1979 Computer Automation History Citibank Lexar AXXA Electronic Office System Word Processing CRT

Computer Automation Citibank Electronic Office System. - This is a brief educational/historical view of Citibank's 1979 implementation of an in-house office automation system, which included E-mail, word processing, desktop computing, calendaring, electronic filing and remote access. Workstations used a Z80 microprocessor and accessed a central processor. The office automation system, known as AXXA was installed in 15 Citibank locations.
This presentation shows the AXXA terminals in use at Citibank, and is followed by a 5 minute promotional video explaining the benefits of the AXXA System 90.
In April 1980, Axxa Corporation was formed as a spin off from Citicorp’s Lexar unit, to offer the “Axxa System 90” electronic office system as a commercial product. The initial configuration included two workstations, a central processor, and printer, and sold for about $42,000 in 1980 (over $155,000 in 2024).
This presentation is for educational purposes and not affiliated with Citigroup, Citibank or the BBC.
Restoration of the film excerpt courtesy of Speakeasy Archives
www.laserfilml...

[@Padrino-kp1rf]

Does anyone else get satisfaction from watching vintage computer videos?

[@papagen00]

yes this is better than vintage porn.

[@yldrmcs]

@@papagen00😂

[@rabcproj]

Yes. As a Gen Xer, it makes me feel like what it must have been like to be my grandparents (born 1910s), seeing tech change from radio to silent movies to color film talkies to television.

[@oscarfeatherstone6688]

2:43 I had to play that back a few times before I heard "If I can trust him" instead of "I fucking trust him"

[@I_stand_with_Israel.]

😂😂😂 I was like “What did she just say?!?“

[@belkacemF]

😂

[@PMThrudr]

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who caught that.

[@c0t0d0s7]

I just played that part back about 15 times. I should have checked the comments first.

[@MontegaB]

It's crazy how much technology from this period has been lost to time. This is really cutting edge stuff.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @MontegaB, yes, these beautiful CRT workstations came and went very fast. Never saw or heard of them before this film turned up. Glad we could share this bit of rare computer history. Hope to learn more about this model in the future. Thanks for your comment. Hope you will visit and view our other videos as well. Thanks! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@mxssxm]

We all need a "oops-key" 🤣 thank you for uploading. Greetings from germany 😌

[@ForgottenMachines]

6:39 is the "oops-key"!

[@bennri]

Citibank sure does need an oops key.

[@heyyo162]

Way better than ctrl+z

[@MM.]

That pivoting monitor took me by surprise, impressive for 1979. The VT100 had been released only the year before.

[@matneu27]

Besides memory, screen size was sure another expensive part of those days. You can find a pivoting screen nowadays in the BYD Atto EVs 😉

[@cfusername]

The resolution was also surprisingly high.

[@jonathankleinow2073]

Wow, this is a really impressive system, practically a decade ahead of its time. How is there so little about it online? This should be up there in posterity with the Xerox Alto and Star, the IBM PC 5150, and the Macintosh.

[@ran2wild370]

Well, I suspect those systems were tightly tailored for mutli-corps inner business processes and acted somewhat a department level mainframes. Probably we have already watched some videos about BBC or other news agencies with global telex/teletype network and editing/news reporting terminals.

[@BlaBla-pf8mf]

At the heart of this system is not a PC. A Z80 PC can't do all that stuff. Networks like this were based on a central mainframe or minicomputer which does all the work. Pretty common from the 60's to the early 90's in big companies. That's why it's so expensive. $155 000 is no joke and you get a really minimal setup. The video is a bit misleading as we get to see only the smart terminals not what was probably a minicomputer powering this, herd drives etc

[@straightpipediesel]

The reason is it's not novel or a head of its time. Wang OIS (1977) beat them. IBM PROFS (1981) meant you didn't need a new, dedicated computer appliance, you could do the same stuff off your mainframe. The IBM Displaywriter (1980) used microcomputer technology to make it far cheaper than this, under $8000 a seat. This was word processing only, VisiCalc on the Apple II (1979) introduced the world to spreadsheets.

[@albear972]

2:00 Dang! I must say, that has to be the craziest monitor design I have ever seen. Pretty wild there.

