IBM 6580 "Displaywriter" Word Processor
date: label: Date made
content: 1983
name: label: maker
content: IBM
notes: label: Description
content: IBM's Office Products Division announced the Displaywriter in June 1980 as an easy-to-use, low-cost desktop text processing system. The Displaywriter System enabled operators to produce high quality documents while keying at rough draft speed. Users could automatically indent text, justify right margins, center and underscore. They could also store a document and recall it for review or revision, and could check the spelling of approximately 50,000 commonly used words.
label: Description
content: The Displaywriter's "intelligence" came in 160K, 192K or 224K bytes of memory. Single diskette drive diskette units with a capacity for approximately 284,000 characters of information were available. As requirements increased, customers could upgrade to a dual drive diskette unit. Optional communications features enabled the Displaywriter to distribute information quickly over ordinary telephone lines.
label: Description
content: 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.
label: Description
content: This system was used by Smithsonian Curator Robert C. Post, who also served as Editor of the journal "Technology and Culture," the official publication of the Society for the History of Technology. Post used this machine for his professional correspondence, museum correspondence, and matters related to editing the journal. He also wrote several books using the system.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Computers
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Robert Post
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2005.0127.01
label: catalog number
content: 2005.0127.01
label: accession number
content: 2005.0127
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Word Processor
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 18 1/4 in x 19 in x 14 in; 46.355 cm x 48.26 cm x 35.56 cm