The Last Dinosaur
It was a newfangled, high-tech device in 1891 when Sherlock Holmes encountered it. A device which an educated, but penurious woman could support herself with, in much in the same way that a web designer using a computer could today.
Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and, having closed the door and bowed her into an armchair, he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was peculiar to him.
“Do you not find,” he said, “that with your short sight it is a little trying to do so much typewriting?”
“I did at first,” she answered, “but now I know where the letters are without looking.” Then, suddenly realising the full purport of his words, she gave a violent start and looked up, with fear and astonishment upon her broad, good-humoured face. “You’ve heard about me, Mr. Holmes,” she cried, “else how could you know all that?”
Remember the typewriter? Long before there were keyboards and computers, there were typewriters. You can still find them in junk shops, basements and museums. But a working specimen is about as rare now as a man without a cell phone.
Below is a short gallery of all the typewriters I have remember having extensively used. None of them alas, date back to 1891. But who cares, they are all from the same undifferentiated prehistory. They are from left to right, top to bottom, an Underwood, Olympia, Remington Noiseless, IBM Selectric and the Smith Corona portable electric.
Writing, the Cave Man Way
A word of explanation.
Typewriters were mechanical devices that contained stamped metal letters on typebars, which were mechanical arms propelled from a base by a series of levers. You struck a key and it hammered a typebar against a piece of paper pinned against a platen. By an arrangement of linkages an inked fabric called a typewriter ribbon was simultaneously raised. The typebar transferred the ink to the paper and if you did enough of this, the manuscript was “typed” — that is symbols were printed on paper.
The implements used in this stone-age process were marvels of mechanical engineering for their time. Speaking only for myself, the Underwood was the most strongly framed typewriter I ever saw. The mechanism was in a rectangle of 1/4″ inch steel. By contrast, the far more modern Olympia had a lighter touch — it was the standard typewriter at my high school — but it was thinly built by comparison. The Remington Noiseless is so called because it has four characters as opposed two per typebar and therefore had a shorter stroke. This made it “quiet”. But was extraordinarily heavy to strike. You basically needed a set of steel fingers to get anything out of that beast.
The Smith Corona, with its electromechanically propelled keys and power carriage return was about 3x faster to use than any mechanical. But it was so light in comparison to its carriage that the whole contraption shuddered from the recoil of the carriage return (that’s where the modern word comes from). You had to reposition the Smith Corona portable every 5 or so minute to keep it from inching off the desk.
The Cadillac of typewriters, to juxtapose two obsolete metaphors, was the IBM Selectric. It had a “golf ball” style element which you could change. There was even a Script typeface that could simulate handwriting. Since there was no carriage it was recoilless. It was, as is so often the case in technology, the final flowering of a line that is about to die.
Every time you wonder why the dinosaurs disappeared only after reaching their apotheosis, think of the Selectric. It was the flagship of American civilization; the living proof that everything gee whiz and modern came from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. It was America at its most invincible. There was even a smell about it, something it shared with the first computers which you can never find in the Taiwan made articles of today. Quality through and through; unbelievably advanced, inimitable. The Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits on your very on desk. Who would have guessed that in a few short years the computer would replace it all.
The typewriter was supported by a number of allied products which have also since vanished. The typewriter ribbon has already been mentioned. In standard form it came in a long fabric ribbon of Black and Red loaded on a stamped metal spindle. Red and black let clerks prepare billing statements and emphasize indicate the amounts owed in red ink. But those outside of Billing mostly bought double black ribbons so when the top part of the ribbon got frayed, you turned the whole thing around and remounted it so the bottom was on top.
There was also something called Carbon Paper. Carbon paper was the mechanical way of making copies. One normally used up to 5 sheets of onion skin paper (very thin paper) interlarded with carbon paper, which had blacking on the one side. Thus the impression of the typebar was transmitted through multiple layers each producing (via the carbon paper) up to five copies. The bottom carbon was often almost illegible and unreadably fuzzy. But that was the best technology could do at the time.
As you might imagine, correcting typing errors were a nightmare, especially where carbon copies were concerned. The normal process was to use a hard eraser and an eraser shield. The eraser shield was a thin piece of aluminum that you put in front of each layer of carbon paper (after letting the platen run to allow access) so that you could erase the mistake on each layer without smudging the one underneath.
A room full of typewriters going full blast was like a battery of machine guns and occasionally a stoppage would be indicated by a silence. That was some guy fixing an error. Then after a time a triumphant thwack would announce the right character being retyped through the layers of carbon, like John Basilone clearing a jam, and the staccato would begin again. Brum, brum, brum.
In later years something called White Out became common. It was a kind of chemical paste which was painted over an error and eliminated the need for erasers and eraser shields. But you had to be careful to let the White Out dry first before replacing the layers of carbons, otherwise typing over would just turn it to goo under the typeface blow.
Some writers never escaped its spell. Ray Bradbury for instance wrote “I don’t have a computer. A computer’s a typewriter. I already have a typewriter.” That is so wrong that one doesn’t even know where to begin. Bradbury was smarter than that. He was clinging to the typewriter for some other reason and I think I know why.
It is because the computer is “wrong” in it own peculiar way. The typewriter came with accessories beyond the eraser, White Out or carbon paper that mechanically accompanied it. Culturally it also came with a whole way of life; with things now vanished or politically incorrect. Cigarettes and whiskey, fedoras, overcoats, wheelguns in leather holsters, phones with separate earpieces and blondes waiting to see you in the reception area outside.
The computer by contrast comes with a whole new world in the box. You may not see it, but its there. Google, the NSA, system logs, ISP data retention, Facebook friends. The whole nine yards. Poor Ray probably thought he could keep that new universe at bay by sticking to his Underwood. Maybe he managed to do it. But those of us who’ve made it this far are doomed to be sucked into it. As I’ve said elsewhere:
Roses are red
Violets are blue.
All our base
Are belong to you.
One gets the feeling that many writers kept with the typewriter long after the word processor had arrived because they didn’t want to sever the last remaining link to a vanishing world. They wanted to look up and see, if only in their imagination, a time they felt more comfortable with. But the typewriters are gone now. And the last of the dinosaurs is dead.
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I learned to type on some sort of school supplied typewriter and hand typed all but the record copy of my masters thesis on a IBM selectric; all 120 pages of it. Among other things typewriters forced you to do was be much more deliberate about what you wrote because of the miss spelling problem and there was no cut and paste function among other differences. I outlined my work and prepared more carefully so as not to retype. There was also no spell checker and I was more careful about having a dictionary and thesarus at hand. Computers have made me lazy.
Another mechanical device was the mechanical calculator. We used to have calculator races in stat class. Fun late at night for geeks in the pre-silicon days.
High school and college and grad school with the Smith Corona portable pictured above. Plus early job applications etc.
When got into business for myself it was at the tail end of the run of Selectrics, and there also was this newfangled thing called a “word processor”. It was a typewriter with a small screen and a few thousand bytes of memory wherein you could type away, edit and delete, and when you were happy with the results you put some paper in a tray, hit a button, and printed up what you had completed.
Within a very few years the term “word processor” came have an entirely different definition. It was now defined to be a program to do that on a PC, and there was a running joke about end users who brought home a word processing program advertised as a word processor they had purchased consisting of a box with a dozen floppy discs in it plus paper instructions, getting home, and expecting a machine with a keyboard and a tray for printer paper irately called the vendor wanting to know where to put in the paper or where the cord or keyboard was that was supposed to come with the box. Might be an urban myth.