[@volvo09]

There were other CRT type "rotating monitors" for portrait or landscape, but this must be the first. Very cool

[@jonathankleinow2073]

I'm quite impressed. The first rotating display that could be changed from portrait to landscape or vice-versa in real time that I knew of was the Radius Pivot Display, which didn't hit the market until 1991. It's possible there was a similar product for the IBM PC market I'm not aware of that preceded it, but the demand for that feature came from the Macintosh's extensive use in desktop publishing at the time.

[@thesteelrodent1796]

@@jonathankleinow2073 there were several very early CRT that could be rotated because they assumed you'd want a vertical monitor for writing letters, and horizontal for everything else. It wasn't till the mid-1980s they realized that you don't need a vertical monitor as long as it's big enough

[@dave4shmups]

Thanks for uploading this! That was fascinating! I didn’t know that any company had computer systems like this in 1979! ARPANET was around, but that was Government controlled and wasn’t available for private businesses to use.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @dave4shmups, you are very welcome. It is somewhat surprising that these systems did not catch on more widely since the rotating CRT was great for banks and institutions that used large spreadsheets as well as memos and letters. The rotation was a great feature especially at that time period. ~ Victor, CHAP

[@yzmey42113]

A lot less standardization back then, vendors were creating their own products from top to bottom. Later on, as systems from multiple different vendors needed to communicate, they started to standardize various systems, and that created the basis for the technology we use today.

[@frankowalker4662]

Ah, the good old days, when PRINT on a key meant print.

[@schr4nz]

Damn, this was so advanced for the time, an almost paperless office in 1979, crazy.

[@LegoTux]

Loved seeing the vintage Western Electric 1A2 key phones, and the Northern Telecom SL-1 digital pbx phones. Started my career working on those old SL-1/QSU phones, they were indestructable!

[@ebridgewater]

03:44 The graphics, the voiceover and the sound effects reminded me of Videodrome (1983 film) so much!

[@PhilMoskowitz]

Keypunch computers were the standard in 1979. So this was futuristic indeed.

[@am74343]

Wow! That sure is the FUNKYEST CRT monitor I've EVER seen!

[@phil4977]

I was a senior manager at Nestle in the early nineties and remember getting a laptop. It was terrible. Prior to that I would hand write memos and give them to the typing pool. The memo would then be couriered overnight to the recipient. Fax machines were big then too.

[@Design_no]

Glad to see "the girls" working on their workstations 😂😂😂

[@volvo09]

2:35 i love how she says "i f-ckin trust him" shortly after 😂 You'd never see that today!

[@K.F-R]

"... if I can trust him..." ;)

[@frankowalker4662]

I thought she said that too, for a split second. But K-F-R is correct. LOL.

[@SlyPearTree]

I replayed that part as soon as it occurred and realized what she said. You would not see casual use of the f word in that kind of content back then either.

[@volvo09]

@@K.F-R oh ok! Hahaha, it really sounded like that on my phone!

[@mrbrent62]

I had to replay that several times myself ha ha ha

[@markarca6360]

This was the great grandfather of Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

[@CrazyTobster]

My father was a pretty senior in BT, but back then they used BBC Micros until Apple (Classic) came along.

[@jms019]

I like the Oops key.

[@thesteelrodent1796]

Always interesting to see the beginning of all the stuff we take for granted today. Just love the "oops" key :D

[@smwsmwsmw]

I love that they have these relatively modern computers but are still using rotary dial telephones (touchtone had been available since the 1960s).

[@johneygd]

Whooaaah now this was definitely mind blowing and forward thinking back in 1979,but it’s no wonder that only banks or other big companies used it because they costed a fortune, a whopping $42.000,so it’s no wonder most people didn’t had a computer back then,am also stun had they expected more business productivity in 1980 or how they could plan a meating 6 years away from it in 1985,1979 was indeed the door to oor current future😁

[@gorsian1979]

Really very Wonderful and impressive , Computers in 1970's Has some similar Shape Features Like in Computers in 1990's and late 1980's , Also Printers were impressive as well and Has High Quality Function like Printers in 1990's and 2000's ❤❤❤ ,

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Thank you very much. Good info. ~

[@tra-viskaiser8737]

That monitor shown has me very worried.... like, what is it secretly doing to me? Lol

[@Teleportcamera]

02:47 did she really say “i fucking trust him”???? 🤣

[@shawnw1979]

OMG I missed that. wow.

