Advertising posters of the 50s: about computers and not only!

Hi all.

Another material dedicated to advertising hi-tech inventions of the last century. let's go again

plunge into the world of high technology, rampant advertising and good old sexism.

Let's focus on the 50s.It was a time when technology developed by leaps and bounds. Offices began to use electric typewriters, voice recorders, the first computers and accounting machines appeared!

Let's start with the technology that has passed throughdecades. In past issues, we have already watched an advertisement for The New Edison Company phonographs. Thomas Edison is known to most as the inventor of the light bulb. But there is another invention that brought him the worship of ordinary Americans - "talking machine". The machine allowed to record sound!

Ever since its invention, Edison andCo. worked on improving the quality of the recording and commercial use of the device. Above, you saw an advertisement for pure sound for music fans. The company held such public demonstrations regularly, demonstrating that the recorded sound was as good as the original. Below is a full spread of the magazine dedicated to how 6,000 teachers listened to the world famous baritone of the time, Mario Laurenti.

And by 1940, the Dictaphone was invented.Dictaphones still existed in the 1920s, but they used wax cylinders for recording, which were bulky, uncomfortable, and initially short-lived. Over time, they learned to make it so that it was possible to overwrite up to 100 times. The pictures above just show the machines that used wax. And below is a picture of exactly how the wax cylinders looked.

This is what the recording cylinders looked like.

And this is what the loaded car looked like.

The United States in this regard, of course, pleases.The country has several museums dedicated to the history of sound, which regularly hold demonstrations of ancient devices. The most inquisitive can watch the 4-minute video below of Edison's phonograph being used to record guitar playing. The video is in English, but, in principle, everything is clear and without words. Take a look to understand the complexity of sound recording at that time.

As a result, wax cylinders lost to anotherperspective format - plates. And the Edison company carried out competent positioning. Dictaphones are needed so that the strong and smart of this world dictate thoughts, and then the secretaries retype them, without distracting the boss with requests to repeat. Why are they secretaries? What is sexism? A secretary is a respected profession – one would probably read such a reaction on social networks if such an advertisement came out now. However, in those days everything was simple and clear.

Miscellaneous

Affiliate material

Reality and prospects of the IT professions market

What professions are the most popular and highly paid?

Saturday coffee #206

Pour a cup of invigorating Saturday coffee andcheck out the news of the week. Telegram Premium has become available to everyone, VK have taken up their services, a new car brand is coming to Russia, and in January we will see Cheburashka in the cinema…

Full tank #14. Lexus ES350 F Sport test

Saturday, which means it's time for our automotive column. Today we will talk about the seventh generation of the Lexus ES business sedan, a roomy, quiet and calm car from the Japanese manufacturer.

Books. Thomas Hein, "Total Packing"

How packaging has changed product marketing and become a value in its own right. An amazing book, simple and profound at the same time.

A delightful 1938 advertisement written asmonologue of a secretary who complains to her friend that she wants to be a real assistant. However, she is forced to spend half a day getting a manicure and staying at work, waiting for her boss to be ready to dictate her answers to letters and other smart things. At the end of the text is a typical objection from a potential boss that he is too old to master such complex technology. To this, the secretary must answer that the recorder is no more complicated than a telephone: you just need to pick up the phone, press the button, and you can talk.

This ad is from 1949.There is also a transitional period, since models that use both disks and cylinders are being sold here in parallel. The boss is invited to dictate his thoughts to the recorder, and while he is busy with this, the secretary can be entrusted with additional duties.

Advertising worked in two directions,processing both the boss and the women. Advertising for working moms. It explains that now a woman will be able to save time when typing smart boss thoughts. There is a chic story going on at the top, where a woman, apparently talking with a friend on the phone, complains that she did not have time to put the children to bed, she felt despair because her husband was annoyed that he had to cook his own dinner. For a whole week she persuaded her boss to buy a voice recorder and now she lives like in a fairy tale, that is, she manages to work, cook, and put the children to bed. This is right. We must give a woman the opportunity to be happy.

And here is an ad aimed at young girls who would like more glamor in their work.

Today in office life Susan camesignificant change. She may be one of those modern secretaries who have more professional responsibilities. While the boss is dictating, Susan can do more - meet clients, lead small talks.

