Lastword for the word processor So yon tre sboutto boy (Or ave jst done 0) one of then twine ling typewriters with a televsion- Tike ‘sreen known in business fcles aia. "word proceso More than 00,00 people are already using one, Before the Ascade is out 10m word proces: {ors could be in use aroun the sworld, Companies making thems Caostiy American) have been en- Joving 30-40% snnval growth Sales for atleast five years, The market leaders (Lanier, CPT, NBI, Wang, Xerox and 15M} expect tp 6 this word proces. Sor businesses soar 65-70% this Siecee have recently plummet- ed—even in backward Evrope, Svhere similar machines can cost rice asamuch atin America, The Slectronie components used ine fide them have become cleverer land more complex, which means fewer are needed. Meanwle, the componsata themselves hava tumbled in pice. A word proces: sor bought ayear ago would now ost about 20% less. And You Havent anon anything yet ‘Most manufactures (ond some aspiring ones) are working fever- ishy to jack up the technologieal level of these slorited typewnt- frs—to endow them with cheap processing power valing that of foday’s computes. ‘The cost of eating line of ext electron ally could then fall ro less than ‘one American cent. It is already bout four cents compared witk even cents when using a sttne Gard ypewster, But a note of Searing: such cos figures de- ond on geting il proguctve yout of a word. processor, which depends entialy on feed. ing it the right kind of laborious ‘work and plenty of “The new technology is causing ° ee oa are eee Sa ae peeartee ers, picture processors as well as ee ee ‘cessors) share many of the same See Seen Pos nee acne ental backache ott af rotting oe oe neti ete ee chattering to one another's com- puters, courtesy of the telephone ‘Sompany, Brave new world? A little bit—but, in many ways, a wel- come relief from today's drudgery, Thanks for the memory ‘A word procestor does for verbal text what a calculator docs for fumbers. It manipulates stings fof characters, adding them to: iether, Furthermore it ean move {hem trom line to line, juggle Daragraphs around, “in some cases even correct spelling, and finally store the approved version ofthe text for future reference or rin out ‘All word processors have four things in common: @-A. keyboard which, like « ‘ypewnite’s, has all the sal alphanumeric characters (leters and numbers), plus # number of control keys to edt the text being Breparee A processor unit (based usual yong microprocessor an ot of Meocsted memory chips) which Hols lle intractons for care ‘ying out the eding es wel ss those for diving other parts of the oyster @°A magnetic memory to store the yped information wile itis taiting to be edit, This canbe In the form of magnetic cares, tates ten or various ort of mall so-called "2oppy” Poses” fA printer when type out the Find copy an con eve bo attached to the Keyboard or te- tote init own cabinet and con: ected by cable, Wuhoue ts memory, «word processor would be no thore tien Eypewiter, Not surprisingly, theay the simplest word. pros for i in fact, the memory type writer—e modern version of the Flexowriter pioneered in the ear- ly 1950s by Friden in the United ‘ypewmiter, introduced tn 1964, I distt) dovietdeatss Car Tuodels were. developed inthe oe oy Reteon, Ole ang “aad Vydec” (part of Epon) ee ‘Memory typewstrs. re idea! for typing reome of essentially shut dotuments or leters with ‘nly minor changes intext Oe ¢ sundard letter as been sored nthe memory, ll secret to do to generate a ve Tore toa inva relent (ange the aime end andres, fnd make any other alterations desoved acco, However memory typewriter does not. low 4 pit to se the faa text (and) so" cnece whether. alter stions heve been made properly) Snel he machine automateally Print fou That mabey core=- fion and editing tedious, dime. ‘onsuiing and expensive. "A refinement ithe thin-win- dow word processor, which bas 8 tiny display panel lke that on sn Dacron eit) to so ee line of words. being. typed. or corrected. Such muchines ae fiote. common, in Europe than ‘Arseicn, thanks lnrgely (0 Euro- peso irs ike Olves ‘Brian's. Mierownter—whose portable, sikey device can do any ofthe tex-edting tricks of {word procewor—ses such display. However, the tex can fg beaded up and manipula ed" on an ordinary television ‘True word processors, as they are now being. define, realy bezin ‘with machines equipped wit tak oun levine ‘creen. This allows t to doplay vecioas of tar tert stored in the machine's memory, including