WEBVTT - Outdated Tech Terms We Still Use 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:14.400 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:17.439 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:19.320 How Stuff Works in iHeart Radio and a love of 0:00:19.360 --> 0:00:24.160 all things tech and over on Twitter, I posted a 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:27.360 simple question not too long ago, which was, what are 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:31.640 some tech phrases or terms we still use even though 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:34.920 the tech that those words referred to is out of 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:37.720 date or maybe even obsolete. And I got a lot 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:41.040 of responses. So on today's episode, I'm going to go 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:44.120 through those phrases, where they came from and what they 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.080 refer to, and we'll all chuckle about how we as 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:50.879 humans are slow to change in our ways, which can 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:53.080 be a really bad thing in many ways, but I 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:56.800 think for most of these examples it's largely harmless or 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:02.120 even silly. And you're probably thinking, huh, Jonathan's really phoning 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:06.000 it in on this one, and you're right, because I'm 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:09.840 recording this on July three, two nineteen, and our office 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:12.800 is closed the rest of the week, and I still 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:15.560 have to record another episode after this one before I 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:18.080 can go home. So when I have to do five 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:20.520 days of work in three days get a bit desperate 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:25.399 for easy topics, al Z. Now, there are a lot 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:28.200 of phrases in terms will be going through on here, 0:01:29.040 --> 0:01:32.440 so I've decided to group them according to subject matter. 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:36.560 So let's start off with phrases we still use regarding 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:40.440 phones and phone behavior. Now, first of all, some of 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:44.720 the phrases I'll say might be dying out simply because 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:48.640 millennials and and the younger generations don't tend to make 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.760 very many phone calls. Heck I don't either, and I'm 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:54.720 a gen xer, so a lot of us are spending 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.440 time on our phones. In fact, the average amount of 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:00.440 time spent on a phone in the United States is 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:04.160 a hundred seventy one minutes per day. That's just under 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:07.440 three hours of your day spent on your phone, not 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.560 all at once, obviously, but throughout the day. Brazilians, by 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:13.160 the way, spend even more time on their mobile devices. 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:15.239 So I don't want to give you guys the impression 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:18.399 that we Americans are the most addicted. But who boy, 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:22.440 we're up there anyway. We might not use some of 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:27.040 these phrases as much as old fogies do. By old fogies, 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.919 I also mean me there as we ride off into 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:33.800 the sunset. We might see these terms fade away, but 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:37.240 for the time being, let's talk about making an ending calls, 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:42.639 which brings us to the phrase dialing a number. Dialing 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:46.880 refers back to rotary phones, which featured an actual dial 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:49.280 on them. And yes, I know a lot of you 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:52.480 listeners out there are old enough to remember rotary phones, 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:55.960 but some of you might not be, and so this 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:58.960 episode is going to end up bridging some gaps. So 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:02.160 the earliest reference I could find of a rotary phone 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:07.160 in actual use dated to eighteen ninety two, but there 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:09.760 were a lot of inventors who filed for patents as 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:13.840 early as the mid eighteen seventies. Before the rotary phone, 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:16.400 you'd simply pick up a phone which would light up 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:19.720 a bulb on a phone operator's desk at a telephone exchange. 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:22.320 The operator would connect to your line and ask you 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:25.520 about whom you wished to call, and you would give 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:30.120 the call signal to the operator, who would then use 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:33.720 a patch cable to connect your line with the appropriate 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:37.080 phone line to complete the call. And coincidentally, one of 0:03:37.080 --> 0:03:39.880 the other suggestions I got when I asked about outdated 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:43.920 tech phrases was what happens if you ask an operator 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:47.760 to connect a call, though I don't know how frequently 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:50.720 that happens these days, but it was a suggestion I got. 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:54.360 But as you can imagine, this system of having a 0:03:54.440 --> 0:04:00.320 human operator manually connect calls together wasn't terribly efficient, and 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:03.520 you could quickly overwhelm the telephone exchange once you've got 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:05.520 a good number of phones on the service, even if 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:09.360 you had multiple operators working at the exchange, eventually you 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:13.480 get to a size where it's not sustainable with that approach. 