Staff and volunteers at the Creston Museum have been busily working on a brand new exhibit, and would like to invite you to come down and check it out.
How many of these do you remember? Doing exercises to strengthen your hands for typing, and then getting your little finger caught between the keys of the typewriter. Sniffing the ink on pages copied with a Gestetner. Computers with green and black screens that used 5.25-inch floppy disks — or even punch cards. Cellphones that weighed several pounds, and phones with no dials because you just rang up the operator and asked her to connect you to the number you needed. Electric Scotch tape dispensers.
Depending on your age, you might remember many of those things — but the tape dispenser is likely to be a surprise. It is massive: over a foot long, very heavy, fairly complex-looking machinery and all for the sole purpose of cutting Scotch tape.
Welcome to Office Evolutions, the new feature exhibit at the Creston Museum. It includes all of these things, and more, in a special look at the ever-changing world of office technology.
Banking in the days before computers. Accounting in pen-and-ink. Business at the speed of Canada Post.
Those who were there will find plenty of memories in this exhibit. Those whose business life started within the last fifteen years will wonder, “How could anyone run a business like this?”
Prominently featured, of course, are some of the museum’s many word-processing machines. This includes everything from a typewriter with a double keyboard, a couple of tiny portable manual typewriters, one very large electric beast, and the first computer from the first business in Creston to computerize (circa 1984).
Office Evolutions opens at the Creston Museum on Office Professionals’ Day, April 27. All office professionals, and anyone else who is interested, are invited to attend a special reception at the museum at 219 Devon Street. The reception runs from noon-7 p.m., giving plenty of time to stop by at lunch on the way home from work, or even to take some well-deserved time off during the afternoon. Admission is free to everyone with a business card, by donation to everyone else, and refreshments will be served.
And yes, there will be some old office machines waiting for you to try them out.
For more information, contact the museum at 250-428-9262 or mail@creston.museum.bc.ca.