complete pages. These cau then be edited ca the screen, proof read and ether refed is the. memory or automaticaly printed out. The most popular {ype is called stan-aloae word Drocessor, because itis totally Eelteontained, ‘Costing $7,000 to $10,000 (agen, twice a8, much in Eor- ope), good standalone systems are RoW only about three times ‘ore expensive than the average memory typewriter. The rest fvantage’ is thelr exceptional productivity, The American food Eompany, ‘General Mls, has found. that even quite sample stand-alone word procesior ean handle four to seven times the Work oad ofthe same number ot piste using ordinary. electae {ypewriters. The tick fs to load the word processors with worl that i repetitive or needs lots of revision. ‘Sharing the work If the work load overflows, the ser can string © amber of Mandalone machines topeber, Teting them shar, say, the same printing unit. But once the num- ber of terminals (ly the cabinet containing the Keyboard, proces- fey a aren) cede out itis cheaper to goto wha frade calle a sared-resource Deter Tn this case, instead of doing aul the processing with « tny microprocessor within each ter- ‘inal, several terminals share a ‘uch’ more powerful, centrally Tocated computer, ‘They ako share central tacts Ue high Speed printers and. memo Shared ‘systems can easly cost $50,000 or more, For thet @ cus- tomer might get half a dozen tenmiaals, a couple ot peisters, some fency softwere and lions ‘of words of magnetic memory. One other type of word pro- cessing system has elbowed ts way on to the market, This isthe ‘word precesting package, which Upgrades the user exist com- puter #0 it ean handle text. The {olution is often far trom ideal ‘uti can be very cheap-—espe- ally when “used is one of the atest $2,000 pertonal computers like Apple, Pet or Radio Shack’s ‘TRS-A0. The software needed to feprogranme the computer as 8 ‘word processor costs an addition: a1 $20 or #0, And the extta memory needed for physially processing words cin add a fur- ther S600" Even so, a surprisingly ‘THE ECONOMIST JULY 25 1081/ cffective (if a bit cumbersome) Word processor can be put gether for under $3,000 America. ‘Word processors have a large appetite for memory. A typical job is preparing longish reports that have to go through several revision stages, Documents of 40,000 words are not uncommon. If each word averages 5.4 letters (the average for The Economis), followed by a single letter space, 18 10,000-word document con: tains some 64,000 characters of information. Tn computer jargon, a comput- er needs eight “bits” (binary di its—ie, 4 on¢ or a zero) of infor- mation to store a single letter or ‘numeral, For convenience, eight bits are called a “byte”, So 2 10,000-word report requires computer memory big enough to store 64,000 bytes (64k bytes). The 64k question Word processors start with at teas 62k bytes of xorage spece in their internal memory (i, sed to their main microprocessor “brain’) to hold the text while is being manipulated; bigger word processors have 128k bytes or more. Outside the word pro: fessor elt, ¢ backing store i needed to memorise standard ters, monthly repors,- mailing line, ete, Usvally this sn the form of floppy diss each about the size and shape of 2 451pm ramophone record. and. cach Eepable of holding 300 bytes of information. Floppy. iss are also convenient way of storing the vatious programmes necded for different word processing tasks (eg, designing forms, pro- dang ‘charts panting "etve- topes te). ‘Technological progress is changing the economics of mont ory ite drematically—both i Side the word processor and ints backing sore. For instance, the interael "memory board em ployed. in practically all wore rovesore today uses «standard {ie ram (random access mom: ony) microchip capable of storing 16/000 bits (le, 2k bytes). The board sherefre needs 32 chip 0 store Gtk bytes of information, {bully and expensive "Tho next generation of chips sow coming onthe. marke, felled 64k rems, can store four times e¢ mich infomation, Cry tight of them wil be needed to do the sume job as $2 of the present version. Before 109 long, the pris of one 6k ram should be aimilar to that of four 16k rams, s0.the cost of interal memory ould be only a quarter (nie eee ce = cease ne eee ae Se Eamets ina maces eee eee eo aes S os eee area ee eee eee ieee en oe ere ‘with 8-bit microprocessors (such ated oa es ey eas sees Bees dm me eee Sharing solutions ‘Stand-alone'word processor ‘They work twice as fast, or