This is a 1980’s era, color movie presented by IBM to promote the Displaywriter Microcomputer system. The movie opens with an aerial view of a major city, 00:20. Two men discussing business are driving in a car, 00:29. Two ladies in an office discuss travel plans, 00:42. Businessman on a business phone discusses business with his office, 1:00. Secretary in an office faces the camera and discusses the need for information in running a company, 1:40. Woman in the office uses an IBM Display Writer in her office, 1:53. Woman checks airline times on her IBM Displaywriter, 2:15. Woman creates graphics on her IBM Displaywriter, 2:15. Men jogging in a park, discussing business inventory, 3:33. Woman uses her IBM Displaywriter to check sales numbers, 4:15. The IBM Display Writer merges and prints text. 4:47. Businessmen including an African American man use their IBM Displaywriter to manage inventory numbers, 5:10. Aerial view of San Francisco, 5:47. Men discuss reports created by the IBM Displaywriter, 6:20. Women discuss printing reports on the IBM Displaywriter, 6:38. Man discusses the IBM Displaywriter’s versatility, 7:00. At 7:04 the film shows an image of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, a symbol of big business, along with a montage of shots of the Displaywriter in action.
The IBM Displaywriter System 6580 was a dedicated microcomputer-based word processing machine that IBM’s Office Products Division introduced in June 1980. The system consisted of a central processing unit, based on the Intel 8086, in a desktop case, a monochrome CRT monitor atop the CPU, a detached keyboard, a detached dual disk drive that used 8-inch floppy disks, and a detached daisy wheel printer. The system booted from an 8-inch floppy disk that stored IBM’s internally developed word processing software. The operator stored the “documents” (i.e., data files) on additional diskettes.
A basic system — consisting of a display with a typewriter-like keyboard and a logic unit, a printer and a device to record and read diskettes capable of storing more than 100 pages of average text — cost $7,895 and leased for $275 a month. The basic word-processing software was Textpack E, with simple mail merge; Textpack 2 added support for double-sided disks, networking, spellchecking, and print spooling; Textpack 4 added automatic hyphenation, columns, and more sophisticated merging; and Textpack 6 added automatic footnoting and outlining. Other options included multilingual dictionaries, graphics, and reports.
The Displaywriter’s features were comparable to other dedicated word processing machines of its era. The features included mail-merge, with fields designated as a01, a02, a03, etc. Elementary arithmetic could be applied to the fields.The basic IBM Displaywriter was a standalone system. An optional central storage and management unit was available, which permitted multiple Displaywriters to share storage and a printer.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