The typewriter era was a more decisive and more efficient era for wordsmithing. The fact that errors and revisions were so tedious to correct and do made a writer clear his/her mind the way few people can or will do today.
Back then a newspaper could be published as fast as it is done today, because the copy (“content” we call it now) was ready in a shorter span of time from its inception than is usually the case today. Proofreaders and editors were important and much-in-demand people back then, as were secretaries. Now we fill up our time with massive sponge-like loads of indecision and revision, a whole herd of Hamlets never able to conclude that we are ready to upload our copy as a final product.
A real typewriter story from a small air base in the Southern US in the mid-1980s.
This was a fighter wing. Once or twice a year, the Inspectors General (IG) would test the wing on its ability to execute the assigned war plan. Usually, this would be a 3-4 day affair which would include a warning order, mobility process, building the loads for the trash haulers (airlift), launching the appropriate number of jets to a deployment location somewhere else, turning them and flying a sortie or two from the deployed location. At times, you would get to do the play war from home base for 4-5 days or so.
While all this took place, the IG watched over your shoulder on the ground and in the air to make sure you did everything due to regulations. Too many write-ups and the wing would bust, dooming the career of the Wing Commander. Do a great job, and promotion was still possible.
When the IG watches closely, you are less apt to do the workarounds that make the entire system work. We see this when unionized employees decide they need to follow all rules to the letter and slow things down to a crawl. Pilots unions and the Air Traffic Controllers come to mind. Such was the problem with this particular inspection, which is where the typewriter comes in.
For this inspection, the two groups of IGs for the fighters (TAC) and the airlifters (MAC) got their heads together and decided to do a simultaneous inspection on both sides of the process. And nobody being inspected ended up having the latitude to do the things that actually would make the entire process work.
As it turned out, there was a MAC requirement for loads to be documented with typed characters on their forms. But the fighter guys had bundled their Selectrics into the loads for the airlifters and the MAC guys wouldn’t accept a pen and ink entry on their form because their IG was breathing down their own necks. There was also a problem with getting electricity to the load areas. There were no manual typewriters left on base. They spent the entire night trying to properly load C-141s on that particular ramp. They got to the point where there were more airlifters on the ramp than fighter jets. Some of the C-141s were loaded and unloaded multiple times. It was a terrible sight to behold.
The fighter guys had successfully generated and launched the fighters to the out base but had a hard time generating for the sorties out of the deployed location because so much equipment was left on the ramp at home plate.
Never heard of the IG doing an inspection on both sides at the same time after that. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. But in hindsight, it was entirely predictable. The wing busted that inspection and passed the re-inspection a few months later.
I remember in USAF when we switched from Selectrics to Xerox “Memory Writers”, a very rudimentary word processor. It had an interchangeable plastic wheel similar in function to balls on IBMs.
What this led to was intolerance for typos or whiteout corrections on performance reports. Regulations previously allowed up to three “corrections” on a type written page. No less than a perfectly “typed” form became the new normal.
Per agimarcs post above, this was early 80′s at a bomber wing on Guam.
A nice break from politics and impending doom, with your uniquely lyrical touch.
I’ll be perfectly happy to be shot down on this, but I think there is a case to be made that writing on a typewriter can produce prose superior to that written on a computer. (All other things being equal.)
I say this because I think my earlier output as a writer generally had a finer rhythm, sounded better to my ear, because I took more time to compose whole sentences and paragraphs in my head, before putting fingers to keys. I was trying to write well, but I also was trying to avoid typing mistakes. (I’m a neatnik.) Inasmuch as writing is thinking, organizing thoughts, working more slowly — on the typewriter — gives time for that. At a computer, it’s easier to write blather very quickly because it takes no time to correct one’s mistakes.
Now have at me.
And who knows who John Basilone was without a search?
6. ras743:
I made similar, or related, points at #3. While a typist took more time to think through the composition of writing, he/she saved more time at the editing end. As a production manager for serial publications in my past, I observed this and noticed the change when word processing, and then the internet, came into being.
One of the best things my mother did for me was to insist that I take a typing class in the summer between 8th and 9th grade. With that proficiency I was able to type my reports in high school and college — first on her old Hermes portable, then on an Olympia I bought as a Freshman in college, and finally on an electric Smith-Corona. When computers arrived I kept my typewriters, as you could adjust the paper to fill in information on forms that were irregularly spaced. (This was before one could scan in a document.)
Touch typing continues to be an asset. Somewhat like (though much less than) playing a piano, I think that touch typing improves the brain in some way. I still sometimes mentally touch type paragraphs when thinking about things. And I do agree that my typing experience (on a typewriter) had a positive effect on my writing.
Mozart grew up playing the harpsichord, and when he started to write piano concertos the early influence of his harpsichord background can be heard in his compositions. Beethoven, by contrast, grew up playing early versions of the piano. The heavier touch of his concerti is as much do to that as to the need for him to feel the vibrations due to his deafness.
The technology of the day can shape the brain in some ways. I grew up with the radio and spent hours listening to dramas and news programs. So I have no trouble attending lectures. My brother grew up with color television and needed more audio-visual learning. When transistor radios became popular, kids were less likely to go to the library, and more likely to take their material with them as portable. Now with video games, no one reads directions and students are not much interested in theory. Thus at my medical school we present data to the students and they have to figure out themselves what questions to ask to solve the problem. This is in sharp contrast to my student days when we would have lots of context setting lectures before getting to clinical problems.
What hath God wrought?
Now it is the whole culture that is the dinosaur.
I don’t miss me no typewriters, except maybe for envelopes.
I went electronic when the teletype protocols were you edited blind and had to request a few lines to be printed out to see your typos and edit results, and hardcopy came either via line printers on greenbar or similar, or via 2740 selectric terminals, and soon thereafter on 30cps matrix printers. Remember Okidata printers and their key trademark (long since lost, I assume), “plug and play”? Remember Centronics parallel current-loop interfaces? Or even NCR (no carbon required, not the national cash register company) paper for typewriter or character printer copies?
All the buggywhips I have known and loved.
I could never make a quill pen work for me nearly as well as ballpoint, for that matter.
Manila John Basilone…? That’s an easy one. He was a Medal of Honor winner on Guadalcanal, a machine gunner. Bodies piled high about his position in the morning. He was later killed, I believe, on Iwo Jima. Who was Private Rodger Young? Down the throat Dealey? Desmond Doss?
It was the knowledge of such things that enabled me, under my nom de plume “Buckhead”, to know that the Rathergate memos were fakes before they had even finished loading on my screen.
Criticism:
“That’s not writing. That’s typing.”
Rejection:
“Get your tripewriter fixed.”
One Hollywood mogul, the kind who referred to both chorus girls on the casting couch and script writers in a bungalow as ‘The Talent”, called authors “Idiots with Underwoods.”
For the record Beta was a better technology than VHS. Markets do fail to deliver the best technology. QWERTY was adopted because it is slower.
Took typing (at my Mother’s insistence) in the 9th grade back in ’68. The school had a mixture of old manual typewriters and the new-fangled electrics. Us boys were assigned the manual machines because the girls were assumed to be secretaries-in-training and would need the faster speeds for their future work. It became a point of pride for me to be able to out-type them on those old clunker manuals (fingers of steel from saxophone playing came in handy). Didn’t type again for 40 years until 5 years ago when I got my first laptop. Ain’t it amazing how long those muscle memories last and how fast the old skills re-manifest themselves. THANKS MOM!
