Manual airline reservations prior to computers!

Life before we had computers... Brian, my husband, and JL, my son-in-law, speak of the development of the reservations system in the airline industry. Before computers: who can imagine this? It involves stickers and is almost as bad as communicating with tin cans. It involves clothespins and early computer development. Jean-Luc, our son-in-law and a software encryption engineer, speaks about NORAD taking over the technology developed by the airlines, to assist them when computers were first invented.
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.

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.