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:16.960 Rotary phones would remove the need to have an operator 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:20.240 make that patch connection. Once the system was upgraded to 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:22.919 allow for these types of phones, it wasn't like it 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:26.440 just magically worked. It all had to be upgraded together. 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:29.679 The dial had a disc that measured about three inches 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:33.520 across that's about seven point six centimeters, and the disc 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:36.440 had ten holes in it along the outer edge, And 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:39.599 there were several different numbering systems in place until it 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.880 was finally standardized so that the numbers under the dial 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:46.080 would go from one to nine with a zero at 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:49.840 the very end. Other systems would have the zero come first, 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:53.120 or the numbers were listed in descending order, but that 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:56.360 would mean that phones using one numbering system could only 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:59.480 work on a telephone exchange designed for that numbering system. 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:03.000 So as these telephone exchanges grew, As these systems grew, 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:06.680 there was a need for standardization because otherwise you couldn't 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:11.880 actually interconnect the systems. Because if I dial a one, 0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:16.240 but it sends the same signal as a nine would 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:19.400 on a different system, then that other system is never 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:22.440 gonna know what number I'm calling. It's going to it's 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:25.440 going to interpret the wrong numbers as I dial the number. 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:28.520 That's because dialing a number would actually cause a series 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:32.440 of pulses to go out over the exchange from the 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:37.560 original telephone. So each space on the dial was a 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:40.680 pulse or another pulse. So if you dial to one, 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:43.640 it would send one pulse out, if you dial to two, 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:46.320 then you would get two pulses, and if you dial 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:49.599 to zero, it would send out ten pulses to represent 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:52.919 that particular character. And you have to wait for that 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:55.080 dial to rotate all the way back into the starting 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.400 position before you could dial the next number. So I 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:01.120 can tell you from experience, you're really hated it if 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:03.680 the person you were calling had a lot of eights, nines, 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:07.240 and zeros in their phone number. After you dialed a 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.760 full telephone number, which for a local call in the 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:13.240 United States for a long time was seven digits, the 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:17.440 pulses would tell the system which lines to engage, in 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:20.839 other words, which telephone line corresponds with that telephone number. 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:24.799 The rotary phone saw wide adoption, and it became common 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:28.640 parlance to talk about dialing a phone number. Bell Telephone 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:32.680 would introduce the first commercial push button phone on November 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:37.239 nineteen sixty three, but we would keep using the word 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:40.840 dial even with push button phones. Now. Part of that 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:43.960 was because the rotary phones remained in service for a 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:46.760 really long time. It wasn't really until the nineteen eighties 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:50.159 that they started to truly fade away. Another part was 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:53.320 that customers were actually a little leery of switching to 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:56.680 push button phones. They used a totally different system called 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:00.680 touch tone dialing, even though there were no die else again, 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.920 but touch tone was how these operated as opposed to 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:07.919 the pulsing that the rotary phones used. By the nineteen eighties, 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:10.000 those rotary phones, like I said, we're largely phased out, 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.160 and in some some cases you actually had to opt 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:15.960 in for an added service to have rotary dialing supported 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:19.200 on your phone line. Oh and here's another fun one. 