Remember When?

Remember how we used to generate research reports?

"The scientist in a pharmaceutical company prepares his compound documents, using a variety of text and graphics systems, in a laborious cut-and-paste procedure, and transmits a hard copy to a records center, where photocopies and microforms are made and indexing takes place. When the end-user wants to retrieve his report, he asks an intermediary to do a search. The result will be a report number or access address. The hard-copy report then has to be manually retrieved, perhaps copied or printed, and delivered by mailman to the end-user. . . it is also evident that research end-users are not accessing full-text online databases to any large extent."

 - From J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci., 1991

It's truly amazing how quickly technology has accelerated online publication in the intervening two decades.

Public library lintel, USA

Update (Aug 3) - Derek Lowe weighs in:

@SeeArrOh Yep, that's how my continuation exam in grad school was done. Typewriter, plastic template, rub-on letters. Just before @Chemdraw.
— Derek Lowe (@Dereklowe) August 4, 2014