The Office: 1912 | Shorpy Photo Archive

, 2 min read

None of us have a truly paperless office. The entire idea is an unreal sales pitch. We do have an mostly paperless office.

November 1912. "Government Printing Office, Washington." - black and white photograph of a the interior of an early 20th century office setting, with half a dozen desks along brick walls to the right lit by large, tall windows. At each is seated a man or woman in period dress. Along the left the entire wall is cabinets, most of which have a drawer open.

Don’t think so? Look at this governmental office scene from the beginning of the 20th century. Those books are not decorative testimonials of owner style and taste to be discussed, or lent to visiting information workers, or even more rarely, referenced. Those filing cabinets are not full of contractual records preserved for compliance reasons. Well, they might have some of those, but mostly they are the operational raw data of the business, and in this place, of the government.

They are the file servers.

More than half the people in that photo are now, in fact, infrastructure. Reassemble this operation with modern equipment and they will be right-sized.

Look how nice those pieces of infrastructure dress for work! My, how low the cubical walls are, why it’s almost the revolutionary open floor plan style office I’ve read about tech companies using in so many business articles!

Are all the file drawers open as staging for the photo, or is that the actual equivalent of locking an open file folder directory?

Unrelated and cool: Note the ghosts in the farthest depth of the picture.