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:22.480 One person said, it's only sort of related to tech, 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:25.520 but she wondered why she still bothered to say hello 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:28.760 on the phone since with caller I D, she already 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:31.400 knows who is calling her. And this is an excellent 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.520 point as it does relate to tech from a social 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:38.080 and cultural point of view. And now we get to 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:42.040 talk about the origin of the word Hello. Isn't mean 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:46.600 you're looking for so the word hello is actually older 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:49.960 than telephones. But you frequently will hear that the word 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:54.600 was quote unquote invented, possibly by Thomas Edison for use 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:59.200 over the phone. Edison certainly popularized using it for the phone, 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.160 and she ange the meaning if you if you really 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:05.000 want to think about it. But the earliest written example, 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:09.280 the published example that the Oxford English Dictionary editors found, 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:14.440 dates from eighteen twenty seven. Alexander Graham Bell, whom we 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:18.200 often credit as the inventor of the telephone, wouldn't file 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:21.840 a patent for that invention until the eighteen seventies. But 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:24.160 even if you were to argue that the real inventor 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:28.240 was someone like Antonio Meucci, who many point to as 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:30.720 the first person to create what was essentially a telephone. 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:33.600 That still puts the earliest date for the telephone at 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:37.640 eighteen forty nine. That's still decades after that first published 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:41.080 instance of Hello that we know about. And now the 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:46.320 plot thickens because the word hello didn't initially indicate a greeting. 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.600 It was more like saying, take a look at this 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:54.360 thing here, earle as an hello, what's this now? In 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:57.280 that instance, which you could just imagine was spoken by 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:00.439 someone who was very, very English, the speaker is clearly 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:05.680 not greeting anyone. Rather, they are drawing focus towards something 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:08.960 in particular, and that was the use for Hello for 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:11.760 quite some time, just sort of a get a load 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:15.640 of this thing over here, Hello, this is curious. Now 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:19.040 skip ahead to Alexander Graham Bell, who might not have 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:22.600 strictly invented the technology of the telephone, but certainly was 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:25.199 able to realize it as a business and patent it. 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:29.680 He saw the challenge behind identifying someone on the other 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:31.640 end of the line, so if you got a call, 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:33.840 you had no way of knowing who it was that 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:36.120 was calling you. I mean, at first, there weren't that 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:39.040 many telephones, so the odds of you guessing who it 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:41.440 was that was calling you were actually pretty good. But 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:44.760 obviously that would change over time. So how do you 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:47.960 ask for the identity of the person who is calling you? 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:52.080 Presumably they know who you are because they called you, 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:55.439 but how do you know who they are? There's no caller. 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:58.640 I d well, you could ask who are you? Who 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:02.120 sent you? But then every phone call would be like 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:06.559 one of those Liam Neeson taken films. Alexander Graham Bell 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:10.000 thought a more civilized approach would be that you would 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:13.680 pick up the phone and you would say ahoy. That 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:16.120 was a tried and true method of hailing someone from 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:20.360 a distance, often used by sailors, as the old ahoy 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:23.240 there has been used, or ahoy there. Maybe if you 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:26.640 really want to get piratical with it, you could even 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:30.640 spice it up on the telephone a bit with ahoy hoy. Now. 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:34.520 Thomas Edison wasn't putting up with any of that. He 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:38.600 preferred the word hello, using that to mean I am 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:41.679 greeting you, and I would very much appreciate it if 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:45.520 you would identify yourself over the phone. That didn't please 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:48.880 Alexander Graham Bell. In fact, a T and T which 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:53.440 grew out of Bell's telephone company tried to suppress the 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:56.480 use of the word Hello on the telephone, stating that 0:10:56.559 --> 0:11:01.679 the word itself was vulgar, but vulgarity one out and 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:03.960 A T and T decided to up the game where 0:11:04.040 --> 0:11:09.439 vulgarity is concerned, eventually referring to the company's phone operators 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:16.360 as Hello girls. Yuck. Anyway, the whole purpose of Hello 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:20.040 wasn't just to greet someone, but to initiate the process 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:23.360 to find out who the hell they were, and so yes, 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:26.760 it doesn't make much sense for us to use it anymore. 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:30.000 But then we also use hello outside the realm of 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:32.960 the phone call these days, so it's grown beyond its 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:37.880 initial purpose. Another Twitter followers suggested the phrase to ring 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:40.840 someone up, also meaning to call them on the phone. 