In the early 80's one of my first adult jobs was typing phone company service orders onto ticker tape (punched tape), to be transmitted across the state each morning via teletype. I used a keyboard, with no monitor. There was a small window that had about five words of what you had typed. In order to see further back, you had to read the tape. I couldn't find a picture of the machine I used, but here's the tape below. I think that pink one says, "Help, I'm stuck on pink tape!" Just kidding.
Eventually I graduated to a "dumb terminal" on a daisy chained network, where I got to enter the service orders via computer between the hours of 2 PM and 4 PM every work day. Each office on the chain was given a specific time allotment to use the computer. Once time was up it would be switched to the next computer in the chain. Our chain ran across several offices in the state. These were the first networked computers used in corporate America. Okay, I skipped all of the APRANET stuff that led up to this point, but you can research that if you care.
Fast forward past the telecommunications gig, a stint in the travel industry, then some schooling, to where I spent most of my career, in computer software testing. This is the career I enjoyed the most. Getting to test the code software developers wrote to ensure it was as bug free as possible.
