They were around in 1980s too, used to travel from University at Coventry to visit my parents, and there were big table top racks in the middle of ticket office, and my parents little station, New Milton had its own pre printed tickets.
When I did the journey in reverse and bought a ticket at New Milton, they used the little Edmundsen tickets, and had to write Coventry on a blank.
Always amused me the little station had tickets to it, a big city didn't.
Those little tickets did cause problems though, I managed to cause a big queue at Clapham Junction ticket office needing a single to Coventry with student railcard one Saturday night, somebody had moved the fare book, and he had to find the keys to find another in a cupboard, then had to hand write the ticket. Those were the days