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:43.600 And it's true that most folks don't have phones that 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:47.840 really ring anymore, though I guess we still call stuff 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.680 ring tones, even if that description isn't totally apt. But 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:54.160 let me tell you what answering the phone was like 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:57.000 in the old days. For you young uns out there, 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:01.439 way back when when you only have the telephone, maybe 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:03.720 you had an answering machine, but many of us didn't 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:06.439 have those. They were rare for a very long time. 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:08.280 I remember it was a big day when my family 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:12.080 got our first answering machine when I was a kid. Well, anyway, 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:16.080 back then, answering the phone was important. When someone called you, 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:18.520 you had no way of knowing who they were because 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:21.480 there was no color idea, there was no Star sixty nine. 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:23.960 There was no way of knowing who it was. So 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:27.000 if you missed a call, you missed it. It was gone. 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:31.920 And telephones had very loud rings, like their bells would 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:34.240 ring quite loudly so that you could hear it from 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.400 pretty much anywhere in the house, and calls were important. 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:40.480 It could be anything. It could be an old friend reconnecting. 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:42.839 It could be a message from work. It could be 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:46.920 an emergency. Maybe it's a wrong number. But once that 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:49.920 phone started ringing, you would rush to the phone to 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:52.080 pick it up and answer it for no other reason 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:56.400 than to stop the darn ringing noise. These days, I 0:12:56.440 --> 0:13:00.600 answer maybe one out of every twenty calls I get, 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:03.280 since most calls I get tend to be marked as 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:07.240 spam or are from an unrecognized number that's popping up 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:10.439 on my smartphone, So I just swiped to decline the call, 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.959 and that brings me to the next phone topic. Ending 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:18.760 a phone call is called hanging up, and that also 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:21.520 dates to the time when people were using rotary or 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:25.360 push button phones, because those would sit in a cradle 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:28.319 when they weren't in use. The rotary phone sort of 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:31.679 acted like a pedestal with a little cradle that the 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:35.360 handset would rest in, and push buttons usually had a 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:39.000 cradle that could either sit flat, horizontally on a table 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:41.640 or be mounted vertically on a wall. There'd be a 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:45.840 switch on these cradles, and that switch would close the line, 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:49.120 ending a call and making your phone line available for 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:52.520 future calls to you. You physically have to hang the 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:55.600 phone on the cradle or place it in the cradle 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:58.520 for those push button models. And yeah, that phrase is 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.319 stuck around two for those of us who still talk 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:04.040 on the phone now and again, we have been known 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:07.240 to hang up on people even though you're not really 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:12.240 hanging anything on anything else for most of those situations. Okay, 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:16.600 we're done with phones. When we come back, I'll cover 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:20.520 a few other shenanigans, but first, let's take a quick break. 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:30.640 All right. Now that we're back, let's talk about the 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:34.840 world of the written word and correspondence, and we'll start 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:38.680 with the word writing itself. I had one Twitter followers 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:42.440 suggest I add in writing simply because all the writing 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:46.120 she does these days involves a keyboard. The actual physical 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:49.400 process of writing, in the sense of holding a pen 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:52.520 or pencil and writing on a piece of paper, has 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:55.160 all but disappeared for her, and I can dig it. 0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:58.920 I rarely write anymore unless it's in a greeting card 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:02.160 of some sort. I do want to get into writing, 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:06.480 actually writing letters, like actually taking a pen and writing 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:09.680 it out, because I feel the mindfulness it inspires might 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:12.720 make the messages I create more special both for me 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:15.840 and the recipient. Or maybe no one will be able 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:19.680 to read it because my handwriting was already atrocious, and 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:23.640 on top of that now I'm out of practice. Alright, fine, 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:28.560 so we tend to use electronic devices to write stuff 0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:32.480 these days. There are some other outdated phrases we tend 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:35.960 to rely upon in that world too, For example, the 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:39.160 good old copy and paste function that you'll find in 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:44.440 everything from word processing programs to smartphone user interfaces. That 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:47.080 term dates back to the days when people would do 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:51.760 manuscripts and page layouts with physical pieces of paper and 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:55.840 with words that have been cut out, phrases, pictures. The 0:15:55.920 --> 0:16:00.000 process of making a manuscript or a layout was laborious. 