Our company still has an IBM Selectric stashed away in a storeroom to do those odd jobs that a computer printer can’t do, such as print a number on a metal label.
I went through college typing reports and papers on a Royal with a pica-elite font.
I don’t miss the typing and the corrections, but the noise and clatter of a room full of typists was amazing. My late grandmother worked for the County Auditor, and her office was in the corner of the “office pool” for all the typists that worked in the County Administration building. I went in there once, and it was like the Din of Pandemonium!
That must be pushing on over 40 years ago.
Yes, Bradbury saw the streaming future of technology all too well, as the house-as-interactive-surround-video-walls-personalized-for-you of ‘Fahrenheit 451′ presciently reveals, 50 years ago:
“It’s really fun. It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed. How long you figure before we save up and get the fourth wall torn out and a wall-TV put in. It’s only two thousand dollars.” (20)
The story of John Basilone was nicely illustrated in the series Pacific. A stretch of the freeway and roads surrounding Camp Pendleton is named after him. The freedoms Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone fought and died for have been squandered by mealy mouthed girly men who hate America because it is mean.
The last typewriter made in the U.K. has left the building
November 20, 2012
Brother has made its last typewriter in the U.K.
The last typewriter to be made in the U.K. has rolled off the production line — and straight into London’s Science Museum.
—
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
- C. S. Lewis
“In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant”
- Charles de Gaulle
Buckhead is a nom de plume that will go down in history. Doubtless they’ll try and airbrush it from the Wayback cache. Hunt down references to you on Wikipedia or other sites. They might even start the rumor that Buckhead did not exist and Microsoft Word was created long before it ever was. Say you were a myth, only a story that children talk about to scare each other.
That’s where typewriters still come in handy. They can generate hard copy which, buried in some mound or secreted in some basement, travels up the arrow of time to testify to whatever end. Beyond the reach of search and replace, past even the power of that last enemy: the delete button.
I owned both a Hammond B3 and a Selectric III at one time. Both of them were motor driven and smelled of machine oil when they got warmed up. The only things I miss about the Selectric are the feel of the keys and rolling a clean sheet of paper to the first line. There are great emulators for the B3 now, some even have the cabinetry. Oh, no tubes in the Selectric. But the B3, in addition to the oil, had the smell of hot resistors and dust frying on the tubes.
Dolores Kearns. Mrs Kearns.
My typing teacher in high school.
I forget my words per minute (with errors), but it was pretty damned good.
I don’t miss the typewriter, however, due to everything Wretchard mentioned (yes, typo correction the hard way, White Out and retyping too soon, re-positioning the Smith Corona…)
The PC is better on all accounts for me.
Some people swear by vinyl albums too…
I do miss the typewriter times, however.
The pre-boxed life that the PC era has brought is in many ways a failure, even though it too had its provenance in the typewriter era.
Oh, brings back memories, that does! *wipes away nostalgic tear* I remember the ubiquitous IBM Selectrics, with their little jagged-edge 3/4 spheres for the different fonts, and how sometimes close to the end of the fiscal year there would be only a single correction cartridge in the unit where I worked away, doing performance reports and stuff. We would have to move it from Selectric to Selectric, depending on who absolutely needed a correction done. The Selectrics needed a very light hand to use, too. Not like my own manual typewriter, which my father bought for me (at a swap meet) for about $30. It was a Royal portable, in a nifty wooden case – and it had special characters for doing German and Scandinavian languages. In one of my books about the WWII underground, I spotted an identical unit, being used to produce an illicit newspaper for the Danish Underground. I used it all through college, and took it with me when I went on active duty for personal use. I still have it around, somewhere – it was a great little machine, and worked just fine the last time I used it … twenty-five years ago. (Must look around for it – they’re going for a bit more than $30 on eBay.)
Many things are dead. Do you remember the slide rule? Good ones were expensive. I doubt that any are manufactured anymore anywhere. And do you remember tubes rather than transistors for electronic devices? Those in the future, as well as the young of today, may not even understand references to them.
From Warren Zevon’s Carmelita, with its references to typewriters and tubes:
I hear Mariachi static on my radio
And the tubes they glow in the dark
And I’m there with her in Ensenada
And I’m here in Echo Park
Carmelita hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town
Well, I’m sittin’ here playing solitaire
With my pearl-handled deck
The county won’t give me no more methadone
They cut off your welfare check
Carmelita hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town
Well, I pawned my Smith-Corona
And I went to meet my man
He hangs out down on Alvarado Street
By the Pioneer chicken stand
Carmelita hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town
Interesting facts about the inventor of “White Out”, Betty Nesmith Graham (1922-1980).
http://inventors.about.com/od/lstartinventions/a/liquid_paper.htm
Oh, and by the way, Betty had a son who subsequently displayed some aptitude at music and eventually inherited her fortune.
Maybe you’ve heard of him: Michael Nesmith.
Yeah, that’s right: Mike Nesmith.
Of The Monkees.
I have a Smith Corona sitting here a few feet behind me. We cleaned stuff out of our office when we moved last year and I saved it from the dumpster, along with a copy of DOS 6 and Windows 3.1.
I think my old mechanical portable is up in the attic somewhere.
I still think it is far easier to address an envelope on a typewriter than via a computer printer. For me, the envelopes always come out upside down, sideways, backwards, or possibly all three. I either use computer printed stick on labels or write the address by hand in crayon or something.
One of the first “quality” computer printers used an IBM selectic type of ball for printing. Others used wheels. And it turned out that Dr. No or some other fiend had arranged it that there were different balls and wheels which fit the printers fine but when installed by accident produced utter gibberish, even judged by government standards.
At the Pentagon we had hush boxes for the selectric type printers so they could be closed up and not make so much noise. And of course, no one ever bothered to close the boxes. We considered putting up a banner above our printers that said “Printer Noise: The Sound of Freedom.”
When the laser printers came out those hush boxes increasingly littered the halls of the Pentagon. Don’t tell anyone but I think I have the cooling fan out of one, somewhere; I have no idea why.
But the advent of the compuer for creating correspondence probably increased workload considerably in the military. It was now so “easy” to change things that we did so much more of it. I recall one item – a single paragraph – that we were supposed to supply to Congress to comment on their budget actions that attained that rarely seen ultimate in revsionism – originally written by me, it went around the organization and was changed by each section chief until it was revised back to the exact same thing I had written.
But I am surprised that no one has mentioned that spawn of the devil, the demonic Memeograph Machine.
Back in the mid-80′s I filed a formal USAF Form 1000 Suggestion that said since we were using computers, we should forget about having blank forms and just print the form along with the info on it. It was turned down; would never work, they claimed. Today it’s the about the only way it is done.
I’m certainly not old enough to have used typewriters, or DOS, or slide rules. But I take comfort in the fact that someday I will be old enough to remember all the stuff from my childhood. We had an original Macintosh in Kindergarten, though it was old even then. The Nintendo 64 was the paragon of electronic entertainment, and in my opinion, still is. My dad’s cellphone was the size of a regular cordless housephone, with the extendable antenna. I remember the first time I saw YouTube was somewhere around grade 6. And I’ve had Facebook for a year and a half.
I’m at least old enough that it surprises me to see a little kid playing with an iPad, or worse, a cellphone; I am that man without one.
At the end of time it will be found that everything under the sun was new to some, and old to others.
