<P> While many homes have word processors on their computers, word processing in the home tends to be educational, planning or business related, dealing with school assignments or work being completed at home . Occasionally word processors are used for recreational purposes, e.g. writing short stories, poems or personal correspondence . Some use word processors to create résumés and greeting cards, but many of these home publishing processes have been taken over by web apps or desktop publishing programs specifically oriented toward home uses . The rise of email and social networks has also reduced the home role of the word processor as uses that formerly required printed output can now be done entirely online . </P> <P> Word processors are descended from the Friden Flexowriter, which had two punched tape stations and permitted switching from one to the other (thus enabling what was called the "chain" or "form letter", one tape containing names and addresses, and the other the body of the letter to be sent). It did not wrap words, which was begun by IBM's Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter (later, Magnetic Card Selectric Typewriter). </P> <P> The IBM Selectric typewriter was a highly successful model line of electric typewriters introduced in 1961 . Expensive Typewriter, written and improved between 1961 and 1962 by Steve Piner and L. Peter Deutsch, was a text editing program that ran on a DEC PDP - 1 computer at MIT . Since it could drive an IBM Selectric typewriter (a letter - quality printer), it may be considered the first word processing program, but the term word processing itself was only introduced, by IBM's Böblingen Laboratory in the late 1960s . </P> <P> In 1969, two software based text editing products (Astrotype and Astrocomp) were developed and marketed by Information Control Systems (Ann Arbor Michigan). Both products used the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP - 8 mini computer, DECtape (4" reel) randomly accessible tape drives, and a modified version of the IBM Selectric typewriter (the IBM 2741 Terminal). These 1969 products preceded CRT display - based word processors . Text editing was done using a line numbering system viewed on a paper copy inserted in the Selectric typewriter . </P>

When was the term word processing first used