From a story by Alexandra Zayas in the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times: TAMPA — For the first time in history, it allowed a human to tap a backspace key and make a mistake go away. Called "Selectric II," it was conceived when Richard Nixon was president, when IBM made typewriters and when a hand-typed card catalog tracked every book at Tampa's downtown library. Librarians got machines for the public, giving each a room of its own with walls the shade of an avocado. The workhorses spit out labels for spines of books and stamped Dewey decimals on paper cards. They typed resumes, got...

22 December, 2009