Early computer users waited days for answers, and the machine never adapted to them
Imagine typing a program onto stiff cards, dropping the deck in a queue, and learning a day later that one typo ruined everything. In the batch era of computing, processor time was so precious that any effort spent making machines friendly counted as waste. People bent to the computer, not the reverse.
Programs were punched on keypunches, bulky typewriter-like machines known for breaking down and forgiving nothing. Operators eventually fed the cards in, sometimes mounting tapes as well, and the user collected a printout: either results or an abort notice with an error log. Turnaround often stretched across days, hours if you were fortunate. Some machines were worse still, demanding that programs be toggled in as binary through console switches, and the very first had to be partly rewired with plugboards.
A turning point arrived after 1957 with so-called load-and-go systems. A monitor program stayed resident in the machine, offering services to jobs and spotting mistakes earlier, with more helpful feedback. Those monitors were the first steps toward both operating systems and deliberately designed interfaces.
From 1969 the command line took over, cutting waiting time from days to seconds and letting users change course mid-task. Its first terminals were teleprinters, devices dating to 1902 that were built for automatic telegraphy and had become fixtures of newsrooms by 1920. Reusing them was cheap, but familiarity mattered too, since engineers already knew how to work them. The cost was memory: users had to learn a specialised vocabulary of commands.
Video display terminals, widespread by the mid-1970s, sped things further because characters appear on a phosphor screen faster than a print head moves, and they removed ink and paper from the running costs. Today the idea of an interface stretches from keyboards and touchscreens to experimental brain–computer links using electrodes alone, and even to cochlear implants. A single system may also offer several faces, such as a library catalogue with a simple view for patrons and a feature-packed one for staff.
Source: User interface