Lessee, a Smith Corona manual portable in high school (the abuse that one endured), a Smith Corona electric portable in college, and some government-procured monster, the color and weight of a battleship in my first job. After that, always PCs.
Well if we’re going to talk typewriters we might as well have period soundtracks about things long gone. Bus stops and things Cherry Red .
dna v. rna
the virus is still standing.
got the flu yet?
No, here you go, wretchard!
One of the commenters said, “This video inspired me to put an application on my computer that makes the keys sound like a typewriter everytime I type!”
I actually had that back in the 90s. The Monty Python CD-ROM had a typewriter sound effect and I used it for quite a while. Eventually I traded my PC for a Mac and the CD doesn’t work with that.
Now I may have to go hunting for a typewriter sound effect that will work with my Mac Pro.
14. Blast From the Past
Criticism:
“That’s not writing. That’s typing.”
I don’t remember who said it, but that was a criticism leveled at Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”. In fact, he wrote it on a typewriter using a large roll of paper rather than individual sheets.
Heard of an editor, quoted in a writing magazine, say that submissions were, since the word processor and word processing, “flabbier”.
I sometimes wonder if some of the involved, run-on, multi-subject, metaphor-laden, historical allusion-laden sentences of the old politicians’ letters were what happened when you get to a place with your quill and ink and can’t see how to get to the end you had in mind the way you intended.
Its strange how societal evolution goes. The average length of novels simply exploded with the birth of the typewriter and even more with the advent of the word processor/computer.
Good god–how many novels would Steven King have in print if they could only be submitted by hand writing on paper?
I just missed the typewriter era. I taught myself to touch-type — in high school on an Apple II. I spent the next 20 years in front of a keyboard, building up to 98 WPM before giving it all up to restore stained glass for a living. I can still type quickly, but not like that.
My mother lived firmly in the typewriter era. I saw her Master’s thesis from the 1960s. In those days, academic theses had to be hand-typed and the typing had to be perfect. Not one letter outside the margin. Not one correction. This was often beyond the practical ability of students, so graduate students would prepare their papers, then hire a professional typist to type them up perfectly.
Later, when I was in my teens, she entered a graduate program and had to write a thesis. She purchased the most advanced typewriter on the market — a new type with built-in memory that could store your entire paper in internal memory, so you could make corrections, fine tune it, then let the typewriter automatically hammer it out — perfectly.
Unfortunately, she had failed to print out any rough drafts, and days before the paper was due, the unthinkable happened. The typewriter locked up and ate her thesis. It was genuine anguish. 40 pages of research lost that had to be reconstructed. And she did.
On her old manual typewriter.
Would anyone even consider doing that today?
I never learned how to type properly. When I was in school typing (or “keyboarding” as the young ‘uns call it today–sounds like an extreme sport) was not a required class. It was mostly girls who took it. I dropped out in the 9th grade (long story) so I never reached the point where typed papers were required.
My dad had an office job and typed. I don’t know what he used at work, but at home he had a Royal Quiet Deluxe from about 1950. (I looked it up online a couple of years ago.) He upgraded to a Smith-Corona electric some time in the 1970s, and then to a word processor in the 1980s.
After he died and left me the house, I sold the word processor at a yard sale, since I already had a computer. I still have the Royal and the Smith-Corona, although they sit in their cases unused. I have no reason to believe they wouldn’t work if I tried them, but they would probably need new ribbons.
When I took a job at a small printing shop in 1990, much of the typesetting was done on an IBM Selectric Composer, which was more sophisticated that the Selectric typewriter. It had adjustments for proportional spacing and leading. I got some training on the composer, but my boss had bought his first computer just a few months before I started, an early Macintosh with a built-in 12″ black & white screen, and I gravitated towards that. Today I use a Mac Pro, and the composer sits beneath a table in my office under its dust cover. It hasn’t been used in 20 years. It’s sad. Seriously, it makes me sad to think about it. It was a state-of-the-art machine in its time. My boss said he paid about $5000 for it in the mid-70s.
(When I started that job, my boss gave a book so I could teach myself typing. I didn’t finish the book, but I learned enough to get by. I can type passably now, but I’ll never win a speed competition. In my line of work, accuracy is more important than speed.)
When the Texas Air National Guard memo flap happened during the 2004 campaign, the IBM Selectric Composer briefly became a topic in the news. I had to laugh, since I actually had some experience with it and fully understood the difference between fixed and proportional spacing.
Several years ago, I watched a movie on TV. It was made during the 1980s. Since I lived through the 80s, the characters, their mannerisms, their clothes, their hairstyles, their cars, and their music were all familiar to me. They seemed almost contemporary. But there was one scene that was set in an office, and there was not a computer to be seen. All of the desks had typewriters on them. That really threw me for a loop.
The girls in the typing pool were cute, though.
ADE
Took a typing class in HS, didn’t use it again until I went to college on the GI Bill. Went down to a 2nd hand shop and bought what looks like a 1930′s vintage Remington portable with a very respectable pica font. $25.00, pricey, but I knew I had to have it. Have it still, down in the garage someplace.
I find that if I really want to write creatively I have to take out notebook paper and a trusty Bic medium point. After two or three drafts it would be ready to be typed on the Remington. My Dad would write short stories (and a novel!) on an Royal portable, when we kids would let him.
I took keyboarding in high school back around ’90, I think, and we learned on those old Selectric battleships. I grew up in a small town, so our broke-ass school only had a few PCs at that time, more a novelty to them than anything (I also learned basic drafting the old-fashioned way: with mechanical pencil, white eraser, actual paper, drafting squares, and French curves). Wretchard is right about that specific smell. I still remember it quite vividly, and I haven’t experienced it in many years.
I think batman is right about the way that touch typing helps to shape your mind. Keyboarding was probably the most important class I ever took at high school. I can’t think of anything else there that I still use on a daily basis.
13 @Harry MacDougald
Good to see that you’re here, I remember you from Free Republic. You still post there? Or have they run off everyone other than the sycophants? You got a raw deal when people started attributing your find to Chuckie Johnson, then he started to act like he’s the one who found it.
In 1971 I came into possession of an IBM punched paper tape machine with a Selectric typewriter at its core. You typed on paper using a ribbon as usual, but what you typed was also put on a one inch wide strip of paper in the form of punched holes, which the machine could then read and type back. I had my own office, writing architectural specifications for other architects, and put my entire master specification on paper tape, typing each letter myself on the Selectric. Once I was finished, I was able to type specs using my punched paper tapes, the machine allowing me to skip words, sentences and paragraphs as needed, and stop and manually insert words as needed, then continue with the master file. IBM had a successor to the punched paper tape machine that used magnetic tape, along with the ubiquitous Selectric, but it cost a couple of thousand dollars, and by that time that particular line of technology was over. About that time I tried to interest venture capital in a plan to build a machine utilizing a CRT, the brand new floppy disc and a chain printer, marrying my master spec to a word processing program under development by the National Bureau of Standards, but no one was interested. Or maybe I just didn’t know where the handles were, even though one of the guys I talked to was named Koch. Sigh. I coulda been a contender. But I’m glad the age of the Selectric is over. Once I got a computer and MSWord I started writing fiction, and eleven novels and a twelfth underway I’m still at it, though rapidly approaching advanced middle age.
In days of old
With typeface bold
When writers were not particular
We wrote to last
But not too fast
With paper perpendicular
We hammered keys
But not with ease
But got it done eventually
Each paper sheet
Got typed complete
And always typed sequentially
BUCKHEAD: Many thanks!
