Good 'Ol Spellcheck

So I was recently thinking about the origin and creation of spellcheck. Everyone knows what spellcheck is in our generation. It would be blasphemy to write a paper or essay or story without pressing the little abc check mark button before you print it.

But let me just say, I would highly doubt my father could find the button or think to use it. My dad can barely type. He has asked me before to find the R for him. That brings me to the investigation of spellcheck and what people possibly did before it was created.

The first spellcheck applications were available on computers in the 1970s after some Georgetown linguists created it for IBM. At this time the application was only for mainframe computers, but ten years later it appeared on personal computers. Spellcheck is barely over the hill.

Also, the first spellcheckers did not suggest any corrections for the misspelled word, it simply just told you it was wrong.

I spellcheck documents numerous times and STILL sometimes find a misspelled word in my documents. Editors back in the day must have needed an even finer eye since the only things looking over stories were just other people.

Computers nowadays even switch letters for you on their own if you make a mistake on a really common word. It works as another mind. In the future, who knows what will be the next editing application. A complete grammar check? A way of telling which "there" belongs in the sentence even if they are all spelled right? Could looking for grammar mistakes completely become a computer's job?

We can only wait and see.