The history of computer word processing applications can be divided into three main periods, each tied to a specific platform transition. In the first period–the late 1970s and early 1980s when CP/M machines dominated the microcomputer market–WordStar was the gold standard. After the IBM PC came along and MS-DOS displaced CP/M, WordPerfect similarly overtook WordStar. Then, as Windows was finally accepted by the masses at the start of the 1990s, Microsoft’s Word usurped WordPerfect as the one word processor to rule them all. (And if we extend things to the present, in the post-PC age there is effectively a commercial word processing duopoly with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.)

PageMaker was the program that defined desktop publishing for the Macintosh platform back in 1985. But what about the PC? Three ex-Digital Research employees believed that desktop publishing could reach the masses of IBM and compatible users as well, so they started Ventura Software. Today, their product "Ventura Publisher" is a largely forgotten footnote in desktop publishing history.

• Computer Chronicles Revisited, Part 69 -- PageMaker, Ventura Publisher, and the DEST PC Scan Plus
• Computer Chronicles #408 -- Desktop Publishing, Part 2 (1986)
• Oral history with Paul Brainerd (Computer History Museum, 2006)
• Oral history panel with Paul Brainerd, Jonathan Seybold, Lee Lorenzen, and John Scull (Computer History Museum, 2017)
• Michael J. Miller's review of Ventura Publisher (InfoWorld, 1986)
• Ted Silveira's review of Ventura Publisher (PROFILES Magazine, 1987)
• Podcast Music: "Scenic Detour" by Melody Ayres-Griffiths

Download this podcast (MP3)

In the studio introduction for a March 1987 Computer Chronicles episode on computers and gambling, Stewart Cheifet showed Gary Kildall a hand-held, calculator-like device that claimed to help people pick winning race horses. Although Cheifet never identified the device by name, it was the Mattel Horse Race Analyzer, an odd footnote in the history of Mattel Electronics, which itself was a short-lived subsidiary of the famed Los Angeles-based toy company.

On April 28, 1988, Mark Herbst of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, went to the offices of the Pennsylvania Lottery to redeem the winning “Super 7” ticket from a July 1987 drawing. Under lottery rules, the winner had one year to claim their prize. Herbst, a clerk at a video rental store, told the press that he had “found the winning stub in an old cigar box.” He said he played the lottery so frequently that he often forgot to actually check his tickets. It was only a news report a few days earlier about unclaimed lottery prizes that prompted him to see if he might have a winning ticket.

Dr. Edward Fry, then a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said in a 1987 report that young school children should be taught keyboard typing as opposed to cursive writing. This was a fairly radical notion for 1987 as computers were not yet commonplace in the home. And there was a feeling among many educators at the time that learning to write cursive was an essential step in promoting literacy itself.

The topic of “computers and the arts” today largely focuses on the use of artificial intelligence to suck up the work of artists–often without their permission–and regurgitate it based on text prompts. No doubt the goal of many of these venture capital-funded projects is to eventually replace the human artists altogether.

Such concerns were still more science fiction than dystopian reality back in March 1987, when this next Computer Chronicles episode first aired. But the ever-wise George Morrow nevertheless cautioned that we should always ensure that machines serve the humans, not the other way around. Stewart Cheifet opened the program by showing Morrow, this week’s co-host, a series of black-and-white sketches produced by artist Harold Cohen using a plotter hooked up to a computer. Cheifet noted that some artists believed computers and art didn’t mix. What did Morrow think? Morrow disagreed. He thought that critics of using computers in the arts were getting the hardware mixed up with the software. He cited the film Star Wars as an example of artists creating effects with software. In art, there were a lot of repetitive tasks. Computers could be a marvelous tool for helping automate those tasks–provided the software was made by the artists and not some computer scientist.

Unlike many people who cover computer history, I generally avoid talking about prices “adjusted for inflation” when discussing older products. For example, one of the products demonstrated in this next Computer Chronicles episode, the Zenith Z-181 portable computer, originally retailed for $2,399 in 1987. If you run that figure through an online inflation calculator, it will tell you that this is the equivalent of $5,395.60 in “purchasing power” in December 2022.

I see a couple of problems with talking about computer prices in these terms. First, a computer is not like a quart of milk or some other commodity that has remained relatively consistent in terms of quality over the years. The Z-181 had 640 KB or memory. The laptop I’m typing this post on right now–a roughly 10-year Dell Latitude E7240 that I paid about $250 for refurbished–has 8 GB. If you were to price both machines on a “per-kilobyte” basis, the old Dell is infinitely cheaper than the antique Zenith.

While annual-release franchises are now a common feature of computer games–think Madden or Call of Duty–the practice arguably originated with tax preparation software. After all, tax laws (and tax forms) in the United States change every year, so the software must be constantly updated. This fact made tax preparation a lucrative field for small software companies to enter during the 1980s, when the personal computer market was still struggling to find a foothold in the home.

On December 19, 1984, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom signed a “joint declaration” with her counterpart from the People’s Republic of China, Zhai Siyang, formalizing the return of the British colony of Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997.

The United Kingdom first claimed the island of Hong Kong as a colony in 1842 after imposing a treaty on China’s Qing dynasty following a conflict known as the First Opium War. After a subsequent conflict–the Second Opium War–the British forced China to cede adjacent territory on the Kowloon peninsula in 1860. In 1898, the British demanded even more land for their expanding colony, which led to a 99-year lease agreement for what became known as the “New Territories.” Although this lease technically applied only to the New Territories, the 1984 joint declaration provided for the return of the entire colony, which only made practical sense since by the 1980s most of Hong Kong’s population resided in that area.

The second part of Computer Chronicles’ two-part look at online services to open 1987 has a strong sense of deja vu. That’s because there’s a repeat guest, Roger Summit, who previously appeared in a 1984 program to discuss Dialog, which is also why he appeared in this episode. Dialog was one of the earliest online database services. And while the previous show focused more on the nascent market for commercial online services like CompuServe and QuantumLink, here the emphasis was more on what Stewart Cheifet described as “high-end databases.”