I remember the Selectric smell.
As a child, I typed multipart carbon invoices for a family business on an old Royal manual typewriter. Eventually, my father bought a Selectric. That was before autocorrect, not that it would have made any difference. You can’t autocorrect through carbon copies on a multipart form – you have to get it right the first time, or correct by hand, which is a no-no.
w @ 40: IBM had a successor to the punched paper tape machine that used magnetic tape,…
They certainly had some mag *card* machines, if they had mag tape I may have missed it. My mother had to go back to work for a couple of years in the early 1970s and used the mag card and raved about it, when she (my dad really) got a home PC with Microsoft Word – she looked at it for about five minutes, but I guess she missed the boat, never did use the PC.
When you have just a little technology you tend to appreciate it, these days when we think we’re inundated by it, if anything it becomes an irritation, and misused whenever possible.
Which is my segue to a small rant – I just received a nice phone call asking for my opinion on local political matters. I asked how long it would take, and the only answer was “brief, but variable.” I said OK but after five minutes I was going to cut it, and she said it might take longer, so I said goodbye. I’ve had several experiences where some anonymous telephone pollster is so interested in my opinion, they ask every permutation and combination of keywords and bore you (me) silly, trying to remember how to be consistent (which is sort of the point), and after fifteen or twenty minutes you (I) really don’t care, but if you hang up incomplete the pollster doesn’t get her one dollar spiff, not to mention you don’t get your crystal insights immortalized. Come ON people, with a little extra sophistication – like that which should get you a *passing* grade in Polling 101 – you can keep it short and sweet and get equally valid results and a much better sample, who *really* is going to sit through such a lengthy, amateur, tedious effort? Not Joe Average, I don’t think, not even Joe Average Voter. Just think of it as mediocrity in action. Must be Mitt’s old polling group.
“There was even a Script typeface that could simulate handwriting.”
Today, typewriter fonts simulate typewriter typewriting. This can fool nearly anyone.
3. Don Rodrigo “Back then a newspaper could be published as fast as it is done today, because the copy (“content” we call it now) was ready in a shorter span of time from its inception than is usually the case today. Proofreaders and editors were important and much-in-demand people back then, as were secretaries. Now we fill up our time with massive sponge-like loads of indecision and revision, a whole herd of Hamlets never able to conclude that we are ready to upload our copy as a final product.”
You are right they were fast, but often inaccurate. For example it took 65 years for the New York Times to uncover the truth about rightwing school bombers who don’t appreciate paying others’ tuition bills. Better late than never.
“Google, the NSA, system logs, ISP data retention, Facebook friends. The whole nine yards.”
Must clear cookies and web browsing history. Don’t forget.
#40 Walt
Once I got a computer and MS Word I started writing fiction, and eleven novels and a twelfth underway I’m still at it, though rapidly approaching advanced middle age.
Ah, but the old manual typewriter could inspire arthropods as well as humans. I am reminded of archy the cockroach, the “muse” of Don Marquis (1878-1936), who met his literary collaborator as follows:
The first appearance of archy
“One morning Don Marquis arrived in his office to find the following message on his typewriter, all in lower case. Archy, a cockroach reincarnated from a poet, had laboriously typed the message to Don by climbing upon the typewriter and jumping on the keys,one at a time. The message is all in lower case, because Archy could not operate the shift key.”
The Coming of Archy:
expression is the need of my soul
i was once a vers libre bard
but i died and my soul went
into the body of a cockroach
it has given me a new outlook on life
i see things from the under side now
thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket
but your paste is getting so stale i can’t eat it
there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would have
removed she nearly ate me the other night why don’t she
catch rats that is what she is supposed to be for
there is a rat here she should get without delay
most of these rats here are just rats
but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him
he used to be a poet himself
night after night i have written poetry for you
on your typewriter
and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet
comes out of his hole when it is done
and reads it and sniffs at it
he is jealous of my poetry
he used to make fun of it when we were both human
he was a punk poet himself
and after he has read it he sneers
and then he eats it
i wish you would have mehitabel kill that rat
or get a cat that is onto her job
and i will write you a series of poems
showing how things look
to a cockroach
that rats name is freddy
the next time freddy dies i hope he won’t be a rat
but something smaller i hope i will be a rat
in the next transmigration and freddy a cockroach
i will teach him to sneer at my poetry then
don’t you ever eat any sandwiches in your office
i havent had a crumb of bread
for i dont know how long
or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings
and paste leave a piece of paper in your machine
every night you can call me archy
http://www.donmarquis.org/coming.htm
(Freddy the rat, I suspect, was reincarnated– as Freddie Mac– and we all know how that turned out).
Here is a cartoon of Archy at work on Don’s 1920s-vintage typewriter while Mehitabel the cat watches wide-eyed: http://www.donmarquis.org/archy.htm I don’t know how Don Marquis would have worked a word processor into archy’s poetic production process, but I’m sure he and archy together could have figured out all kinds of creative vers libre with the Ctrl and Alt keys as well as the Shift key.
Mr. McDougald, thank you very much!
When I took typing class in 10th grade – from Mrs. Margin, no kidding! – we used typewriters with blank keys. Did anyone else use those? It was a great way to get the right muscle memory. I type very quickly now, I’m sure the unlabeled keys are one of the reasons. I still prefer as steeply graded a keyboard as I can find (increasingly difficult).
My son, then 7, wanted a typewriter for last Christmas, my wife found an old Royal. He has a blast on it, though had to learn the hard way how difficult it is to make corrections.
Batman, interesting point about Mozart and Beethoven. I wish I could transfer my typing skills to the piano.
JMS, with the advent of word processing a whole cottage industry died. In every college town there used to be scores of ladies who made a buck typing students’ papers. Into the 1990s you could see flyers for “Miss Dee” at Columbia, though by that point there must have been scarcely any demand for her services.
Learning to type was arguably the most useful thing I learned in High School.
I miss my Selectric II. I may have to find one and try writing on it for the sake of comparison.
rickl 32,
Bing says it was Truman Capote who eviscerated Kerauoc. No joy on who sent or received the tripewriter rejection.
Lyrics to “The Ballad of Rodger Young,”
No, they’ve got no time for glory in the Infantry.
No, they’ve got no use for praises loudly sung,
But in every soldier’s heart in all the Infantry
Shines the name, shines the name of Rodger Young.
Shines the name–Rodger Young!
Fought and died for the men he marched among.
To the everlasting glory of the Infantry
Lives the story of Private Rodger Young.
Caught in ambush lay a company of riflemen–
Just grenades against machine guns in the gloom–
Caught in ambush till this one of twenty riflemen
Volunteered, volunteered to meet his doom.
Volunteered, Rodger Young!
Fought and died for the men he marched among.
In the everlasting annals of the Infantry
Glows the last deed of Private Rodger Young.
It was he who drew the fire of the enemy
That a company of men might live to fight;
And before the deadly fire of the enemy
Stood the man, stood the man we hail tonight.
On the island of New Georgia in the Solomons,
Stands a simple wooden cross alone to tell
That beneath the silent coral of the Solomons,
Sleeps a man, sleeps a man remembered well.
Sleeps a man, Rodger Young,
Fought and died for the men he marched among.
In the everlasting spirit of the Infantry
Breathes the spirit of Private Rodger Young.
