Of all the people I’m writing about lately, Evelyn has had the greatest and most lasting impression or effect on me. She is credited with inventing Word Processing!
Unless you didn’t know, my father got into Data Processing (an offshoot of Computer Science) back in the Seventies. As a kid, computers were amusing and they played some cool games but they weren’t practical to the average person, including the personal computers which started to appear by decade’s end. Then I became rather anti-computer in the Eighties. There were a couple reasons. The first one was centered around Dad’s career; his skills were in demand so we moved around while I was in high school and it made me resentful. Hence, I would show the old man by getting a career sans computers. What’s ironic is that he wanted me to pursue a degree in CS and we never had a home system to cultivate this. The other big reason was mentioned before, computers didn’t solve crap beyond playing Wizardry/Ultima, writing BASIC junk and spreadsheets (I think Lotus 1-2-3 was the breakout app). It all changed slightly the day I was introduced to Evelyn’s contribution, Word Processing. Writing term papers and letters was a helluva’ lot easier with a computer being involved. You didn’t have to type everything all over again, it could check your spelling and best of all, with the document being saved on a floppy, re-working your writing became easier. Trust me, I used a typewriter in its waning days. Due to its nature, you often had what you wanted to type written out in longhand first because it wasn’t a technology you could easily workshop with; Liquid Paper, blech! Re-arrange a sentence, forget it! Already typed out and it cannot be erased.
Thank you so much Evelyn! Your invention got me through college and has been a part of my every day life ever since. You’ve changed how authors write as well.