this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
260 points (99.2% liked)
/r/50501 Mirror
1177 readers
609 users here now
Mirrored /r/50501 Popular Posts
founded 4 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It probably was an active document started as early as the 1970s and that's just a way to do it. Had to be paper they didn't have anything else. Take note cards, write (Or typewrite, or print) the info on them, paste them into a book. Remove old cards as they need to be updated. Easier to package vs a rolodex. Even into the 2000s, old habits die hard and it is easier to maintain security of a single physical copy.
Yeah, I wasn't giving enough credit to how far back this goes. I think this version was supposed to be scanned in 2005, so I was thinking of it as a 2005 document.
I remember how frustrating it was for my dad to maintain a list of contact info. He had many different versions and they all had different information and different omissions.
I was only a kid so I didn't understand how big a deal it was, but I distinctly remember "mail merge" being advertised as a 'killer feature' of word processing software back in the early '90s.
Funny enough I have a pretty advanced typewriter with many word processor functions from the 90s. It has mail merge, believe it or not. I found it in front of someone's house on large trash day and bought new ribbons for it.
Only thing I couldn't get to work is the floppy drive, but it is super neat watching it print out what I've typed on the tiny screen into two columns.