While the production of RILM Abstracts has consistently depended on computing technology, the systems available in the 1960s and 1970s were unable to fully support its multilingual and multicultural mission. Even the advanced IBM System/370 mainframe, employed between 1970 and 1988, offered only limited functionality for rendering diverse fonts, writing systems, and diacritical marks. From its founding in 1966, however, RILM prioritized the accurate representation of names and terms–including their display in original scripts–as a central objective.
During the 1960s and 1970s, RILM’s Soviet national committee made significant contributions by supplying many records of Russian-language publications. Because the IBM System/370 mainframe could not render authors’ names and titles in Cyrillic script, RILM editors turned instead to the IBM Selectric typewriter, introduced in 1961. The Selectric quickly became a commercial success, with IBM receiving four times the anticipated number of orders within its first year.
The Selectric’s distinctive typeball–a rotating mechanism resembling a golf ball–improved both typing efficiency and the visual quality of text. Its capacity to switch between multiple fonts and alphabets within seconds anticipated the flexibility of later word processors and personal computers. For RILM editors, the interchangeable typeball served almost as an automated transliteration tool: by installing a Cyrillic typeball, they could generate Russian texts while using a standard Roman-letter keyboard.
The original Bibliolore post RILM and the IBM Selectric appeared on 31 July 2021.
