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School of Journalism students furiously type their stories
in 1970. Today students and faculty at the school have access
to high-tech design labs, a digital television editing lab,
an electronic photojournalism lab, and to more than 550
computers. Photo courtesy of University Archives
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What’s
High-Tech?
@Mizzou readers describe high-tech
gadgets used during their college days …
When I attended the J-School at MU in the late 1980s, I brought
along a manual typewriter. Being an older student – I graduated
in 1988 at age 37 – I knew how to operate it. A 20-year-old
friend asked to borrow it, but he needed me to tell him what to
do when it jammed at the end of a line. He had used electric typewriters
— we still used them in the News 105 pit — but he
had never used a manual with its carriage return lever. I must
say that when I started writing stories on a computer at the Missourian,
I rapidly became addicted, and now tremble at the thought of using
anything else.
— Benjamin Israel, BJ
’88
Long before the PC, and not too long before
the Bowmar Brain hand-held calculator, students who reached the
statistical plateau of standard deviations and square roots were
admitted to a high-security room in the now old Business and Public
Administration building and shown the mysteries of the mechanical
calculators. These metal electrical monsters had grids of about
18 keys across by 18 keys down. After carefully entering our formulas
for several minutes and finishing pushing the “execute”
key, the calculator would grind for a couple more minutes until
the result would display (if we had been meticulous) in a row
of oval windows at the top, rather like an academic slot machine.
— Jim Swinford, BJ ’68
The typewriter was the high-tech gadget that
helped me through college – along with carbon paper. Turning
in an article for the Missourian in relatively readable form required
retyping and retyping. There wasn’t even Wite Out or correction
tape! Scotch tape, relatively new during my college years (at
any rate, new to the public after World War II), was another high-tech
item that helped put things together when rubber cement didn’t
do the trick. I am sure there were many more high-tech gadgets.
Thank God for the word processor that allows for quick back spacing
and quick communication!
— Jane Guthman Kahn, BJ
‘54
These Mizzou students
studying at Ellis Library several decades ago never dreamed
of a high-tech world like the one that will open this fall
on the library’s main floor. The James B. Nutter
Sr. Family Information Commons will unite information,
technology, computing expertise and instruction to support
student research and scholarship. Photo courtesy of MU
Publications and Alumni Communication
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I was a technophobe. I had a Brother typewriter
that I used my freshman through junior years (1987-90). My roommate
at the time had shown me that she was communicating with her boyfriend
(a student at University of Missouri-Rolla) by some kind of electronic
mail program. WOW! I didn’t even want to touch that! My
senior year, one of my roommates finally talked me into trying
out the Macintosh lab in the basement of the Arts and Science
building. I did a few papers down there, but found my Brother
typewriter to be more comfortable. Today, I have a computer, more
e-mail accounts than I know what to do with, a PDA, a cell phone,
caller ID, and I recently learned how to make MP3s for my new
MP3 player. I may be a little slow, and I’m not an expert,
but I’m certainly not the technophobe I used to be!
— Janet Remedios Snyder,
BA ’91
Who can forget the monster spitting
out reams of green bar in the basement of the old Business and
Public Administration building? Of course, you had to feed the
monster through its mouth, the punch card reader that did or did
not return your entire program to the output bin.
I’m not sure these machines helped me through college, but
it does give me a chance to tell my kids how easy they will have
it in college compared to my “old-fashioned days.”
— K. Brian Rorie, BS Acc,
’84
A manual Royal typewriter, three-ring notebooks,
pencil sharpeners attached to the wall that we cranked by hand,
No. 2 lead pencils, blue books for exams were the norm in the
early 1960s.
— Joyce Taylor, BS HE
’61
When I was at Mizzou in the 1960s,
the only high-tech items we had were typewriters, stereos and
popcorn poppers. Even having a car on campus was a luxury that
most of us did not enjoy. Times have definitely changed.
— Sharon Pickernell Wright, BS Ed ’69
Several very high-tech gadgets
were vital in getting my engineering degrees. The most important
was my mind. I don’t know about today, but in 1964 it was
necessary to actually think in order to graduate from engineering.
The next most important gadget was an unbounded determination
to succeed. Perhaps in my case, it was only stubbornness; but
one of the two was needed to keep me working 18-20 hours a day
for six years. The only high-tech machine I needed was a slide
rule. A simple slide rule was, and is, capable of performing all
the calculations an engineer needs to do. It may very well be
that many high-tech gadgets are in use today, but none of them
is “vital.”
— Howard Downing, BS EE’63,
MS ’64
When I was at Mizzou the high-tech item I
used was an ancient manual typewriter in the newsroom.
— Elyse Zorn Karlin, BJ
’72
Oh man! My first computer
was a Macintosh LC, which I bought down in the computer store
at Brady Commons. Boy, was it high-tech or what? All of my friends
oooed and ahhhed at the cool 15-inch color screen and were amazed
at how much faster it was than the original Macintosh Classic.
It really saw me through all of my term papers and essay finals.
At that time, e-mail was almost nonexistent and the World Wide
Web? People were amazed that you could go to places like Australia
and Europe right there on your computer. How far we’ve
come.
— Laurie Splater,
BS Ed ’92
An “out of cash” memory
that we received after @Mizzou’s December issue had already
been published ...
In regards to eating cheap in college, I decided to try a can
of cheap cat food. So I selected one made with chicken. After
tasting the product, I realized the chicken was ground-up bone
and all. Then I read the ingredients label more closely and it
said, “whole chicken.” I realized what that really
meant, and decided to not eat any more!
— Ken Hunt, BS ’73,
MS ’79, PhD ’88
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Last Update:
November 15, 2007
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