Who is this lady and what is she doing?

[hedgehog]

[warrior1]

1. Nixon's

secretary. Hanging up a phone.

[Marnie]

27. That's not even the half of it.

[sufrommich]

2. She's Nixon's secretary explaining how she "accidentally" erased

24 minutes of tape.

[itsrobert]

3. Rose Mary Woods?

?

[hedgehog]

5. I'm asking because I posted this picture on another thread, and

I think two different people thought it was me!

Talk about a generation gap!

[sufrommich]

6. lol. nt

[Ellipsis]

8. Look at Tank on her desk... is that a early Selectric?

[musette_sf]

12. No, it's an IBM Executive

The main selling point of the Selectric was that the carriage didn't move, the typeball replaced the regular key setup, and instead the typeball moved.

The IBM Executive was a strange animal, a proportionately spaced typewriter, with a carbon ribbon like the Selectric had. If I remember correctly, a capital W was 5 "units", and a lower-case i was 1 "unit". It had weird half-space keys in addition to the spacebar.

And it most certainly was the typewriter used on the original of the famous Bu$hie TANG forms upon which the career of Dan Rather was crucified. If I heard ONE MORE idiotic pundit who was, like, 3, when I was the Executrix Of The IBM Executive, say "those forms were proportionately spaced and there was NO typewriter like that at that time", I was gonna scream.

[SheilaT]

18. I'd forgotten about the IBM Executive

typewriter. I seem to recall it never was widely used, because the proportionality spacing was just very awkward. I bet it was especially awkward if you'd typed a wrong letter, and were now trying to go back and type the correct letter over the white-out. Only, if the first letter was proportionally smaller than the second, it just wouldn't work very well, would it?

I don't think I ever actually saw one of those in use. I do recall the Selectrics, very well.

[immoderate]

20. Where did you use whiteout? Not on a business letter.

It's called a do-over.

Any proportional typewriter (some Selectrics were) would have that problem. Erasing or painting was unacceptable.

--imm

[SheilaT]

24. The reason I had a very limited

secretarial career back in the day before computers, was that I'm a fast but somewhat sloppy typist.

White-out was my best friend.

I also recall typing papers in high school and college and once I discovered erasable bond, my life was much simpler.

I am so happy I live in the computer era now.

[Brigid]

47. Erasable bond was a gift from God.

This thread is a real trip down memory lane! :rofl:

[Raine]

25. I used one of those. When there was no mistakes

it looked really good but boy it was a pain in the ass when you made a mistake. :cry: I liked the Selectric better, the letters were in script.

[Sal Minella]

31. Except, when you got up to any speed on a Selectric, it sounded

like it was going to fly apart!

The noise of the Selectric drove me nuts, and waiting for the type-ball carriage to return.

[musette_sf]

34. rattleclicka rattleclicka rattleclicka

(bzzzzzzzz)

rattleclicka rattleclicka rattleclicka
(bzzzzzzzz)

I know exactly what you're talking about.

[Sal Minella]

36. Obviously, you do! ha.

The mechanical hum was impossible to ignore.

[musette_sf]

37. You're making me want to go dig up my copies

of "Processed World"

http://www.processedworld.com/

[Sal Minella]

42. Looks like fun -- will check it out tomorrow when I'm not in

end-of-the-day fade mode.

[musette_sf]

30. I got very creative at manual kerning on the Executive

when I made an error.

I shudder now to think of doing manual kerning on a typewriter...

[Sal Minella]

29. Yes, capital W and lower case "m" were five units, iirc -- I was

working in a print shop in the 'seventies and trying to do justified typesetting on one of these darlings. Numerals were three, I think.

And I was also furious at the people who said variable width spacing did not exist on typewriters during GWB's TANG "service" era -- I googled and googled, but had forgotten the name of the machine.

Reading your post made me feel somewhat better -- but why did no decent journalist expose this at the time? Because Karl's ratfuckery worked better than Dan Rather's research staff???

[musette_sf]

33. Hey, I posted about it at every opportunity,

but like Regis says, "I'm only one (wo)man!"

Like I said, all of the pundits who kept catapulting the propaganda, were watching Big Bird while I was toiling away in the office canyons of Manhattan in the late 60s and early 70s.

[Sal Minella]

39. I believe the final pronouncement was that the documents Rather

had were "fake copies of documents that might well have been real originally" or some such nonsense -- based on the typeface!

I think that was when I began unhinging from the news world.

[musette_sf]

43. kind of the same here

the IBM Model D "Executive" was not exactly a freaking state secret.

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/modelb/modelb_office2.html

In the spring of 1967, the division announced the IBM Model D "Executive" Typewriter. It features "proportional spacing," first developed by IBM, and incorporates the same type of contoured keyboard found on the "Selectric" typewriter. Other features include added typamatic keys and a "control row," containing such controls as margin and tab set, above the keyboard. In all, the Model D incorporated some 250 improvements over the Model C at the time of its introduction.