No, they’ve got no time for glory in the Infantry,
No, they’ve got no use for praises loudly sung,
But in every soldier’s heart in all the Infantry
Shines the name, shines the name of Rodger Young.
Shines the name–Rodger Young!
Fought and died for the men he marched among.
To the everlasting glory of the Infantry
Lives the story of Private Rodger Young.
Frank Loesser
Josh/42
You are correct. The mag card machine must’ve been introduced between the paper tape and the mag tape. I remember looking at the mag card and thinking my paper tape machine worked for me just as well.
PA Cat/44
Thanks for the archy and mehitabel. One of the first adult books I ever read, probably about fourteen or so, and I not only devoured it, but I remember it fondly to this day, even though I have known since reading it that I could never write that well or be as inventive.
The girls in the typing pool were cute, though.
So were the girls not in the typing pool.
Never got the hang of using word processors, one wrong move and lines disappeared, paragraphs unwrapped, numbers appeared out of nowhere and paper widened and narrowed for no discernable reason. Arrg!
Our typing classes also had blank keys. Rather, they were normal keys that the teacher painted over with nail polish. By the end of the course the nail polish would have worn away, but by then nobody needed to see the keys anyway.
Yes, I can testify heartily that the typewriter made me a better writer then than I am today. The typewriter forced me into thinking harder about composition. “Cut and paste” were unknown terms to me then. “Winging it” was very hard. Maybe Jack Kerouac could do it. And that’s debatable. Also every sentence had to be better thought out, and spelled out. Dictionaries were consulted (and whole definitions read and explored). Sinking a dry well of a sentence, or a paragraph, really hurt you in those times. The “Undo” button was foreign even to the IBM Selectric.
In parallel, we also had to submit code to computers with decks of punch cards. Even the electronics all had mechanical interfaces for these communications. Worse still, every clock cycle then cost real money, both for code compilation and for program execution. The first step for any programming task was to pull out a sheet of paper and start planning. We mapped all our programs out with flowcharts from entry to exit with every control path nailed down before the first line of code was written. Then we examined every one of those carefully numbered lines for any possible logical or grammatical error. Then we’d bravely step up to find out how badly the compiler would spank us the first time.
Those mechanical interfaces did enforce efficiency over bloat, and some rigor of design. Our electronic interfaces of today allow for many sins. They don’t even teach typing anymore. The accuracy of old isn’t required. Slop’s in. Everybody’s Jack Kerouac!
Before the Selectric the top of thew line IBM typewriter was the Executive. It had a split space bar that allowed the typist to do something resembling proportional spacing. Some secretaries resented losing that capability when the Selectric replaced the Executive.
Carbon copies is the reason reason the letters cc are used as a symbol for additional recipients. A bcc is a blind carbon copy.
Cut and paste was literal. We would mark up a document and give it to the typists. If they could make the changes and save a big chunk of text, they would cut the text that could be saved out of the edited page paste it into a new sheet and type around it. We could then photo copy the marked up page to avoid distributing the cut and paste page.
Pub@ 48:
YouTube has the West Point choir singing it.
The Roger Young was young Starship trooper Juan “Johnnie” Rico’s ship in Heinlein’s novel and the song, played over the ship’s loudspeaker system was their “return to ship” signal.
So, now with the obligatory RAH reference, this cycle is complete, if not yet completed. / erc
13. Harry MacDougald
It was the knowledge of such things that enabled me, under my nom de plume “Buckhead”, to know that the Rathergate memos were fakes before they had even finished loading on my screen.
Good to see you again, and that you’re here at BC too. I missed the original thread on FR when you broke the Rathergate memo revelations. I was pinged to and followed the continuing discussions, though. I even have the original thread saved in my archives… /g From the perspective of today’s surreal national nightmare, it all seems sort of like a pleasant dream, when we all thought we could really make a difference… /grin
In reminiscing about those heady times versus the dire situation of today there are a few points that still stick with me.
1. As wretchard pointed out there are still many people who remember you and the good thing you did. It mattered.
2. Who’d have ever suspected at the time, however, that George W. Bush and our so-called GOP leadership never had any desire or intention of really taking the fight to the domestic enemy that is now destroying the country, but would actually help set them up for their takeover. They all really fooled us good, didn’t they.
Anyway, hope things are well with you and yours, and that you’ll prosper through the coming times.
Totally OT except that the Vulcans and Victors were about as state of the Art in 1980 as typewriters are today. …and it should not be missed.
The Vulcans were going to be scrapped 3 months later.
I rarely watch movies anymore, almost never watch long videos…
I watched much of this 42 minute masterpiece 3 times!
13 Victors refueling Victors refueling the Vulcan!
“Astonishingly, this great feat has been downplayed into near obscurity by history, but this documentary brings it back to life, providing a thrilling and uncharacteristically upbeat account from the Falklands War:
the Dambusters for the 1980s generation.“
XM607 – Falklands’ Most Daring Raid
On 30 April 1982, the RAF launched a secret mission: to fly a Vulcan bomber to the Falkland Islands and bomb Port Stanley’s runway, putting it out of action for Argentine fighter jets. The safety of the British Task Force depended on its success.
However, the RAF could only get a single plane – a crumbling, Cold War-era Vulcan – 8000 miles south to the Falklands, because just one bomber needed an aerial fleet of 13 Victor tanker planes to refuel it throughout the 16-hour round-trip. At the time it was the longest-range bombing mission in history.
From start to finish, the seemingly impossible mission was a comedy of errors, held together by pluck and ingenuity.
On the brink of being scrapped, only three of the ageing nuclear bombers could be fitted out for war, one to fly the mission and two in reserve. Crucial spare parts were scavenged from museums and scrap yards – one vital component had been serving as an ashtray in the Officers’ Mess.
In just three weeks, the Vulcan crews had to learn air-to-air refuelling, which they hadn’t done for 20 years, and conventional bombing, which they hadn’t done for 10 years either.
The RAF scoured the country for Second World War iron bombs, and complex refuelling calculations were done the night before on a £5 pocket calculator.
With a plan stretched to the limit and the RAF’s hopes riding on just one Vulcan, the mission was flown on a knife-edge: fraught with mechanical failures, unreliable navigation, electrical storms and lack of fuel.
Of the 21 bombs the Vulcan dropped, only one found its target. But it was enough to change the outcome of the war.
Wretchard,
The evolution of the typewriter was not the most extreme change. The evolution of the calculator was even more awesome.
Consider the mechanical Friden calculators — those mechanical miracles probably could not be built today. The electronic variety (you did not have to pull a crank handle to complete the operation) were wonderful, and the sound of long division would last for 10 seconds as the machine clanked away. Then there was the first solid state Friden, with a CRT screen. Then the Wangs (with 4 memory locations and exponentiation and logs). Then the dam burst and we got computers and hand-held mult-function devices that replaced slide rules and were more powerful than the moon landing computer.
AHH– typewriters.
If you were in the service during the era of the Draft, and had a PHD in – say -Chemical Engineering, you were likely to be made a company clerk because you could type.
Just out of the service in 71, I took a job with Pitney Bowes as a serviceman; postage meters, collaters, letter folders and envelope stuffers, that sort of thing.
We wore white shirts and ties and carried our tools in a briefcase. We considered ourselves to be above mere mechanics. Our machines were filled with clockwork gears that turned cams that tripped micro switches, triggering contacts in electro-mechanical relays that were housed in clear plastic units an inch square and three inches tall.
