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To: Selectric II who wrote (230242)	2/23/2002 11:46:22 AM
From: J_F_Shepard	Respond to of 769667

"What's a Model C? " Afraid I can't help you too much, I didn't work on typewriters. I was a semiconductor engineer. The Model C, to my understanding, was in the first series of Selectrics. Mine has the standard length carriage and does not have error correction. The main technology advance was the typing ball which came is all sorts of fonts and type sizes.. Very very cheap for IBM to manufacture and I think they sold at retail for about $15-20 each. Therefore it was a precursor to the Selectric II. I bought it refurbished at the employee price of $295 at least 20 years ago. Amazing, considering what we can buy new PC's for now. The next big improvement, I think, was the Mag Card machine in which a mag card the same size and shape of the old punched card was inserted. What was typed was able to be stored in the form of a mag card. They saved space and they were a dream for error correction. I used to watch the secretaries type, back space over an error, and continue that way until the document suited them. They would then remove the original sheet of paper which had backspaced corrections, insert a new sheet, and get a perfect copy. That machine was replaced by the magnetic tape machine which had many more bells and whistles. What was most amazing was the price which was about $10,000. Incredible for a typewriter and they sold very well. Now if you ever want to discuss the history of semiconductor devices and technology ...I'm your man..:-)