Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter

Nowadays anyone can have a pretty powerful word processor in their web browser and before that the likes of Microsoft Word and Wordstar were essential software installed on millions of computers. But before the electronic word processor there was of course the typewriter, with companies having rooms full of typists typing away. Typewriters had a number of disadvantages (apparently). To amend a document (to fix some typos or change some details like a date or address) often meant it had to be typed out again entirely. However, there was a technology developed by IBM which could solve this problem.

The Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter was a version of the highly popular IBM Selectric electric typewriter and was the first device to be marketed as a word processor in 1964. The MT/ST stored documents on magnetic tape. Each tape cartridge could store up to 25K which doesn't sound a lot these days but was perfectly adequate for a page of text. Later on IBM released the MagCard system, these were punched card sized magnetic cards which could store up to 8, 000 characters.

Documents could be edited by the typist by loading the document onto the typewriter (which being electric could print it out from storage) and then the typist would amend the document by crossing out or overwriting text. These changes were then stored on the tape cartridge or card. Once the edits had been made onto draft copies then the final version could be printed out on the nice paper. With two drives even mail merge could be performed.

The IBM MT/ST was successful in the 1960s but by the 1970s the technology was obsolete and had been surpassed by screen based word processors by the likes of Wang, however this is where the road to Word, Apple Pages et cetera began.

Image from IBM Mag Card Composer manual