A little above us were the copier repairmen with the boys from Xerox looking down on us all.
Trumping the field, like a violin maker at a woodworkers convention, were the Typewriter Repairmen. They carried their tools in Victorian leather satchels, often with their initials embossed in the leather. Of the ones I ran across during my two years in that business it seemed that the Olivetti men were the classiest of the bunch.
Olivettis were smaller, more compact and stylishly designed than the other machines you saw. It should be remembered that before the advent of the IBM Ball and the Xerox Disk, that electric typewriters were the same mechanism with a power assist; the mechanical parts were at least similar if not identical to the standard or manual typewriter.
My memory of Olivetti is dominated by a service call I made to their branch office to service a postage meter there. In the lobby was a glass case about sixteen inches wide, four feet tall and six feet long. Filling the case was a model of the clipper Thermopylae. The receptionist told me it was the handiwork of their oldest technician and took ten years for him to finish. I spent two hours gazing in rapt amazement at that model. That was 1972. Olivetti is gone, the building is gone; a clinic stands there now; and that model is gone- somewhere. I presume it wound up in a museum but I’ve been unable to find out where.
56. Edward…
“The evolution of the typewriter was not the most extreme change. The evolution of the calculator was even more awesome.”
—
The Vulcan’s Bombing Calculator was mechanical. The operator said it included some bicycle chain!
Did a stint in D.C. early 70′s as a note reader, on daily copy for Columbia-Smith-Alderson. Note readers were assigned to a court reporter who was working in hearings, etc., on the Hill, usually two readers to one reporter. A runner would make the loop through the various hearings and courtrooms hourly, pick up the pile of notes, return to the office and distribute them. The two of us would split the pile and set to work on our Selectrics.
Remember stencils? We’d pound out the stuff on stencils, with a bottle of correcting fluid handy. Then another runner from the mimeograph room would make the office rounds, pick up the completed stencils.
At the end of the hearing, the pressure was on, as the lawyers would start gathering in the waiting room about an hour after the hearing ended. The mimeograph runner would dash along the hallway, look in at your typewriter, and if more of the stencil was coming out the top than going in, he waited until you said “OK,” yanked that stencil out of the typewriter, and was on his way.
Sometimes the court reporter, after returning to the office and doing some proofreading, would discover that we had been misspelling someone’s name, or whatever. Oh s***! Start grabbing all the stencils, hold the blue sheet up to the light, looking for the incorrect name, grabbing a Selectric, and making corrections. Meanwhile the lawyers were pacing in the waiting room, waiting for the transcripts so they could begin plotting the next day’s hearing.
Speed was critical. If you didn’t measure up, you couldn’t hold Daily Copy, and would work the lower-pressure weekly stuff. We got paid by the page, and Daily Copy was where the money was.
I always wondered what happened to that business when computers came out; I’ll bet they were one of the first to get a network.
One of the fastest note readers had a small refrigerator by his desk. He had to get a buzz on before he was any good, but then, look out. He could hardly speak coherently, but his output was incredible.
Another good thing about typewriters that’s sort of passed by the wayside is that high school typing teachers were usually the hottest, youngest babes in the teaching profession, and accordingly provided sterling inspiration for many a young swain.
Surprised to see Manilla John linked to an article about typewriters. Semper Fi.
You may say the Selectric was the final gasp, but that might better be occupied by the Selectamatic, as it combined some new tech along with that gorgeous mechanical innards–a 4k memory (yes, actual computer memory) so that, after you typed a page, and made whatever corrections you needed with the lift-off key, you could insert a new sheet and it would retype it perfectly.
Wow.
The other tech marvel I remember fondly was the “electric stencil cutter”. You put a typed sheet on one side of the drum, and a photoconductive mimeograph stencil on the other. It then read the page with some kind of photocell and a high-voltage spark zapped holes in the stencil to match. So many orders of magnitude better than typing right on a mimeo stencil!
Corrasable Bond was a brand of typing paper which could be erased, letter by letter, without the mess associated with earlier typing paper. Great. Still, there was no editing, just redoing a letter hear, I mean here, or there.
The early IBM PCs came with a tactile keyboard that gave you audible feedback to bridge the gap between computer and typewriter.
Also some of the Selectrics came with an RS232 interface and were used as early terminals. I seem to remember using one on an Unisys 1100. Green bar paper and tracing code by hand.
Hey, how many of y’all had experience with keypunch machines?
That’s what you had to do to program a computer back then. Put those 80 column cards into a machine and type a line of code on each one. The code was printed on the top and appropriate holes punched in the card to equal the printed symbol. Then when you finished the program, you turned it in to the people who ran the IBM 360/65 and they ran it and you got it back the next day.
Inevitably you would be disappointed to find that you had typed an “Oh” instead of a “Zero” and the computer could not figure out what that symbol was. You spent the next month screwing up an otherwise perfectly good program while trying to figure out what “Undefined Operator in Line 1″ really meant. It meant that the computer had taken your “1.0765″ in one line of code, saw the “0″ as an “O,” and was unable to figure out what that undefined variable was.
By the way, in military parlance, it is “Oh Dark Thirty” rather than “Zero Dark Thirty” and is another way of saying “You ain’t getting to go to bed tonight because the T-0 for the launch is at some godawful time in the middle of the wee hours of the morning.”
Walt:
I laboriously typed the first SF story I submitted to Analog Magazine on a manual typewriter circa 1981. It was then rejected – fortunately – because otherwise I would be enjoying 3 hots and a cot at a certain military facility in Kansas. Great Minds Think Alike and I had “invented” what proved to be a highly classified weapons system.
By the way, how many of y’all ever learned to send and receive Morse Code? I still have a few code keys for doing that stored away.
#60 “Another good thing about typewriters that’s sort of passed by the wayside is that high school typing teachers were usually the hottest, youngest babes in the teaching profession”
My first semester typing teacher was a first year teacher who had been a Baylor (University) Beauty the year before. As a HS senior, I looked for reasons to ask for teacher’s assistance.
Unfortunately, the young lady died in a car accident the next year — thrown from a car in the pre-seatbelt era.
64. Mark_B: That was the IBM Model M keyboard with buckling springs. Those are considered by some, myself included, to be the finest computer keyboards ever made. I’m typing on one right now. It was manufactured in 1987. They are still manufactured and sold by Unicomp if you miss yours.
“It was, as is so often the case in technology, the final flowering of a line that is about to die.”
I recently translated a French documentary about the Albatros film studio of the 1920s. It was set up in Paris, and run mostly by Russian exiles fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution. They made some of the most beautiful silent films in existence – the level of craftsmanship on the part of everyone involved, from directors to actors to set designers, was simply unmatchable. Hollywood movies of that era are clomping vaudeville acts by contrast; lots of money, but no style or subtlety. Alas, it all came to an end with the arrival of sound technology in 1929. The Russian actors couldn’t speak French, or else their accents were too heavy for the public to accept: the great Ivan Mosjoukine was a particularly sad example of this. But the point was made by the experts in the documentary that Albatros perished because it couldn’t adapt to the new technology, but also because it had already achieved such a high aesthetic peak, it had nowhere else to go. They couldn’t possibly top what they’d done by 1928.
People who love silent movies often lament what happened after 1929 – silent movies were often just thrown away, and the great majority have been lost. (Fortunately, the very best were saved and we can still watch them today, with restoration techniques returning some of them to almost original condition.) But we have to understand the people of the day; they weren’t being especially stupid, they just couldn’t imagine what possible use anyone would ever have for these old outdated movies. It’s like future generations lamenting that we scrapped all those millions of typewriters once the computer became common – why would we keep them? We can’t imagine any scenario where something this outdated would be worth saving.
