Welcome back! Get all my updates automatically when you subscribe to my RSS feed here.

Cut and Paste Didn’t Start at Microsoft!

Before Microsoft came along artists and corporate office staff were using a light board to cut and paste.

What Exactly is Cut/Paste?

Before business offices had personal computers, all their documents were typed by secretaries.  To prepare a presentation that included pictures, the page first had to be typed using a typewriter.  The page was then taken to a light board to be completed.

A light board made it very easy and fast to insert photos and to make corrections.  The process of inserting a page back into the typewriter and lining up the letters or using white-out was time-consuming and did not always produce the best results.

Instead, replacement words and phrases could be retyped on a separate page.  The original page was placed on the light board and the replacement page with the new text was placed over the original, carefully aligning both pages.  The words were then cut out using an x-acto knife.  The new words were then inserted into the original document and taped into place.

Now when the page was Xeroxed, the original page looked perfect – you couldn’t even tell where the changes were made. When a picture was to be added to a page, the same cut and paste process was used.

Now you know where Microsoft got the idea to create their cut and paste function.

How to Cut and Paste

Cut is used to remove words and images; paste is used to insert words and images.  For instance, you can remove from one location in a document using cut and add to another location with paste.  You can copy from one location in a document using copy and paste into another, without deleting the original.  That’s the difference between cut/paste and copy/paste.