There was, of course, a time when cut and paste meant cut and paste! I don't remember that but I do remember replacing sections of my thesis with sellotape. Another skill we have lost is trying to replace a small whited-out section of text with a word or two conveying the correct meaning but fitting in the gap!
My thesis from 1983 was typed by my supervisor's secretary on an IBM golfball with the occasional symbol written in. I didn't start using $\TeX$ until the first Apple LaserWriter.
