How did people write University assignments before computers??!!

[XmisterIS]

All that essay writing was good training for when you have to hand-write non-stop for 3 hours in an exam. I'm just not used to hand-writing anything longer than a post-it note anymore and it was a real struggle to keep going to the end when I had to do an exam for my OU course earlier this year. I'm glad I didn't have to try and read it!

Lol! Our lecturers keep us in good practice - lectures all day and continuous writing! I find those ergonomic pens with a specially shaped bit where you hold them are really easy on the fingers and improve my writing style substantially.

 

[dellzeqq]

one simply pondered the wonders of God's creation, then, taking a carefully sharpened soft pencil one started writing. When finished one went over the sampe pages with a fountain pen. If one's prose was deathless there simply wasn't the need for emendations or (dread word) footnotes. This post will be edited presently

 

[XmisterIS]

Ah! there's the problem you see ... my prose is anything but "deathless" ... it comes out all garbled and clunky and I need to sit and look at it and think, "Oh no, that's crap! That needs re-writing ...". I do half my thinking in my head and half on the computer screen!

 

[guitarpete247]

I must be about the same age as ColinJ as I remember slide rule, log tables and the first Sinclair calculator.
My dissertation was hand written and as my mother had been a secratary she was a decent and cheap typist. She used carbon paper for extra copies as photcopies were not that good in the late 70's.

 

[jack the lad]

I think that in the olden days you would have done more thinking before setting about producing - and it was probably better for it - you had to have to your argument pretty much formed before the first word hit the page. I also think that you are more likely to be fluent first time if there is no opportunity to edit. It's temtping to be a bit lazy about expressing yourself when you know you can go back and change it.

 

[GordonB]

I bought a slide rule and a set of log tables from a car boot sale earlier this year to show my kids what we used in pre-history (as they like to call it!) but I also use the log tables in teaching as I lecture in acoustics now and then and you need to have a basic understanding of logs to understand decibels. The tables are a useful visual way of showing how logs work. However, I still find the slide rule a ruddy nightmare to use and I always seem to end up with an answer that's a couple of orders of magnitude out.

Gordon

 

[661-Pete]

Slide rules - log tables - early calculators - early digital watches - I remember all that lot. Couldn't afford a calculator in those days, though.

But I go back a wee bit further. Our maths master at school had a couple of Brunsvigas of which he was immensely proud:

Beautifully crafted machines! He'd let us lads use them at times - if we fell in his favour, that is. A tremendous privilege. I remember the thrill of my first attempt at dividing two numbers without using long division or log tables..... (*sigh*)

 

[montage]

I prefer to handwrite drafts.... I find if I write something out on the computer I don't remember it as well...there is something about reading stuff in your own hand writing which submits it to memory that little bit better.

As for cut and paste....no way would I risk being done for plagerism, and I think that this is the general feeling. At A level you could get away with it, but there is some pretty funky plagerism detectors at hand.

What you studying Xmister and at what uni?

 

[beanzontoast]

No laptops for taking notes on during lectures when I was at uni either. If you got a lecturer who crammed in loads of detail and went at the speed of light with explanations, you needed either shorthand or to be able to precis like a demon to keep up.

It was always amusing to see people stopping to shake their wrists half way though a particularly long lecture.

 

[Davidc]

Mainly handwritten submissions in the 70s, apart from dissertations, theses, and some of the final submission for projects which formed part of the final degree work. Those were all done by hand and then either 1) a typist had to be paid or 2) a friend who could type well needed a good night out and a meal afterwards.

I think we were probably better at producing low error first drafts, adept at correcting them on the page rather than rewriting them, and those doing the typing were good at reading handwriting and typing page after page error free!

I learnt a form of shorthand for taking down notes in lectures but have since forgotten it. The same short (optional) course in my first year at uni taught speed reading, which I haven't forgotten. That was one of the keys to doing research before Google, being able to extract information from books very fast.

It was a very different world before personal computing, but not necessarily all worse.