0:16:00.880 --> 0:16:04.400 Designers would have to determine how big a layout would 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:07.240 need to be. For example, so let's say you're in 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:12.160 charge of making a layout for a magazine advertisement. You've 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:15.040 got a full page ad in a magazine, and you 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:18.480 are a graphic designer and you're an ad executive type, 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:21.560 you know, a madman, kind of dude or a woman, 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.680 and you want to work this out. Well, first you 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:27.960 would get an oversight sheet of paper. It would be 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:31.480 larger than whatever you were planning on actually creating, but 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:35.440 that's the the canvas you would be using. And then 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:39.320 you would draw the borders of that piece of paper 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:42.360 to mark out how large the final piece of of 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:45.880 advertisement was going to be, because i'd be very important. 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:49.200 So you would use tools like a T square and 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:53.080 a quick square or speed square. Those are those little 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:56.080 right triangles that are made out a flat piece of 0:16:56.120 --> 0:17:00.120 metal that you use too for drafting purposes, and you 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:03.560 would use those to carefully measure out and mark the 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:09.040 boundaries for your layout. Then to place copy or images 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:13.480 on the paper, you would physically paste those elements in 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:18.000 the right position on your little boundary. So typically you'd 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:21.120 use something like rubber cement, which would dry slowly enough 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:24.360 to let designers move elements around a bit without having 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:27.119 to scrap everything and start over if they decided they 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:29.800 didn't like the placement of an element. So you might 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:32.840 put a headline, for example, and you might think, no, 0:17:33.000 --> 0:17:35.520 I want a little more white space between the top 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:38.000 of the page and the headline, so you would actually 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:39.720 be able to move it down a little bit before 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:43.240 that rubber cement would dry enough so that such a 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:46.280 thing would not be practical anymore. So in the old days, 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:49.240 you would physically have to make a copy of something 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.280 and you physically have to paste it on the paper 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:55.600 to create your layout. The manuscript process was similar, though 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:58.240 it would typically involve cutting words out of a page 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:00.480 and pasting them into a new one. You were laying 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.600 out a new page of manuscript, so you had cut 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:07.359 and copy and paste all in the physical world. You 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:10.639 were physically doing these actions. When did those make the 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:13.439 move over to the computer age. Well, that was in 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:16.719 the early to mid nineteen seventies and a couple of 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:20.040 guys named Larry Tesler and Tim Mott, both of whom 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:24.200 worked at Xerox's Park facility. That was that's xerox is 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:27.879 research and development facility, also known for creating or at 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:31.359 least popularizing things like the computer mouse. Anyway, they created 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:35.640 the first cut copy and paste functions for computers as 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:39.760 part of a document preparation system, which had the unfortunate 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:42.840 name gypsy. Now, I say unfortunate because that term is 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:46.280 considered by many to be a slur today. I doubt 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:48.640 those working on the system at the time had any 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.760 awareness of that. I would like to think that they 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:55.560 were just ignorant that that term could be offensive to people, 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:59.720 so they were just picking it, uh, for whatever other reason. 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:02.240 At least I'd like to think that, I honestly don't know. 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:06.040 The function proved to be quite useful and found its 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:10.119 way into word processing programs like word Star and word 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:14.480 Perfect and all of those kinds of word processing programs 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:16.879 in the nineteen seventies and beyond, and it's become a 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.800 key feature in numerous programs since. So we're all familiar 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:23.800 with copy and paste, even though now it's all digital. 