Electric Pencil

 

Electric Pencil (also known as The Electric Pencil) was the first word processor written for a microcomputer. The original version was created by Michael Shrayer and released for the MITS Altair in December 1976. The TRS-80 version was released almost two years later and it dominated the market until the introduction of Scripsit.

Electric Pencil was one of only five pieces of software inducted into the 80 Micro Hall of Fame in 1983, with the panel stating that Electric Pencil “demonstrated conclusively that a TRS-80 could be used for serious word processing, and was the model for later word processors.”

Origins

Michael Shrayer purchased an MITS Altair computer kit after seeing the January 1975 issue of the Popular Electronics. He later expanded his Altair with a paper punch, video display, and keyboard and he began writing machine language programs.

What became known as Electric Pencil started when Shrayer made some improvements to an editor assembler package called Software Package 1 or SP-1. He named his improved version Extended Software Package 1 or ESP-1. Shrayer decided he didn’t want to use a typewriter to write the documentation for ESP-1 but to use his Altair instead. There were no suitable programs available, so he decided to write his own. As he stated in an 1984 article in Creative Computing:

I developed the original Electric Pencil to document something called ESP-1. At that time, I didn’t even know that a product like Pencil was called a word processor. In fact, Electric Pencil was the first word processor ever written for a microcomputer. I used Pencil to document ESP-1 and then itself.

The new Electric Pencil program was unlike anything else available, and there was great demand for the program. Shrayer began selling it through his company, Michael Shrayer Software, Inc. Peoples wanted versions for computers other than the Altair, and 78 different versions were created for different computers and operating systems by 1980.

The popularity of Electric Pencil made it an early target for software pirates. By one estimate, ten copies were pirated for every legitimate copy sold.

Electric Pencil for the TRS-80

Electric Pencil title screen

Electric Pencil was adapted in 1978 to the TRS-80 Model I by Small System Software. The price was $150.00 for the disk version and $99.95 for the cassette version (with both Level I and Level II versions on the same tape). It was enormously successful, becoming the dominant TRS-80 word processor.

The Electric Pencil advertisements promised a number of features:

Write text, delete, insert, or move words, lines, paragraphs, save text on tape (or disk), then print formatted copy with our TRS232 or Centronics printer (RS-232C with disk version). Right justification, page titling and numbering, transparent cursor and repeating keyboard. Upper case only, or lower case with modification.

 MANUAL