Prior to the introduction of AutoCAD, most other CAD programs ran on mainframe computers or minicomputers, with each CAD operator ( user ) working at a graphical terminal or workstation.

Prior to the introduction of the ubiquitous fax machine, one of the first being the Exxon Qwip in the mid-1970s, facsimile machines worked by optical scanning of a document or drawing spinning on a drum.

Prior to the introduction of modern reinforced-soil gravity walls, cantilevered walls were the most common type of taller retaining wall.

Prior to the introduction of the Latin term, incest was known in Old English as sibbleger ( from sibb ' kinship ' + leger ' to lie ') or mǣġhǣmed ( from mǣġ ' kin, parent ' + hǣmed ' sexual intercourse ') but in time, both words fell out of use.

Prior to the introduction of plastics, it was used for billiard balls, piano keys, Scottish bagpipes, buttons and a wide range of ornamental items.

Prior to the introduction of the cannon and ships with sufficient capacity to carry the large guns, navy warfare primarily involved ramming and boarding actions.

Prior to the introduction of PostScript, printers were designed to print character output given the text — typically in ASCII — as input.

Prior to the introduction of pneumatic tires, riding over the large wheel of the " penny-farthing " gave a much smoother ride, which accounts for their popularity.

Prior to the introduction of this new technology, moving image production was only available to the consumer ( or the artist for that matter ) by way of eight or sixteen millimeter film, but did not provide the instant playback that video tape technologies offered.

Prior to the introduction of contrapposto, the statues that dominated ancient Greece were the archaic kouros ( male ) and the kore ( female ).

Prior to the introduction of the mechanical cotton gin, cotton had required considerable labor to clean and separate the fibers from the seeds.

Prior to the introduction of specialised video connector standards such as SCART, TVs were designed to only accept signals through the aerial connector: signals originate at a TV station, are transmitted over the air, and are then received by an antenna and fed into the TV.

Prior to the introduction of BS 25999, BCP professionals relied on information security standard BS 7799, which only peripherally addressed BCP to improve an organization's information security procedures.

Prior to the introduction of the 802. 1Q standard, several proprietary protocols existed, such as Cisco's ISL ( Inter-Switch Link ) and 3Com's VLT ( Virtual LAN Trunk ).

Prior to the introduction of a new city charter on June 20, 1984, council members in Windom were referred to as alderpersons.

Prior to the introduction of fibreglass as a construction material, dories were more popular because their ease of assembly and, thereby, lower cost.

Prior to the introduction of inks made with aniline dyes in 1856, the quality of copies made on letter copying presses was limited by the properties of the available copying inks.

Prior to the introduction of the basic chromium species in tanning, several steps are required to produce a tannable hide.

Prior to the introduction of antibiotics, colloidal silver was used as a germicide and disinfectant.

Prior to the introduction of videotape in 1956, kinescopes were the only way to record television broadcasts, or to distribute network television programs that were broadcast live from New York or other originating cities, to stations not connected to the network, or to stations that wished to show a program at a different time than the network broadcast.

Prior to the introduction of the Bulletin Board System ( BBS ), modems typically operated on direct-dial telephone lines that always began and ended with a particular modem at each end.

Prior to the introduction of the term " PDA " by Apple in 1992, handheld personal organizers such as the Sharp Wizard and the Psion Organiser were also referred to as " PIMs ".

Prior to the introduction of Beta Hi-Fi, Sony shifted the Y carrier up by 400 kHz to make room for the four FM carriers that would be needed for Beta Hi-Fi.

Prior to introduction the reborn " TC1 " after a year of road testing received improvements to critical chassis components due to the harsher roads of rural Argentina and a lot of parts were re-selected for ease of availability although most of it still had to be imported from European Ford plants.

Prior to the hiatus, the strip ’ s characters had aged at the tectonically slow rate standard for comic strips.

Prior to FORTRAN 77, a number of preprocessors were commonly used to provide a friendlier language, with the advantage that the preprocessed code could be compiled on any machine with a standard FORTRAN compiler.

Prior to the IEEE-754 standard, computers used many different forms of floating-point.

Prior to the codification of the standard language ( Standard Macedonian ), Macedonian dialects were described by linguists as being either dialects of Bulgarian or Serbian.

Prior to the advent of the microprocessor, a computer was usually built in a card-cage case or mainframe with components connected by a backplane consisting of a set of slots themselves connected with wires ; in very old designs the wires were discrete connections between card connector pins, but printed circuit boards soon became the standard practice.

Prior to this, the standard measure of 72. 27 points per inch was used in typeface design, graphic design, typesetting and printing.

Prior to the IEEE standard, programmers often used a special value ( such as − 99999999 ) to represent undefined or missing values, but there was no guarantee that they would be handled consistently or correctly.

Prior to the Elkins Act, the livestock and petroleum industries paid standard rail shipping rates, but then would demand that the railroad company give them rebates.

Prior to the decision of the House of Lords in Re B ( A Child ) UKHL 35 http :// www. publications. parliament. uk / pa / ld200708 / ldjudgmt / jd080611 / child-1. htm there had been some confusion-even at the Court of Appeal-as to whether there was some intermediate standard, described as the ' heightened standard '.

Prior to the debuts, fifteen-minute-long shows had been the standard.

Prior to that time the standard. 38 Special was very close to today's "+ P " cartridges.

Prior to the development of the dexos standard, General Motors used the 4718M standard that is used for high-performance engines, a standard that is used in North America for selected North American performance engines, with a " Use Mobil 1 only " sticker was usually placed on those cars.

Prior to and throughout most of the 20th century, common standard psychology viewed homosexuality in terms of pathological models as a mental illness.

Prior to their arrival, extensive improvements were made to ensure that the building would provide standard of accommodation appropriate for members of the Royal Family.

Prior to the DDC, the VGA standard had reserved four pins in the analog VGA connector, known as ID0, ID1, ID2 and ID3 ( pins 11, 12, 4 and 15 ) for identification of monitor type.

Prior to and during this firestorm, when this was not standard equipment, firefighters were sometimes forced to don turn-outs which greatly hampered their ability to move quickly and stay cooler during a wildland fire.

Prior to the introduction of the IBM PC there was no unique accepted standard for entering, displaying, printing, or storing the £ sign in the UK computer industry.

Prior to 1954, the 235 and 216 cubic inch six cylinder engines had babbit bearings and scoops to create oil pressure at the bottom of each rod and the oil pressure was standard at 15-30 PSI.

Prior to this, it had been standard practice for a cowbell to be attached to only the best and leading piece of livestock.