It's been going on a while

John Lynch at A Stranger Fruit posts a 1956 ad for Univac. What I noticed was the language in the ad.

You can be sure that, when you install the Univac, you'll get under way faster, surer, and more economically because the System has already handled similar work.

Faster and surer both used as adverbs.

Some will look at that say the rot is older than they thought. But others will wonder what the fuss is all about. 1956 is practically 2006 when it comes to fast and other "flat adverbs" - fast, safe, and others have been adverbs as well as adjectives since before Chaucer. Faste, from Old English fæste, was the adverb and fast, from Old English fæst, the adjective; the loss of short final -e marked the collapse of many once-separate forms (we now retain the "silent e" as an orthographic guide to the pronunciation of the vowel in the preceding syllable, which is why it's "fast" not "faste"). Sure and sur were borrowed into English from French on the same pattern. (Saf (sauf) and safe (saufe) were borrowed the same way, if you're wondering.)