It has a certain aesthetic that reminds me of some (European?) computer, but I cannot quite put my finger on it.
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Mystery deepens: After searching for “british office photo 1980s,” I found a photograph of what seems like a similar keyboard – although in a two-colour scheme.pic.twitter.com/cnYjrpqA6j
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Solved!
@leggca cracked the code. This is a British word processing machine called Wordplex.@leggca found a 1987 documentary talking about Wordplex, then about to be acquired by Norsk Data. This bit in the video talks directly about the keyboard: https://youtu.be/dg8cPvm603w?t=677 …pic.twitter.com/IUZVPKcc0Y
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This is how, in 1988, Norsk Data announced the merger.pic.twitter.com/VNKb2EfTtK
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The last breath of Wordplex was in the 1990, and it will sound familiar to anyone studying PC history. Norsk Data created a version of Wordplex for IBM PC compatibles, called “Wordplex 100,” that went absolutely nowhere.
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A sad ending for a company that once “owned a third of the UK marketing for word processing systems for the legal profession,” which is probably why it was there in all these earlier videos… and why nobody cares today: it was a boring office computer found in law offices.
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“I have known some brilliant keyboards in my time. There was the lovely Wordplex 80-series devices with a soft rattle.” https://writerlywitterings.com/2017/08/30/keyboards-and-tools-of-the-trade/ … I wonder how many still survive, hidden in attics and weird places.
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I scraped the bottom of the Internet and found a brochure of the early version of Wordplex, complete with awkward/sexist photos and an earlier colour scheme of the keyboard. It very much screams 1976. THE SCOPE OF THIS SYSTEM IS GOVERNED ONLY BY THE LIMITS OF YOUR CREATIVITYpic.twitter.com/VnL4FRLJ3Y
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This feels overall like a fascinating corporate story: · Ventek renamed itself to Wordplex · AES merged with Ventek, but then split away again? · Wordplex started in California, then moved to Canada, but was mostly popular in the UK and had all engineering offices there?
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Replying to @mwichary
Basically serial checking twitter today just for this thread.
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I’m afraid this might be it! Here is a Dutch ad. It seems like this is the model that started it all: Wordplex 80-3. And Ventek’s hopes for their location to become the next Silicon Valley.pic.twitter.com/zrBW46UFRD
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Replying to @mwichary
eyeing those Communication Specialist job requirements and coming up short!
#couldntcutit#80s0 replies 0 retweets 0 likesThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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