What was the first novel ever written on a word processor?

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The Book-Writing Machine

What was the first novel ever written on a word processor?

By Matthew Kirschenbaum
Slate Magazine
Friday, March 1, 2013

Len Deighton and his IBM word processor, London, 1968.
Courtesy of Adrian Flowers

Would best-selling novelist Len Deighton care to take a
walk? It was 1968, and the IBM technician who serviced
Deighton’s typewriters had just heard from Deighton’s
personal assistant, Ms. Ellenor Handley, that she had
been retyping chapter drafts for his book in progress
dozens of times over. IBM had a machine that could help,
the technician mentioned. They were being used in the new
ultramodern Shell Centre on the south bank of the Thames,
not far from his Merrick Square home.

A few weeks later, Deighton stood outside his Georgian
terrace home and watched as workers removed a window so
that a 200-pound unit could be hoisted inside with a
crane. The machine was IBM’s MTST (Magnetic Tape
Selectric Typewriter), sold in the European market as the
MT72. “Standing in the leafy square in which I lived,
watching all this activity, I had a moment of doubt,” the
author, now 84, told me in a recent email. “I was
beginning to think that I had chosen a rather unusual way
to write books.”

Continues at:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2013/03/len_deighton_s_bomber_the_first_book_ever_written_on_a_word_processor.single.html

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj

[Francis A. Miniter]

Define word processor.


Francis A. Miniter