It was cutting edge technology in 1978. Now it’s a museum piece.

The Indianapolis News transitioned from typewriters to computers in the late 1970s and I found this image a couple of days ago – a photo of me at a Hendrix computer terminal shot in November, 1978.

I’ve always loved new technology, so I took to the Hendrix system quickly while some of my colleagues struggled and fought it. A few years later, I was on the transition team that trained the staff on a more sophisticated Atex computer system.

Hendrix was a wide-open system on which you could see everyone else’s files – something a new city editor failed to grasp when he created a series of memos to himself in which he ridiculed his superiors. Curiously, he wasn’t fired over it.