What did people do in 1985?

[Sheilbh]

Prompted by a Twitter comment I saw which I've been thinking about for a while since. But what did people do in offices in, say, the mid-80s?

It was before the internet and before common PCs (I think - at least in the UK) and I just have no concept of what office work looked like at that point. The best I have is Mad Men (typing, smoking and sexual harassment) and maybe that's what the workplace was like but I feel like that's pretty rarefied and rather different from, say, working for a bank or a manufacturer or a law firm in 1985.

So in the same way as people of my generation have started chatting about the things from our childhood that just don't make sense now (growing up pre-smartphone is the big one) - I wonder for people who were working before the internet and maybe before PC adoption what was your working life like? So much of my day is spent on my emails I can't really work out what else people did - where there just lots of phone calls?

The only thing I can think of is I remember an older partner saying that he thought the introduction of track changes ruined law because it encouraged people to spend ages fighting over trivialities. When you had to physically read and make changes you prioritised more

Edit: AND - incidentally how did you even do track changes between two sides? I get that it'd be red pen (because it's still red pen often) internally but in terms of showing a mark-up did someone re-type the entire agreement with red ink or bold for changes?

[Barrister]

Okay so I was 10 in 1985 so can't exactly answer your question.

But I was working in a lawyer's office as early as 1998 so I can kind-of extrapolate back.  It was a one-man office so I don't think we even had email - or if we did it was scarcely used.

You spent a fair bit of time writing and responding to letters for starters, instead of emails.  Many would be faxed (not sure how widely that was in 1985), but just as many were mailed or bike-couriered.

We had to generate our documents on computers (which in the conservative law world would not be used yet in 1985), but we still had a typewriting and regularly used it (for filling in pre-printed forms).  That would have been even more widely used in 1985.

Dictation was a huge thing - the lawyer would go through files, read out instructions on each including dictating letters, then the assistant would go back, listen to the recording and follow the instructions.  They absolutely were doing that in 1985.

Legal research was paper, paper, paper.  When I was in law school we started learning how to research using specialized databases, but knowing how to "hit the books" was absolutely essential.

[Valmy]

They filed things a lot. There were huge file rooms with people whose only job it was was to file things and retrieve them. I spent a few summers in the early and mid 1990s working in some of them. I injured my back one carrying around huge file boxes.

And then you had typewriters around generating new records to be filed, though in 1985 they had word processors that would make things a bit more efficient but then you had to print what you made and then file the paper.

Oh and they made lots of forms with blanks to fill in.

And lots of carbon paper. When you used a credit card to make a purchase it had to be done in triplicate so the customer got one copy, the vendor another, and a third for the credit card company. It was a slow and cumbersome process.

I do kind of like old movies and shows that show offices with no computers on the desks. Just a flat surface for you to write on...it is really weird to a 21st century person.

[Valmy]

Edit: AND - incidentally how did you even do track changes between two sides? I get that it'd be red pen (because it's still red pen often) internally but in terms of showing a mark-up did someone re-type the entire agreement with red ink or bold for changes?

Yep. Tons of great work for legal secretaries.

But also things were much shorter back then because of how comparatively labor intensive it was. When I look at old dockets at my current job from the 1970s, I am impressed that they do what we do in hundreds and hundreds of pages in about 10. With computer digitized legal documents you can just put everything in there that before would have been too difficult to include.

[Sheilbh]

Dictation was a huge thing - the lawyer would go through files, read out instructions on each including dictating letters, then the assistant would go back, listen to the recording and follow the instructions.  They absolutely were doing that in 1985.

So dictation still is a thing in my experience but basically only done by senior partners for night typing to transcribe (there was also some software but I don't know what it did). No-one from young-ish partner down ever dicatated in my experience.

[Valmy]

Dictation was a huge thing - the lawyer would go through files, read out instructions on each including dictating letters, then the assistant would go back, listen to the recording and follow the instructions.  They absolutely were doing that in 1985.

So dictation still is a thing in my experience but basically only done by senior partners for night typing to transcribe (there was also some software but I don't know what it did). No-one from young-ish partner down ever dicatated in my experience.

My Dad, a psychologist (well a former one, he retired in 2013), did this for years before he got voice typing software and became his own secretary once his old one retired.

[Barrister]

I can remember going to my dad's work mid-80s / he brought some stuff home.  He was a newspaper reporter / columnist at the time.

Now newspapers did adopt computers much earlier than some other businesses.  Their articles were written on computers, and printed out on very high quality printers.

But what I remember at the time is that the newspaper editors took those printed-out articles and had to lay out every newspaper page by hand, including literally cutting and pasting the articles (and ads, and headlines) to fit the available space.

When desktop publishing software became a thing (which it was just a few years later) it became a massive change for the industry.

[Barrister]

Edit: AND - incidentally how did you even do track changes between two sides? I get that it'd be red pen (because it's still red pen often) internally but in terms of showing a mark-up did someone re-type the entire agreement with red ink or bold for changes?

