From the industrial age to the information age

Abstract

At the turn of the century we were still living in rural areas. We might have heard about the first plane flight (in 1903) and our most complex office machine was the manual typewriter. In our offices were ‘information management tools’ such as a Rolodex, and ledgers to keep track of numerical information. Mail delivery was slow, and electronic mail (e-mail) voice mail and overnight mail did not exist. In 1893 the vertical filing cabinet was introduced, replacing copy books, flat files and letter boxes which stored information in the order it was received. Towards the middle of the twentieth century office equipment and procedures became more sophisticated. The first successful electric typewriter was introduced in 1935 by IBM (Lupton, 1993, pp.45–7). The telephone, while it changed in design and many more people began using it, essentially was unchanged in its functionality.