Talking about dictaphones, it should be notedthat there was also a lot of image advertising aimed at people who are prejudiced against technology. For example, below is an advertisement from 1965 that reads: "A recorder for those who hate cars." A characteristic phenomenon of any era, when the usual paradigms break down. New technologies come, and people who no longer have the strength to understand this are left behind. The natural reaction is to hate what you don't understand.

Along the way, electricaltypewriters. This niche was occupied by IBM. The selling slogan said that in an hour of work on an electric typewriter, the fingers get tired in the same way as in 3 minutes of work on a conventional one.

All advertising in this case was designed for women, because the authorities were sneezing, how the fingers of the secretary got tired there.

In the 1940s, computers began to enter offices. They are bulky and expensive, only the largest companies can afford them.

But, probably, it’s worth starting with their predecessor -tabulator. In general, tabulators appeared at the end of the 19th century. This is an electromechanical machine that was able to process numerical and alphabetic information recorded on special punched cards. Tabulators were "sold" for accounting and warehouse accounting. For example, the advertisement below is designed for the city administration. The advertisement tells how the tabulator can reduce tax debts. It is understood that earlier taxes had to be calculated manually and no one met the deadlines.

This is what the modern office looked likeprofile accounting secretary. It was proposed to punch cards at the same time as filling out invoices, so that later it would be easy to count everything. As you understand, initially everything was filled out by hand (for speed), and then it was already transferred to the secretaries for “digitization”.

A stylish toy of a modern office has becomeaccounting machine IBM 407 (the same tabulator). Introduced in 1949, this baby could read 80-column punched cards and could count up to 150 lines per minute. The pinnacle of technology. Worth it. IBM rented them out for $800 to $1,000 a month. Tabulators existed on the market until the mid-70s.

But this is a rather rare advertisement for a communication system"White Alice" 1957. Initially, as often happens, it was a military technology, which then entered the civilian needs. Subsequently, "White Alice" became a victim of satellite communications. The White Alice used the principle of tropospheric propagation for over-the-horizon communications and line-of-sight radio relay communications.

And initially the system connected US Air Force facilities atAlaska. The advertisement emphasizes this point: as soon as an enemy aircraft tries to threaten our northern borders, the signal will immediately be transmitted to the air base, regardless of the weather and weather conditions. And when the system is completed, there will be telephone and telegraph communications in Alaska on a route of 3,100 miles. It should be understood here that Alaska was such a wilderness that even in Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska, in the 60s there was one public telephone in the city center for almost 45 thousand people.

For the "White Alice" such huge antennas were used.

By the way, for the curious.The USSR had its own system of tropospheric communication, TRRL "North" with a length of 13 thousand kilometers. And even now the technology is not forgotten. So, last year alone, 335 million rubles were allocated for the Krasnoyarsk Groza. It is expected that one station will be able to provide Internet at speeds up to 25 Mb / s via tropospheric communication, and via a radio relay line, the speed will generally be 150 Mb / s.

After the launch of satellite communications, "White Alice" ceased to be relevant.

The end of the 50s is the time of the first computers.One of them was the Bendix G-15 introduced in 1956. The starting price was $49,500 (around half a million in today's money). Only 400 models have been sold throughout history. Each computer weighed 438 kilograms.

Since there were no monitors yet, a typewriter was used. The computer gave answers at a rate of ten characters per second.

Below are two advertisements. One is from 1960 and the other from 1963. The second ad offers a profitable lease - $985 per month for 3 years, and then, apparently, a residual payment or a new computer.

Gadgets

As an advertisement

Acer ES series 1 electric scooter review (AES001)

Acer has made its debut on the Russian market of electric scooters, and we are in a hurry to share our impressions of riding on the base model. Can the simplest solution be the best choice?

Acer

Overview of the flagship Samsung Galaxy S22+ (SM S906B/DS)

The most balanced flagship from Samsung in 2022, the best price / quality ratio, certain flaws in ergonomics, but excellent cameras and display.

The first smart speaker from Xiaomi in Russia: Xiaomi Mi Smart Speaker

Powerful sound and nice design.