[@Schroefdoppie]

Probably more productive than the distraction machines we use nowadays 😂

[@narwhaltacos2197]

How did the Oops key get lost!!!! I get that we don’t need it today, but I’ve needed it for years beyond this video…

[@johneygd]

Well,we now call it the backspace key and that key is still present on our current computers🤣

[@ebridgewater]

All the secretaries were birds and all the managers blokes 😆

[@MontegaB]

How things have changed...🤣

[@MikeF1189]

8:09 A password you say?

[@WhitfieldProductionsTV]

wild this was 45 years ago.

[@Stephen.Bingham]

The flowers for the secretary at the end are to soften the news that her role is no longer required. Hopefully she started a fin-tech company and ended up earning more than her former boss.

[@samio3907]

I wonder if any of these systems still exists. I can't find a single picture in google.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi @samio3907, we had the same thought. With more than 20 years of computer history experience, we have never seen one of these terminals, or any photos of them. This film is the first time we have seen one being used. A nice rare bit of history! Maybe we will see one on eBay some day in the future. Thanks very much for your feedback! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@Richardpasquinucci]

that office got that sofisticated computer system. But they dont have buttons on their office phones

[@crumplezone1]

We owe a lot to those early computer engineers and sofware developers or we would still be a paper and pen civilization

[@mrroobarb]

It's quite scary how the US was so far ahead in the late 70's with banking - but seems to be stuck in that era when the rest of the world has moved on. Chip and PIN, contactless payments etc.

[@ForgottenMachines]

Does the CHM, or any other museum or private collector, have one of these terminals? What about the host system? Have any of these survived???

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Good question. We are not affiliated with the CHM (museum), so you might want to ask them directly. Or perhaps the Smithsonian National History Museum in Washington D.C. We do not know of any museum or collector that has these workstations. Pretty rare!... VK

[@BradNeuberg]

There’s very little about this system online! It’s really interesting, any other materials on it?

[@andyr8812]

Long before you could do all that with Microsoft's products.

[@thesteelrodent1796]

Microsoft was the last company to figure out how to do any of that, all their programs are based on the work of other companies

[@sorinankitt]

Axxa music drowned out the dialogue

[@devpublic526]

2:47 did she just drop the F bomb?

[@ZachariasEnislidis]

WTF?! How the hell did they have that tech, back then?

[@douro20]

Are there any surviving Axxa systems?

[@wiwingmargahayu6831]

thats a lot of fish and chips sir

[@heatvisuals]

3:48 METALLICA

[@arduinoguru7233]

7:08 Damn how M$ screwed the biggest feature needed in office workplaces, searching for your documents (fast).. I think M$ intentionally wanted offices to be crappy like PC never existing

[@shawnw1979]

Was this for real?

[@peewee678]

1:56 - "The Girls"?

[@c.m.obrecht]

Is this the entire system I think, no external CPU unit. But has it mass storage? How to store something? Could it send work to a IBM 370 or something?

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

There was an external CPU unit that connected the workstations, but it was not shown in the film. Still looking for more detailed specifications on this system from the 1970's. Good questions...

[@c.m.obrecht]

Ah OK!@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject

[@ForgottenMachines]

7:55 Looks like a Texas Instruments Silent 700!

[@billschlembach8055]

Did she say what I believe I heard her say??? Omg roflmao.

[@AndrewDavie-er3ug]

That monitor looks like it's attached to a jet engine.

[@ran2wild370]

Ohhhh, those young greenhorns like Jobs, Gates and myriads of others had a lot of space at the bottom of the market with their AppleII/CPM and even Lisa with its only $10.000 price 🤣🤣🤣

[@sa3270]

How funny, they added a key for about everything they could think of.

[@yldrmcs]

AI, hold my 🍺

[@danbeaver534]

Was 1979 that sexist? Geez, I graduated college that year and didn't notice it!

[@gayesthusky2177]

May not have had B00bzz, but I’m sure one could type dirty stories on those computers.

[@shawnw1979]

WYSIWG editor LOL.

[@PilotVBall]

Vulgar 2:46 😂

[@am74343]

She said, "If I can trust him..." not the "F" word! 🤣🤣

[@triodehexode]

​@@am74343Freudian slip. There is also reference to sharpening pencils for you budding analysts out there.

[@meatpockets]

Patrick Bateman before he returns some tapes and murders a hobo. 1:30

[@fokthewef]

Password protected 😂😂

[@sararose8942]

Promo_SM 😑

[@johnpinion8033]

How do we know this is real, and not AI generated??🤣