I know it's not radio

[Jack Bennest]

Ron Loftus, Dave Watters and Chris Gainor pictured below

I know this is a radio board but thought we might to take a look inside a Vancouver Sun newsroom
circa 1980

[Buckley]

Man that's not an ergonomically correct setup... also, is that a dual-screened computer, or is that just a strange effect of the picture? If it is, I don't know what use that would have been in the early 80's but I bet it cost a LOT of money.

[Jack Bennest]

If you look at the top left of the picture - the guy there seems to have a wide job 'puter too. On the right other people have
smaller (not as wide) ones. I shall ask.

[freqfreak2]

You know you're on the lower end of the food chain when you work beside a rotary phone that has no dial.

When that thing rings, you just know it's not going to be good news. Saw too many of those in control rooms.

[jon]

You know you're on the lower end of the food chain when you work beside a rotary phone that has no dial.

When that thing rings, you just know it's not going to be good news. Saw too many of those in control rooms.

Anybody remember CKWX in the 1960s? They still had a telephone switchboard with telco phone jacks on both ends of a cable that you plugged from sender to receiver of a call. My recollection is that those switchboards could only be attached to phones without dials, because all incoming and outgoing calls went through the switchboard operator. The switchboard operator had the only dial, and it was used to connect to the outside world.

I'm guessing that is what we are looking at: a phone attached to an old style switchboard.

is that a dual-screened computer, or is that just a strange effect of the picture? If it is, I don't know what use that would have been in the early 80's but I bet it cost a LOT of money.

I did a Case Study of Air Canada as did everyone else in 1973 in my Management Information Systems course at UBC. They used custom-built Raytheon computer terminals for their reservations system that hadn't changed since the mid-1960s when computerized reservation systems first appeared at Air Canada. And that is what these single and dual screen babies pictured here look like.

My only exposure to newspapers was a programmer I worked with at CKUA (and at an engineering firm prior to that) who worked for the Edmonton Journal in the mid-1970s. Although they had a different computer system than the Vancouver Sun, I seem to recall that the "gold standard" for computer systems in those days was to have two screens side by side, where you coded the funny looking markup language on the left screen and could push a button and, on the right, display a pretty good reproduction of the way it would look in the allocated space on the printed newspaper page. Only "special" people were entitled to a computer terminal that expensive.

If they were custom-built Raytheon's, I'm guessing close to $10,000 each for the single screen version and almost double that for the dual screen. A lot of money back in the 1970s.

Man that's not an ergonomically correct setup...

That is as good as it got in the 1970s. Those chairs gave nice lower back support. Nobody wanted arms on chairs if they typed all day, as they just got in the way. I've been reading material on "computer ergonomics" since about 1980, and it wasn't until this century that the importance of properly adjusted arms on a chair, to support your elbow, and that part of the arm, was even talked about.

Likewise, there has been huge variations on the ergonomic recommendations for positioning the monitor surface you look at. For a while, around 2003, there was even talk of embedding it into your desktop.

But I do know that the keyboard is correctly positioned, height-wise, according to the Ergonomics of the day. Which was derived from positioning of typewriters. 26" from floor to bottom of the keyboard, as opposed to 30" from floor to desk surface. Those were the standard numbers. And it looks like about 4 inches between desktop and keyboard level in this picture.

[freqfreak2]

If they were custom-built Raytheon's, I'm guessing close to $10,000 each for the single screen version and almost double that for the dual screen. A lot of money back in the 1970s.

Whaddya talking about? That's a lot of money now!

[jon]

If they were custom-built Raytheon's, I'm guessing close to $10,000 each for the single screen version and almost double that for the dual screen. A lot of money back in the 1970s.

Whaddya talking about? That's a lot of money now!

Yes, it is amazing how cheap technology has become, even in the last decade. $750 was the bottom of the line Dell Canada computer 10 years ago. Now, it is less than $400. In 1987, before Dell, it was $3000-$5000, for a no-name.

Average wage for a Computer Science student graduating in 1973 in Vancouver was $600 a month, which was considered very good money. A dual screen computer terminal costing $20,000 works out to 3 years wages.

I can't think of anyone today who has a piece of hardware on his/her desk worth three years of his/her wages, that sits idle 16 hours a day and all weekend long.

[Buckley]

Man that's not an ergonomically correct setup...

[...] there has been huge variations on the ergonomic recommendations for positioning the monitor surface you look at. For a while, around 2003, there was even talk of embedding it into your desktop.

That was more what I was talking about, he's looking down which to me looks really bad on the neck and back.

Also kind of surprising... it's a newsroom in the 80's... where are the ashtrays? How come no one's smoking?