In the days before computer systems, how did the different transportation industry handle reservations for tickets? Today if you want to fly by plane, train or bus, you call a reservation office and they check some computer database to see what is available. But in the days before computers, what did they do? Was it a big book and the reservation agent would pencil you in?
Yeah, pretty much.
The airline or ship line or railroad would keep one central book with all reservations, and the travel agent or reservation agent would call and -um- reserve passage for you.
Wasn’t all that long ago. I can remember my father at least as late as the 1960s being on the phone for as long as an hour with an airline, booking his trips for the next several weeks. By then they were using a mainframe computer, but it was still basically one master list.