access were actually just clones of Wordstar, Lotus123 and DbaseIII.

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