Nostalgic Tuesday. Things have moved on heaps in the past 10 to 20 years. If you are reading this in an office, then take a look around. If you are young enough you may notice a lot has changed in terms of corporate stationery and technology that used to be common place in the office but has now been replaced. So with a pair of misty eyes, let us walk down memory lane and check out some products that were popular only as far back as 10 to 20 years ago. For those who are really really young, then perhaps you may be a bit amused. Here is the list:

Office Products You No Longer See

1)    Floppy Disks: Before solid state pocket hard drives that can achieve memory capacities of 128 gigabytes and beyond people used to save important documents on floppy disks. Why were they called floppy? Well the first ones were indeed just that, bendable pieces of plastic about the size of your palm. Later technology got real sophisticated and they reduced to about half the size and onto solid pieces of plastic instead. Most floppy disks were 1.44mb which would be sufficient for about a quarter of a typical jpeg photo. By the way you windows save icon is a picture of a floppy disk!

2)    Carbon Paper: Have you sent an email today? Wondered why you press the Cc button, or if you are inclined to the Bcc to include other people? Well the reason is because it stands for Carbon Copy. It is a piece of paper that when pressed on one side causes the opposite side surface to leave the same mark. In other words it was a device used to create copies of a document. These were used in typewriters, credit card receipts as well to copy written text in some instances.

3)    Telephone Switchboard: In the past when you called into an office you would be put to a switchboard. This was literally a board where a receptionist would physically transfer a cable on a board in order to connect you with the person you would like to speak to. Today the word switchboard is loosely used to describe anyone picking up a phone and transferring a call.

4)    Before Windows and Apple computers documents were typed onto typewriters. The first ones were manual the subsequent ones electronic. Did you know that the keyboards we use today were made so that we will type slower? That was because the QWERTY keys as we know today used to cause typing jams on manual typewriters.

5)    Airmail envelopes! They were made because postage rates were higher when sending mail by air. Hence these special envelopes were made lighter. They are nothing more than novelty nowadays though sadly.

6)    Had a lot of pals or clients? Then you needed this address book!

An also an honourable mention to:
CRT Monitors and Liquid Paper (tipex)