This was where I should say that I was working for a real estate lawyer.  We could do a hundred deals or more in a month, but the contract itself was a 1-2 page pre-printed form typically where you'd just fill in the blanks.  Tracking changes in such a form was not exactly difficult...

[Valmy]

Edit: AND - incidentally how did you even do track changes between two sides? I get that it'd be red pen (because it's still red pen often) internally but in terms of showing a mark-up did someone re-type the entire agreement with red ink or bold for changes?

This was where I should say that I was working for a real estate lawyer.  We could do a hundred deals or more in a month, but the contract itself was a 1-2 page pre-printed form typically where you'd just fill in the blanks.  Tracking changes in such a form was not exactly difficult...

Yeah stuff was much shorter back then. That is a huge difference.

[crazy canuck]

Prompted by a Twitter comment I saw which I've been thinking about for a while since. But what did people do in offices in, say, the mid-80s?

It was before the internet and before common PCs (I think - at least in the UK) and I just have no concept of what office work looked like at that point. The best I have is Mad Men (typing, smoking and sexual harassment) and maybe that's what the workplace was like but I feel like that's pretty rarefied and rather different from, say, working for a bank or a manufacturer or a law firm in 1985.

So in the same way as people of my generation have started chatting about the things from our childhood that just don't make sense now (growing up pre-smartphone is the big one) - I wonder for people who were working before the internet and maybe before PC adoption what was your working life like? So much of my day is spent on my emails I can't really work out what else people did - where there just lots of phone calls?

The only thing I can think of is I remember an older partner saying that he thought the introduction of track changes ruined law because it encouraged people to spend ages fighting over trivialities. When you had to physically read and make changes you prioritised more

Edit: AND - incidentally how did you even do track changes between two sides? I get that it'd be red pen (because it's still red pen often) internally but in terms of showing a mark-up did someone re-type the entire agreement with red ink or bold for changes?

Tracked changes were typically done with a red pen and a ruler - drawing a straight line under the portions of the text you changed.

The equivalent of emails was when the mail was delivered to your desk typically around 10 - Then you spend time going through the pile to determine what needed prompt attention and what could wait. 

The really significant difference is nobody expected a quick response - 1-2 weeks was the norm. 

[PDH]

The university I work for had thousands of filing cabinets, huge rooms dedicated to documents, and large typing pools.  When I went to university my first year (1984) I was considered odd because I had an Atari computer (not for word processing, but rather playing games - nothing ever changes) and the dorm had one station (one of those old monitor/keyboard setup) downstairs for 12 floors of students - nobody ever used it too much except the nerds playing Spacewar! or something.

When I got my MA in history in 1993 I was in the first class allowed to use a word processor and printer for my thesis, all the years before you had to have a good typist.  That saved my bacon, thank you WordPerfect.

[Razgovory]

I was just a little kid at the time but my dad's office always had computers on the desks.  Of course, he was a computer programmer so that might have had something to do with it.  They weren't PCs, they were dumb terminals hooked to the mainframe.  Still they produced a lot of paper.  My dad would come home with these big stacks of green and white paper with computer code on one side.  The other side was blank and I could draw on them.

[mongers]

Prompted by a Twitter comment I saw which I've been thinking about for a while since. But what did people do in offices in, say, the mid-80s?

It was before the internet and before common PCs (I think - at least in the UK) and I just have no concept of what office work looked like at that point. The best I have is Mad Men (typing, smoking and sexual harassment) and maybe that's what the workplace was like but I feel like that's pretty rarefied and rather different from, say, working for a bank or a manufacturer or a law firm in 1985.
....

Let me get this straight you and some other people in the office/home offices are wondering what people did in offices before smart-phones,the web and email?

Maybe some of the time they did what you were doing, making non-worked related conversations?   

[jimmy olsen]

Prompted by a Twitter comment I saw which I've been thinking about for a while since. But what did people do in offices in, say, the mid-80s?

It was before the internet and before common PCs (I think - at least in the UK) and I just have no concept of what office work looked like at that point. The best I have is Mad Men (typing, smoking and sexual harassment) and maybe that's what the workplace was like but I feel like that's pretty rarefied and rather different from, say, working for a bank or a manufacturer or a law firm in 1985.
....

Let me get this straight you and some other people in the office/home offices are wondering what people did in offices before smart-phones,the web and email?

Maybe some of the time they did what you were doing, making non-worked related conversations?   

Sexual harassment was already covered

[HisMajestyBOB]

I was just a little kid at the time but my dad's office always had computers on the desks.  Of course, he was a computer programmer so that might have had something to do with it.  They weren't PCs, they were dumb terminals hooked to the mainframe.  Still they produced a lot of paper.  My dad would come home with these big stacks of green and white paper with computer code on one side.  The other side was blank and I could draw on them.

My dad brought home the same paper. Reams of it with holes along the side. It was definitely the best drawing paper for a kid.