The most striking thing to me about IBM memos from this era is just how literate executives were. These days most VPs struggle to write a single sentence worth reading.
Related? I have several sets of old encyclopedias, Collier's from the 40's and World books from the 60's and 80's. It is very noticeable how much better the older articles are written.
Here is an example from 1921, <a href="https://archive.org/details/colliersnewencyc01newy/page/40/mode/2up" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/colliersnewencyc01newy/page/40/m...
And weird errata, while looking for an example the Wikipedia article on Collier's claims they started in 1949 while my copies have copyrights 1932 - 1944 so were probably printed 1944/45.
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Here is an example from 1921, <a href="https://archive.org/details/colliersnewencyc01newy/page/40/mode/2up" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/colliersnewencyc01newy/page/40/m...
And weird errata, while looking for an example the Wikipedia article on Collier's claims they started in 1949 while my copies have copyrights 1932 - 1944 so were probably printed 1944/45.