5 facts about HUAWEI MateView GT Standard Edition 27''

Compact curved 2K 165Hz monitor for the money…

The description is pretty interesting.First, we are assured of the reliability of the device. With a probability of 97.4%, the computer will perform the operation. More than 1000 programs are available to the user out of the box (for free!).

To understand how cosmicthe device was a Bendix G-15, just look at the second advertisement with the pilots - the secretary just has a stunned look, like “how do these two smart men manage such a thing!”. By the way, the advertisements with the pilots say that the computer will help plan the route, calculate the fuel, select the optimal altitude, as well as flight options with the least wind resistance, suggest alternative airports, thus freeing the captain from most of the routine operations that he usually spends on. not less than an hour.

But Bendix was not alone. Here is a Philco advertisement.Don't you think that the slogan "The world of tomorrow is already today" (that is, the world of the future is already today) does not become obsolete? 60 years have passed, and we are still being sold new electronics with this sauce.

A feature of the computer were surface barrier transistors, which were much faster than previous types of point contacts.

This is what a transistor with a surface barrier looked like.

And so - a transistor with a point contact, which was invented in 1947. And this grandiose event was even dedicated to the cover of the magazine "Electronics" for September 1948.

However, Philco did not fly, as IBM is tightsubjugated the entire industry, winning fat orders. Because of what, the rest of the players simply did not have money for R&D. Philco went bankrupt in 1961 and was bought by Ford, which is said to have kept one of Philco's computers running until 1981.

The article is called "Facts you need to know about the new IBM 305 RAMAC"

IBM, of course, was ahead of the rest.By the way, here is the exploitation of the same theme of the future. This is an image advertisement that says that scientists, engineers, businessmen can now quickly solve problems that were previously estimated as "endless". It's kind of like now with quantum computers, which are said to solve problems that ordinary supercomputers would consider a thousand years.

And here is an advertisement for the new IBM 305 RAMAC.The feature of the computer, which weighed more than a ton, was the first hard drive in history with as much as 3.75 megabytes. The price of the computer was $50,000, or $11,364 per megabyte. How drastically reduced the cost of memory, right? For understanding, 24-inch plates were placed in a separate cabinet the size of a washing machine at a distance of 7 cm from each other. And rotated at a speed of 1200 revolutions per minute. This is what this beauty looked like!

Whole 3.75 MB! Formally 5 MB, but only 3.75 MB is available. Even back then, manufacturers were playing this game.

IBM was doing well with marketing.The company was able to push its 305 RAMAC as the official computer for the 1960 Winter Olympics. The advertisement below describes how the computer allowed the judges' scores to be entered quickly, so that the audience could quickly see not only the results of each athlete, but also his position in the overall table. Advertising says that before the results had to wait for hours. And the computer automatically printed punched cards and sent them to the press center! It also allowed me to store previous results in memory, so I could give context.

It's funny, but the advertisement also mentions Moscow.In 1959, such a computer was brought to the exhibition there. The IBM 305 RAMAC had the answers to 4,000 questions about the US in its memory. Thus, advertising proudly and as if slightly caustically says, Muscovites were able for the first time in their lives to get accurate information about the United States. And then RAMAC processed the statistics of questions, and "we (Americans) were able to find out what the Russians most want to know about the United States." And, apparently, the report was immediately sold to the FBI. I suppose it would not be a mistake to say that this is apparently the first case in history of the sale of user data to the side.

Conclusion

Vintage ads are amazing.

On the one hand, vintage advertising reflects the interests and views of the society of that time.

On the other hand, almost nothinghas changed. The work uses exactly the same slogans and approaches: the world of the future is for sale, and the articles are called "Facts you need to know about blah blah blah." By the way, I can say that such headlines still work great. It is worth calling the text “5 new TV shows to watch”, and immediately people run to read and resent in the comments (why is this necessary? Who is in charge here? Where is the respect ?!). It seems that we are getting smarter, but fundamentally nothing changes. And it's funny.

The first 70 years of telephone communication in posters and advertising

How much does a phone cost at the beginning of the 20th century, why a telephonist is a female profession, an advertisement for really cool handsets, which even the iPhone would envy.