It’s fascinating to consider the many changes that have occurred in journalism over the past three or four decades. Particularly on the topic of “how we file our stories from remote locations.”

When I first entered the profession, we typically filed via a primitive form of early faxing — a machine that scanned typewritten pages attached to a drum that rotated as the machine “read” the page and translated signals sent via telephone line. Thus, at that moment in history, a reporter needed 1) a typewriter, 2) a phone line and 3) this sending machine, which weighed about 30 pounds, was carried around in a suitcase and needed at least four minutes to transmit one page — six minutes if you were interested in reproduction clear enough to easily read back in the office.

(At the time, several “services” popped up, guys who would take your pages as they came out of the typewriter and send them for you, at a rate. They had a run of about four years before they went extinct.)

In the subsequent 35 years, I’ve filed stories in most of the ways possible (and they are numerous), but reporting the on-deadline final of the regional women’s soccer tournament in Abu Dhabi was a new one, for me.

This is how we did it:

Cell-phone dictation plus home laptop plus cell-to-cell text-message plus wifi to file.

Some of you may have heard me declare (or write), often, that sports journalism is way more about logistics than civilians, or even many editors, realize. The first thing you do, in any time or place, is make sure you can file when the desk expects you to file. And at various points in history that meant dedicated phone lines, power outlets, typewriters, word processors, cassette tapes, laptops, 1-800 lines, lights, heaters/air-conditioners and a train/plane/subway schedule.

In this case, the obstacles were these:

1. Deadline. The UAE-Iran match kicked off at 8:30 p.m. and we had to be off the floor at 11. Game was not going to end before 10:20, best case. That already made for a very tight window.

2. Wifi at the stadium. There was none. The match was held at Sultan bin Zayed Stadium, which has almost no facilities other than a half stand and changing rooms. Actually, no internet hookups of any sort. No cables, either. No press stand. No tables.

3. No power. Not a huge problem, with batteries, and all. Just sayin’.

4. The reporter at the scene, my colleague Amith, is not a Blackberry user. And even Blackberry would have been a problem because of the technical problems troubling the system, worldwide, in recent days.

5. The stadium is just far enough from the office or Amith’s home that he could not scurry home to file.

6. The “dongle” was not working. Don’t know why. It wasn’t.  And yes, a ridiculous name.

I was aware of all these problems, and I told Amith that he could (and perhaps should) call me at halftime and dictate some words to me, and I would type them into my laptop, and then as the second half progressed he could dictate more. I would be at home, and would be able to give this my full attention.

He called me at halftime, and dictated as I sat in front of this laptop and bashed the words into a google docs file. This was complicated by the English language. Amith and I both speak it but he has trouble with my accent and I do with his, too. Add in ambient noise in the stadium and the usual cell-to-cell clarity issues, and dictating was surprisingly difficult.

Another factor:  The difficulty involved in spelling (and dictating) the names of the women in the match. To wit: Fereshteh Al Karimi (look at all the eff, ess, em, en problems there!), Vahideh Esari, Maryam Rahimi, Imen Trodi, Jadget Fedoul, Niloosar Ardallani and my favorite, Oumayma Maaouia — which has more consecutive vowels than “sequoia” even dreamt about.

So this is how we did it.

Amith called in some halftime stuff and I then checked all the UAE spellings against the roster I had from seeing them play earlier in the tournament.

I turned his notes into “running” (sometimes also known as “A matter”), the stuff from early in the game that later will constitute the bulk of the story, but does not reveal or even really guess at a conclusion, because the game is ongoing.

As the second half began, Amith began sending me texts from about every five minutes. I texted him to check on the spelling of the Iranian women, too.

I kept tweaking the running as new results came in. UAE has tied 1-1 … Iran scores in the 54th … UAE has three good chances aimed directly at the keeper.

It was still 2-1 Iran in the 80th, so I had written an “Iran wins” lede, and the story was basically all ready to go — all 400 words of it.

But then the UAE scored in the 85th minute, and I had to regain a neutral voice.

At that moment, the internet in my home crashed. I blame the sandstorm, which rolled in late in the afternoon and was pretty intense. The grit in the air was amazing — and how the women ran for 90 minutes in it, I have no idea.

Anyway, the internet had crashed in my home, while using it, perhaps three times in a year. A year. Yet just as I’m about to file the story to the sports queue … I’m dead. What were the odds of that?

So, Amith continued to send text updates as I was cursing fate and all things electronic and wondering how quickly I could get to the office with the story … and after several prompts the wifi came back up.

By then, I had written a first graf with XXXX and XXXX to denote the winner and loser and score, and have 400 words on how the game got to the 2-2 tie after 90 minutes … and the desk got nervous and told Amith (who texted me) that they wanted me to file whatever it is I have written. I did.

Then, Amith called the desk with the final score of the shootout (6-5, UAE wins), and the desk plugged that in to the lede of the story I had sent, which runs at more like 200 words than 400. (Desk guys lie to reporters in the field all the time about deadlines and lengths; always have, always will.)

This was, however, a bang-bang situation. The tie game went directly to the shootout, but even then it wasn’t over until about 10:45, which is late to get a page through the system and to the plant.

So, that was how it (barely) worked, and we had the UAE’s championship victory in the morning newspaper, and I wonder if any other daily in the UAE was able to pull that off. (The Arabic-language papers are famous for horribly early deadlines.)

The online product was far easier, of course.

So, to recap the history of filing a story, over the past 35 years … faxing … to early computers sending 200 words at a pop from a cassette (the infamous Teleram) … to the Trash 80 over the phone … to various and sundry internet hookups (phone modem to cables to, now, wifi) … with laptops … and then Blackberries …

It’s been a wild ride, for reporters in the field. New technology, mastering it, then facing yet another change. And it gets even more arcane for reporters in the middle of war zones who carry around their own sat-phone setups and file by bouncing a signal off an orbiting satellite.

Ah, for the simplicities of the century before 1970 — when sending via cable worked for anyone not in the city, and dictation via phone (to the infamous “rewrite” desk) worked for everyone close to the office.

Simpler times. And about six generations of technology ago.