
But by 1971 the term was recognized by the New York Times as a business "buzz word". However, it did not make its appearance in 1960s office management or computing literatures, though many of the ideas, products, and technologies to which it would later be applied were already well known. The term “word processing” itself was created in the 1950s by Ulrich Steinhilper, a German IBM typewriter sales executive.

It was not until decades later that the introduction of electricity and then electronics into typewriters began to help the writer with the mechanical part. These mechanical systems could not “process text” beyond changing the position of type, re-fill empty spaces or jump lines. In the late 19th century, Christopher Latham Sholes created the first recognizable typewriter that although it was a large size, which was described as a “literary piano”. More than a century later, another patent appeared in the name of William Austin Burt for the typographer. The first word processing device (a "Machine for Transcribing Letters" that appears to have been similar to a typewriter) was patented by Henry Mill for a machine that was capable of "writing so clearly and accurately you could not distinguish it from a printing press". Through history, there have been 3 types of word processors: mechanical, electronic and software.

The term “word processing” arose from the more general data processing, which since the 1950s had been the standard term used to describe the application of computers to business administration. At first the designers of word processing systems combined existing with emerging technologies to develop stand-alone equipment, creating a new business quite separate from the emerging world of the personal computer. Word processing burst into American offices in early 1970s as an idea about reorganizing typists, but its meaning soon shifted to describe automated text editing. The history of word processing is the story of the gradual automation of the physical aspects of writing and editing, and then to the refinement of the technology to make it available to corporations and Individuals.

Rather, they evolved from the needs of writers and only later did they merge with the computer field. From the outset, it should be noted “word processors” did not develop out of computer technology.