In addition to the new "Executive" typewriter, the Model D line includes a standard electric model without proportional spacing; an electric formswriter designed to speed the preparation of continuous business forms; and a new model, featuring decimal tabulation, especially designed for statistical typing.

(okay, NOW I'm having flashbacks of the Executive statistical typewriter! GAAAAHHHH talk about a monster tank!)

[Canuckistanian]

44. I remember that "half-space"

I always wondered who used it and why.

[musette_sf]

46. manual kerning

when you made an error and had to make it "look good"

[Moondog]

9. It's hell to wake up one morning

and realize that one is on the cusp of geezerhood, isn't it?

[CTyankee]

19. CUSP? What cusp? We're IN IT for sure!

GEEZ, this is bad...

don't talk to me...

[Moondog]

23. Heh. OK, if you say so.

Snicker.

Don't talk to you? Well, OK. I'm sure that's my loss . . . .

[CTyankee]

49. Sort of my way of saying "get off my lawn"...

trying to be a bit humorous...

:hi:

[Moondog]

51. No worries

:hi:

[Justitia]

21. ROFL! That pic is a classic, isn't it?

[Scuba]

7. Exactly. Ask her about the 18 minutes. Hmmm.

[Ellipsis]

4. Nixon's secretary?

[Uncle Joe]

10. She's the vote counter in Wisconsin talking about how she found 15,000 votes

they were under her phone.

Thanks for the thread, hedgehog.

[hedgehog]

11. Good one! Can I steal that?

[Uncle Joe]

13. Consider it yours.

:hi:

[Marnie]

28. Excellent!

[Ian David]

14. Rose Mary Woods From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rose Mary Woods
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Mary_Woods

[TheCowsCameHome]

15. Trying to get herself taken off of Mr. Blackwell's worst-dressed list

Some neat threads there, Rosemary...............

[Justitia]

22. LOL!

[Faygo Kid]

16. I thought of this as soon as I heard the looney tunes excuse out of Wisconsin.

I remember it all well.

Nixon was toast, and I had hair.

[leveymg]

17. Back then they had to destroy gov't records. Today, they're just declared State Secrets

Ah, Progress . . .

[Marnie]

26. Rosemary Woods , Nixons's secretary,

trying desperately to cover his ass, err, stretch credulity trying to explain that she could answer the phone and accidentally put and keep her foot on an erase pad on a foot treadle,(under the desk)and thus erase the magic exact 16 seconds of tape that Nixon needed to erase.
I remember it well.

No body believed her.

It says volumes that Nixon the Commander In Chief let his long time friend and secretary take the hit for him and let her suffer the derision for his lie and her loyalty for the rest of her life.

Nixon was a coward and a whole lot worse.

[annabanana]

32. She's doing the 18 1/2 minute minuet. .

It aint the hokey pokey.

[Imagevision]

38. The 18 1/2 minutes erased dealt with JFK assasination remarks that couldn't be allowed out...

[Motown_Johnny]

35. Human Error

it happens all the time

[scarletwoman]

40. Ah! Memories of my youth!

Dear Rose Mary, the very soul of loyalty. I never felt any animosity toward her, she was a woman who loved unconditionally, a woman determined to protect her beloved.

And I'm glad to know that she was able to retire into obscurity until her death in 2005, I like to think that she was well looked-after by those whom she served once she sank from public view.

I was in my early 20s during the Watergate hearings. My partner (who some years later became my husband) and I did not own a television. So, every day when the hearings were on, he and I and a number of friends would betake ourselves to the local 3.2 bar to watch the hearings on the bar's TV.

We'd order a pitcher (or three) of 3.2 beer and all sit around a table close under the TV, jeering and cheering as events dictated. We were a bunch of already old hippies living in the old hippie center of Minneapolis, the West Bank.

As I said, I hold no animosity toward Rose Mary Woods. I despised Nixon, but I couldn't help but understand where she was coming from. She was going to do her damndest to help her guy.

Thanks for bringing back the memories! :hug:

sw

[Canuckistanian]

41. Ah, the "Rose Mary Reach"

It's popular at RNC exercise gyms, so I hear.

[Brigid]

45. I am showing my age by recognizing this picture immediately.

Without reading any posts. Yes, it is Rosemary Woods, demonstrating how she "accidentally" erased 18 minutes out of that infamous tape. I don't recall too many people being convinced. Ah, the good old days. :)

[Jack Rabbit]

48. Why, that is Rosemary Woods, President Nixon's private secretary

She was demonstrating for the Watergate special prosecutor's staff how she thought she accidentally erased 17 minutes of crucial conversation on one of the tapes.

This maneuver became known as the "Rosemary stretch"....................02

[alphafemale]

50. It led to this one. Goodbye and Good Riddance.