Hugh smith wrote:

Remember Wang?  In 1985 they were a huge vendor at ARMA.  

When I came to the University of Arizona in 1984 the entire administration building was wired into a Wang system.  Six or seven inch screens and everything done with commands.  Had to type in the address of the printer each time and type in the command and address for the line printer for either portrait or landscape.  Having come from University of California's Regent's staff it was a little crude.  However, when I was doing a sabbatical at  Clark Kerr's Center For the Study of Higher Education at UC Berkeley I had a TI Silent 700 (I still have one here in my archives) and I could put the telephone handset into the rubber cups and dial up the "mainframe" at the Regents.  I think we had two or three huge 16 mb machines that were being used to create the first on-line book catalog for the UC libraries.  None of the faculty at the Center had a computer or computer access and were still using index cards to take notes.  UC Berkeley is also where I saw my first demonstration of this thing on a Sun workstation that had a document displayed and there were words either highlighted or underlined and somehow one could point to that word and it would take one to another document that was perhaps in another country!  I wonder what ever became of that....

Where are they today?  Can companies guarantee they will even exist much less their technology in 10,000 years?

I have some hand axes and choppers from North Africa that date back about 1.2 million years and they still work. 

The Victrolas of the 1800’s were pretty good.  But try to find a part for them today. And I don’t know if the company is still there.

My family had a stand-alone Brunswick Victrola and a supply of one sided Edison records each about 1/4" thick and recorded on one side.  We had three types of needles for playing: steel, Sapphire, and bamboo.  We had a cutter for the bamboo needles so you could sharpen them when they wore down.  A big deal until I discovered electricity and my own radio.

I wonder how many companies exist that started 1,000 years ago still exist. Is  Guttenberg still publishing Bibles?

I'll ask him.  I think he's down the street buying some new type.

Dick King, University of Arizona Records Officer & Momentary Slacker

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