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:27.840 We're not physically copying and pasting stuff anymore, at least 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:31.480 not most of us. Now, while we're talking about terms 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:35.439 related to writing, how about we talk about something that 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:38.280 a lot of people get persnickety over, and that's the 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:42.720 difference between typeface and fonts. Now, this is one that 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:46.240 drives some folks crazy because we typically use the words 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:50.240 interchangeably these days, but once upon a time, they meant 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:54.960 separate things, or at least, you know, things that that 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:59.040 had a definitive meaning, and we're not interchangeable. And the 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:01.520 pedantic folks out there who may have worked in a 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:04.840 printer's office might still get their proverbial danders up about it. 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.119 And I'm not being dismissive. I am a pedantic individual, 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:11.560 so goodness knows if I had that background, I would 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:13.560 be one of these people. I have to do a 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:16.720 full episode about the history of typography one day because 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:19.920 it is fascinating and it's a complicated story. But today 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.760 we're going to focus on type face versus fonts for 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:25.920 this part of the episode. So back in the very 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:29.720 old printing press days, to print on a piece of paper, 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:32.720 you first would have to arrange metal blocks on the 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:36.760 press with the letters set out in relief on one 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:41.040 face of the blocks. The type face each block was 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:45.040 a single letter in a particular style. Size and weight. 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:49.199 Weight refers to the thickness of the line, and the 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:52.960 weights could be bold, light, or medium. The side of 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:54.720 the metal block with the letter on it that was 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:57.480 the type face, and that face of the block would 0:20:57.480 --> 0:20:59.879 be inked and then pressed onto a sheet of paper 0:20:59.880 --> 0:21:02.280 to create the print. So really you would have a 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:06.160 whole series of these blocks with the type face out, 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:09.280 you'd think all of them, and you would then press 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:11.879 it against a sheet of paper to get a printed sheet. 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:16.240 So a typeface came to mean the style of this lettering. 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:21.879 So Garamond, Helvetica, Times New Roman, and Ariel are all 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:26.200 type faces. Those are all type faces, and the word 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:30.720 typeface really refers to that actual stylistic design of each 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:35.320 collection of characters. It's what makes Garamond look different from 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:38.680 Times New Roman, which looks different from Helvetica, etcetera, etcetera. 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:42.639 But that just denotes which stylistic family each set of 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:46.439 characters belongs to. You can also describe those characters by 0:21:46.520 --> 0:21:50.280 how large each character is. We measure characters by units 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:53.600 called points. Now, I would love to tell you that 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:57.000 the unit we call a point has had a specific 0:21:57.080 --> 0:22:00.399 value since the dawn of typography. I would love to 0:22:00.400 --> 0:22:03.479 tell you that, but it would be a lie. The 0:22:03.560 --> 0:22:06.520 value of a point has changed many times over the 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:09.680 centuries since the invention of the printing press, but today 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:15.240 the standard is essentially a point equals one seventy second 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:20.200 of an inch. That's point three five millimeters or so. 0:22:20.200 --> 0:22:23.240 So does that mean a character at seventy two points 0:22:23.800 --> 0:22:28.480 is a full inch tall? No, But that's because there's 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:31.960 an invisible square around each character. It's a little bit 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:35.200 above and a little bit below the tallest and lowest 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:39.600 points on a or the ascension and decension if you prefer, 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:44.720 of the upper case largest character. So the seventy two 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:48.040 points really refers to the size of this invisible square, 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:51.560 not the actual character that's printed. So if you were 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:53.320 to think of it as the old printing days, you 0:22:53.320 --> 0:22:56.359 could say it's a larger block the actual physical block 0:22:56.480 --> 0:22:59.440 that has that letter out in relief on the type face. 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:02.639 Your characters would have to have larger blocks. You couldn't 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:08.000 fit a huge t uppercase t on a tiny little block. 0:23:08.040 --> 0:23:10.480 You would have to have a bigger one anyway. That's 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:13.400 why we described those characters in terms of points, such 0:23:13.400 --> 0:23:17.280 as twelve point Times New Roman. So each type face 0:23:17.480 --> 0:23:20.399 would have its own huge collection of blocks with each 0:23:20.520 --> 0:23:23.679 of the sizes and each of the weights in the 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:29.080 printing house. So these these weights and sizes were the fonts. 0:23:29.920 --> 0:23:31.960