 

[psmiffy]

Everything was hand written - several times - cut out the good bits and staple them together - then rewrite in best handwriting - graphs for inclusion were individually produced on the mainframe using Fortran (the programming counted to the whole piece) - my dissertation (20000 words or so) (eventually) was the only typed document I submitted.

In my early proffessional life it took a team of 4 typists and technicians producing the text,drawings and records to support me when I was report writing. Data produced on site was stupidly vunerable - the only copies being the rough draft and the raw data.

To make a telephone call out of the office you needed to carry a ton of change with you and hope that you could find an empty telephone booth. Facsimile machine were unheard of. Luckily early on the photocopier was if not common then at least available, but if you wanted anyone to have a copy of something quickly you had to drive over with it.

The only advantage was that nothing was instant - you could not do anything by yesterday - And if you did have a bit of a disaster you could fix it before anyone heard about it - It was a world without so many silly little cockups and as a consequence if not totally stress free was at least fun a lot of the time.

 

[summerdays]

Hand wrote everything apart from the 2 dissertations and they were a real pain hand typing them myself (can't remember what on since I didn't own a typewriter).

I sometimes thing of the things that have improved and wonder whether they are all for the good. Take accommodation ... from what I see of student digs they seem to expect them to be wonderful ... I lived in some right hovels, and survived. I think I gained from that experience. Equally I'm glad that I was pre-fees and the pressures that exist on the students now.

Not looking forward to going through the process with mine in a couple of years time (apart from theoretically gaining space when they move out.... )

 

[meenaghman]

All that writing. Diagrams /graphs were hand crafted in pencil and carefully inked. One of my lecturers did let me in on a big secret. never write the introductory paragraph to the question in an exam/piece of work. its very likely that you may have other ideas when writing the question. Go back once finished and craft the introductory paragraph so that it fits/flows with the rest of the piece. Without computers it meant that you had to spell words correctly.. and there wasn't time to use dictionaries. The required reading for the courses were naturally all on restricted loan in the library.. but it often meant getting one book between the house and studying together, rather than individually. Photocopiers were available but copies were expensive (part of this was to prevent widespread copyright infringement).. however the software to read the card, and deduct the money wasn't as robust as today.. so there were ways and means of beating the system. Similarly with phone calls home. Sometimes phones would go out of order and not demand payment -long queues would be seen forming outside booths. Later on when studying a post graduate course we had to use the DEC VAX 11 computer. This was a pain to do stuff on and all student printout was centrally printed and one paid a fee every time to pick up program listings (again an attempt to make you think first / print later). However the manuals for the VAX were available, so using a bit of cop-on, some system calls, and seeing the printer names plastered on the staff printers dotted around the college, I never had to pay for a piece of printout ever. BBC micros were the in thing in educational computing, while 386s were just coming onto the market. Everything was DOS, and based on text and markup language, not a WYSIWYG type interface.. so one never saw the final draft for real until it was printed (and you discovered you hadn't closed the italics markup etc..) All good stuff. Simpler times when "computer didn't say no".

 

[Davidc]

I was recently asked, completely seriously, by a 19 year old, how we ever managed to have a decent social life at university without mobile phones!

I think it's the same issue as with the the OP. If something doesn't exist you don't know you haven't got it, and so just get on with life using the tools you do have. You don't feel hard done by, and you can't miss things that haven't been invented yet.

 

[palinurus]

It took a bit longer, it wasn't that bad though. Just didn't look as neat.

Once I started work I used to write my reports by hand at work then give them to a typist. They were quick, and they got used to my crappy handwriting after a while.

The main advantage now I have a computer is having access to various statistical software packages so I can make nice charts and diagrams without taking all day about it. And deal with whopping great data sets quickly.

And photographs. Used to have to wait for them to be developed, then stick them in the report after (but If I wanted a quick job there was Polaroid)

Need to balance all that against no interruptions from email, relatively infrequent phone calls and meetings.