twice as accurately. ‘The 16-bit microprocessors Ihave more like true minicom- puters many times their size and Drice. Their extra power can be Cleverly used to make the word processor easier to operate—ie, ‘more “friendly”. It ean also ale Jow simple stand-alone machines to be hooked together into pow- erful networks like sharet source word processors, all inter fcting with one another and sharing common printers and ‘magnetic fies, Just around the corner is lurk- ing the even faster 32-bit micro processor. Who needs it? At Teast four of America’s top mi- ro-chip innovators (Iatel, Ni ional Semiconductor, Bell Labo- ratories and Hewlett-Packard) say the market will be demanding the 32-bit microprocessor in a couple of years’ time. Customers vwill want it not so much for its dragster-like speed; more be- ‘cause it will provide a great deal of extra parallel processing pow- fr, allowing machines to da many ‘more things at once. All four ‘American outfits have started Producing 32-bit _microproces- Sore. The Japanese cannot be far behind, Meanwhile, the faster micro- processors and bigger memory Chips are encouraging word pro- cessor designers to rethink the ‘way they programme their mach {nes to do clever text editing. Till recently, they have had to write their programmes using so-called “assembly” language. Such pro- ‘grammes are tedious to construct and debug; they are also difficult to modify once written Whether they like it or not, today's word processor firms ‘committed to their assembly lan- guage software for a while yet: they have spent hundreds of ‘man-years developing it. Not so the neweomers breaking into the business. They will be able to ‘write their software using a high- level (le, Englis-like) computer Janguage such as Pascal. This will reduce development times drasti- cally —as well as make word pro- cessors more reliable and cheaper still. Star-studded future? Once the Japanese enter the word processor business (Sony launched its first machine in ‘America recently) the price war will commence in earnest, But ‘word processors donot automati- cally spell greater office efficien- cy, Tales shound of companies that have been disappointed with the resulting productivity SCIENCE BRIEF In. part, this is because too much emphasis has been put on saving secretaries’ time rather than that of their bosses, An analysis of office efficiency by management consultants Booz, Allen and Hamilton points out that: © Only 12% of the cost of run- ning a typical oftice goes in secre- tarles' salaries and overheeds, © No more than 15% of secre tarial time is spent on typing © About 75% of office cotts go ‘on management, largely on sala~ ries and overheads for profes sional people, © Managers spend a dispropor- tionate amount of time—about 46%—cresting documents and in meetings discussing them. Far better, say firms like Xe- rox, to give a really advanced word processor to a $40,000- year manager than to provide Simpler machines to seeretari earning $12,000-a-year. This the thinking behind the long- awaited “Star” word procestor, launched by Xerox three months ago. Itembodies the latest think Ing In the use of a 16-bit micro processor (Xeror's is said to be fix times faster than Intel's 8086) plus an intemal memory three fimes larger than usual and a screen that can print all sors of different typefaces. and fancy graphics. At $17,000, it is the ‘Mercedes among’ the’ new gen eration of word processors devel- coped specially for senior businessmen. Xerox's Star marks the merg- ing of word processing, typeset- ting and business computing. Other manufacturers (including IBM) will doubtless follow suit as quickly as they can. All are ound to teke advantage of the way microchip developments are siving designers more computing ower to play with, Chunks of the machine's brainpower could be dedicated to doing specific tasks (sales forecasts, regression analysis, etc). Such fecilites Could be available atthe touch of button rather than the result of tedious programming. In other words, the word pro- cesor is evolving in such a way a8 to perform many of the jobs done today by a specialised computer. It is becoming clear thet it is more likely to be the friendly word processor (which started life in the humble typing pool) rather than the more daunting ‘dsta_procestor (which sprang from the botfin's backroom) that will evolve eventually into the personal “work station” which, like it or not, most office workers will be using before this century expires. 29