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I remember typing pools...

Steve Bridger

I remember my first day at work. The summer of 1981. County Hall. The smell of polished corridors and trolleys laden three-feet high with leaver arch files and buff folders. I opened a door and there it was: The Typing Pool. Page 3 of The Sun were always plastered on the walls of the printing unit whenever I was asked to make errands. We still had a few discussion threads on that topic in the early days here - in 2004!


And I've seen Made in Dagenham, the movie!


I only mention this as the CIPD published a report called Work Audit today, a fascinating look at how the world of work has changed
in Britain since 1952.


I thought we could share our own compelling vignettes of social history comparing changes in the way we work.


What do you reckon?


Steve

Parents

  • Giving my age away - but my first job was sending & receiving  morse code messages in the RN. And this often meant copying them directly onto a typewriter. Thanks to the RN I'm a competent touh typist and still remember learrning to type to music in a class of twenty of us with 20 carriage returns clashing in unison.

    Carbon paper  to duplicate and no tippex then.

    Transmitters and receivers were  the size of domestic cookers and communications was often a trial and unreliable.

     The first 'mobile 'phone ' I saw was being used was in Scarborough by some guy with black curly hair and a shell suit - it must have been the size of the box they put fine whiskey in.  He was telling the other person that, "Yeh, I'm in Scarborough doing a bit of shopping".  

    I probably only  dreamt you'd be able to stand in a street  one day and talk to someone else in another street, in some far off country, using something the size of a few business cards.


     

     

     

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  • Giving my age away - but my first job was sending & receiving  morse code messages in the RN. And this often meant copying them directly onto a typewriter. Thanks to the RN I'm a competent touh typist and still remember learrning to type to music in a class of twenty of us with 20 carriage returns clashing in unison.

    Carbon paper  to duplicate and no tippex then.

    Transmitters and receivers were  the size of domestic cookers and communications was often a trial and unreliable.

     The first 'mobile 'phone ' I saw was being used was in Scarborough by some guy with black curly hair and a shell suit - it must have been the size of the box they put fine whiskey in.  He was telling the other person that, "Yeh, I'm in Scarborough doing a bit of shopping".  

    I probably only  dreamt you'd be able to stand in a street  one day and talk to someone else in another street, in some far off country, using something the size of a few business cards.


     

     

     

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