And although the 1984 JVC VideoMovie wasn’t the first model in the marketplace, it grew to become iconic when Marty McFly lugged it round in 1985’s Back to the Future. The ruby red model was the primary to integrate the tapedeck into the digicam. (Previously, residence videographers needed to put on a purse-like peripheral that housed the cassette.) Eventually, camcorders were displaced by flash memory-packing Flip Video cameras and, later, smartphones. But their impact will stay eternally, like the movies they captured.

So in 1965, when the IBM System/360 mainframe rolled out, it solely made sense that the Selectric’s keyboard …