Hubby joined the airline in 1979 at the data centre.
People remembered when customers would phone in, have the outline of the airline on stickies.
When you booked a seat they put the sticky on particular seats, and put the others onto a cardboard piece of paper onto a clothespin where it went onto a clothesline and into central source in another office.
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| Pneumatic Tube internal mail system, Commerce Bank ca. 1931 |
Flights were written in long hand, page after page. Every page added by day, week, month and year by column. Senior management were young, in their 30s, personal computers were so new that they though that two people could share a computer. These were dumb terminals, not PCs. They were at the forefront of the industry, using large data systems. The first sale of a computer was to American Airlines. IBM sold it, after talking to an AA senior president. They thought the market for computers was about five. The first discount airline was having the carriers for breakfast, as they could manage sales. American invented inventory control. Now used for hotels, airlines and drove Peoples Airline out of business.
Then, I found this one.
Now, you can track a flight online.
2 comments:
This is so interesting. I worked in many offices during the time he is discussing, and I witnessed the transition from pre-computer to computer. At my first couple of jobs we didn't have computers at all. Then we all got "dumb terminals" at our desks. Finally, we each had a computer. It really caused a lot of confusion at first as people got used to using them. Sadly, some of the older people were let go because they just could not make the adjustment.
By the way, I have always loved geeks! They are so much more interesting than non-geeks.
The transition into the Information Age was an interesting one, wasn't it? After staying home with my kids I went back into teaching. I got tutoring from my daughter (gr. 8) and students during my lunch hour.
I loved dating geek between marriages. I sucked them dry of information and made it my own. Eventually, I was giving workshops to my shy teaching colleagues. I have no embarrassment in asking kids for info and/or help. High school teachers, terribly backward in some way, worry about saying, "I don't know. Let's find out."
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