DAISY WHEELS AND DISKS
Without most people realizing it, there has been revolution in office work over the last teen years. Before that time, it was only the very large industries that could afford to use new technology. Large computers or mainframes, were only used by rich companies that could afford the investment. With advancement of technology, small computers have come on to the market which are capable of doing the work which use to be done by much larger and more expensive mainframes, so now most smaller companies can use them. The main development in small computers has been in the field of word processors, or WP,s as they are often called. 40%of british offices are now estimated to have a word processors (or some kind of small computer which is capable of word processing ) and this percentage is growing fast.
word processor is a small computer linked to a visual display unit, or VDU, .a disk-drive and a printer. The VDU looks like a television screen. It provided a ‘window’, or a way of reading the information stored by the word processor on a floppy. This disk is plastic coated and looks rather like a single, or 45 rpm record. It is fed into the disk-drive which transmits the information from the disk into the word processor as required. The printer provides ‘hard copy’ that is to say it prints out on paper the information stored. Most printers use daisy-wheels. These are little plastic wheels with characters, of letter, on the end of spokes coming out of the central hub. As the daisy-wheels spine round from letter, each word is printed at very high speed. You change the kind of type simply by the substituting a different daisywheels.
Other printer use dot matrix printers. These make up letters from single dot, but the quality of the printing usually much worse than that produced by daisy-wheels. Word processor are particularly well-suited to the kind of routine work that has to be done in so many offices. For example, they can keep records in their memory. These can be updated by calling them up onto the screen and simply typing in additional information. If copies are needed, they can be printed out on request. As many copies of a standard letter as required can be printed out at any time and without supervision. This can happen outside office hours to free the machine either during the day or even while something else is being typed in.
There are many advantages in using a word processor, therefore, for both secretary and manager. The secretary is freed from a lot of routine re-typing and filing. He or can use this time to do other more interesting work for their boss. From a manager’s point of view, secretary time is being used more productively and money can be saved by doing routine jobs automatically outside office hours. A word processor in full use is highly cost-effective. But is it all good? If a lot of routine secretarial work can be done automatically, surely this will mean that fewer secretaries will be needed. Another worry is the mounting evidence of medical problems related to work with VDU’s. The incidence of cataracts among people using word processors seem to have risen dramatically. It is also feared that working at a VDU for long hours can cause miscarriages in the early months of pregnancy. Safety screens to put over a VDU have been invented but few companies in England bother to buy them,
Whatever the arguments for and against word-processors, they are a key feature of revolution in office practice.
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