Looking back over the years, there are many products that I have used that have hit the marketplace and caused a disruption, but not realizing what was happening at the time. This is a prime example of hindsight is better than foresight. One of the products that I remember so well is the manual business typewriter and the IBM Selectric typewriter.
Manual business typewriters were a better choice of writing tools than pen and pencil because they kept businesses moving forward at a faster pace. Once the IBM Selectric typewriter hit the marketplace, it disrupted the manual business typewriter because it had several advantages. The features of the Selectric typewriter made it a much better quality because it was electric, which was much faster, it had different fonts, could type in italics and had different languages. All these features contributed to the expedient process of completing correspondence in a third of the time it would have taken on the manual typewriter.
So, everyone that knew how to operate a manual typewriter had to get on board and learn how to operate the IBM Selectric typewriter and because it required change, I think that was the biggest disruption because people are afraid of change.
