Whilst waiting for you to pray...
As teachers, my parents had lots of stuff to reproduce for their school children. In the beginning, what they did was very basic. Scribe over the "pictures" on two or three pages at a time before going over them again with pencil. They were innovative enough, probably from directives or "circulars" from the Ministry to carve patterns on stencils, ink them and then stamp on the papers - technology akin to batek printing. Perhaps the advent of tracing paper preceeded or even concurrent with this "technology" assisted them further.
Then came the typewriter followed by cyclostyle machines. Machines as big as a 20 inch tv. By the time you finished copying you will be covered in ink since the ink comes in cartridges which you have to squeeze into a reservoir on the machine whilst making sure that it forms a consistent layer on the "bed". You type the words or somtimes scribe them (handwriting and drawings) on the cyclostyle base.
When did carbon paper appear? The same time as typewriter? I don't think so. But it helped. What did they use to "erase"? I remembered a "blue" liquid was used to "erase" typwritten text. Then came "backspace" on typewriters to type over the errors. Before, you would have to manually pull or push the roller to find your error and "go over" them.
My parents retired at the beginning of the birth of photostat machines.
Of course, my first thesis was typed using a £60 typewriter from Boots. Liquid paper was my salvation. The last thesis was carved out by my only sibling two years later on the same typewriter before it was "loaned" to friends.
In 1984, my first £299 Amstrad CPC464 running on magnetic cassettes as the storage medium paired with a £500 Brother Daisywheel printer paved the way to my first SOHO. The word processor must first be loaded from a different cassette.
The keys were more responsive than typewriters. But not a single GUI (graphic user interface), nor a mouse... So you had to remember "Ctrl + C", "Ctrl + V"... I believe this was the basis for "Wordstar", "MS Word" and myriad of other application software.
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