Soon the keyboard itself will be a dinosaur. Even the mouse seems quaint already.
At work a keyboard is one of those pesky things taking up too much room on my desk that I need to use when the voice recognition software makes a mistake, which is often.
I heard a story today on the news about a voice activated alarm clock which can give you all kinds of information and with the right peripherals you can tell it to turn on your lights, warm up the house and maybe start the coffee for you in the morning.
I remember typewriters. Spent many hours filling out insurance forms on a Selectric when I started working. I do not miss them at all.
In 1958 I took a high-school typing class.
I was finally awarded a “bottom of the heap” 40 words/minute pin.
Such rate never to be achieved again. But still touch-typing in my computerized future.
I “made” my children take a typing class in high school. I told them learning to
touch-type was far and away the most important skill needed for the rest of their lives.
In college I bought the Cadillac of slide-rules from a student who transferred to “Business”.
To replace my Pickett. After he ran into his first tough engineering classes.
One-third of the “new price”. But, never ever used.
This was “standard operating procedure” for us bucks-down students.
I still have it. The K&E. Plastic coated bamboo.
Much better than aluminum when walking from building to building in a blizzard.
However, I NEVER used the leather and metal clip to attach it to my belt. NEVER !
I dreamed a dream of K&E
Enamel white, the Pickett’s yellow.
Yet there are logs that cannot be.
A fact unknown to students callow.
But the changes came overnight.
My purchase proved a blunder.
As they took the rules away.
It was HP all the way a-a-ay!
It spent a summer by my side.
In leather case and belt suspender.
Now in the attic it resides.
Next to my mother’s broken blender.
And still I dream someday there’ll be
A chance to draw it from the leather
But there are dreams that cannot be
IT has killed the dream I dreamed.
In addition to my high school and college slide rules, lying in some box somewhere (I think they all were made by Sterling), I have a couple of WWII vintage circular slide rules made for use by USAAF aircrew.
Both are 8 inches in diameter. One is for computing True Airspeed using inputs of calibrated indicated airspeed, pressure altitude, and temperature. The other is for calculating True Altitude using inputs of pressure altitude at the ground and temperature.
I read not long ago that Operations Research analysts created special slide rules for use by B-29 crews in the Pacific. Since AAF aircrew typically described any ship sighted that was larger than a PT Boat as being a Yamato Class battleship, the special slide rule enabled the crews to use the B-29′s lead computing gunsights to calculate the actual size of the ship based on gunsight measurements and the aircraft altitude. I think that a modern day approach would be far more complex.
Wretchard:
Don’t dream of slide rules. You can use one in your browser:
Derek’s Virtual Slide Rule Gallery
A gallery of clickable simulated slide rules.
Pickett N909-ES SIMPLEX TRIG RULE with METRIC CONVERSION
Pickett N3-T POWER LOG EXPONENTIAL LOG LOG DUAL BASE
Pickett N904-T TRIG and DECIMAL KEEPER SPEED RULE
Pickett N525-ES StatRule
Pickett N4-ES Vector-Type LOG LOG DUAL BASE SPEED RULE
Pickett 160-ES MICROLINE
Pickett N600-ES LOG LOG SPEED RULE
http://www.antiquark.com/sliderule/sim/index.html
70. DanP_from_AZ
I “made” my children take a typing class in high school. I told them learning to
touch-type was far and away the most important skill needed for the rest of their lives.
,,,,,,,,,,,
Agreed. My HS typing class did me more good than any other class I took at the time..
In “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel”, the protagonist has a top-end slide rule, described as “log-log duplex decitrig”. Not sure there is such a thing or if RAH just liked the rhythm.
OH, yeah. If you were a real loser, you pronounced K&E as “kooful” instead of “koyfel”.
22 Uncle Jefe mentioned vinyl.
There is a small continuing production of new vinyl albums. A bunch of old late 1960s – early 1970s rock never made it to CD / MP3. Only way to get it out is to digitize and convert which is why there is still a continuing marketplace for audio cartridges and needles. One example:
http://www.needledoctor.com/
Cheers -
alexdombroff@alexanderdombroff.com
I’ve written a book of themes about living in the Modern world– a opposed to the pomo world of Obama et al, and in my book I write about, among other things, typewriters. I write about telephones, Vesuvio’s Bakery, yellow and blue, Islam and jihad and holidays; in short, things and events and people who make us who we are as people living in a unique and wonderful world.
I am also a very tough guy living in a dangerous world of bad people who kill. So, there’s a mix in what I write. It’s not all about beauty and wonder. I happened to quote our gracious host on the first page of the book, as I recall. I’ve never seen a copy of it, living on the road without access to a proper address, so I leave it to memory. As I recall, I wrote a good and worthy book. Perhaps my new book is better. But consider trying this one.
http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1
I don’t have a typewriter with me, no address, and I don’t have a telephone. I left my beautiful sewing machine in storage with those other lovely things I own. I don’t have a copy of my own book. I don’t have much of anything, but I do write books, and I can only hope that people will at least give one a try, even if only to write a scathing and intelligent review so I stop trying. So far the reviews are good. Yes, you could lose. You might try, though, and you might find you’ve gained a bit.
Here are some reviews and comments on said book:
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html
#7 – - Those of us who know our history.
I enjoy typing and I think there’s something to the idea that it has an effect on the mind. There’s something calming about it, finding a rhythm with your hands and then letting your mind settle in and follow the rhythm. Plus there is an auditory element, I hear the words as I am reading or thinking them, so there’s a pleasant integration, words seem to flow from one’s ears and mind into one’s hands. If you can keep the rhythm going it’s a very nice experience. When I’m retyping something, my mind slows down to the speed of my hands. That’s extremely relaxing. Composing is different, your hands have to slow down to accommodate the mind, at first, and then when the ideas get flowing you have to type as fast as you can to capture the ideas. When I’m composing these days I’ll often use longhand to capture part of that experience. It’s even slower, of course, and a different type of rhythm, but you get that integration of the tactical experience, the inner auditory experience, and the flowing of ideas.
I took two years of typing in high school. The first year was required, I think, but the second year was intended for people who wanted to go into clerical work. That year we had brand new Selectrics and as I recall they were courtesy of IBM. It took a while to learn to use the carriage return button instead of doing it manually. It was very exciting to have the built-in correction capabiity, although we were discouraged from relying on it; the goal was to learn to type without making any errors. Errors were subtracted from your word count. I got up to around 70 words per minute, which I was very proud of. A few years later a friend of mine got a job as a secretary in an Important Company and the policy there was no corrections, all documents had to be perfect. With whiteout you could always see the correction (even if you didn’t make a hash of it; boy, I remember the result when you didn’t let it dry enough, or used too much–ruined the whole document). The Selectric correction tape was less visible, but not the same as a perfect document. It seems funny now to worry about corrections being visible when much of our prose is littered with typos and spelling errors.
In the 1980s when word processors first came in, I wrote a story for the Boston Phoenix about how it changed one’s writing process compared to the typewriter. As others have indicated here, being able to change things around without much effort does change one’s relationship to the material. The very fact that you don’t see everything you type makes a big difference–it all goes “in” and scrolls out of view instead of going “on” the paper and accumulating as you watch. There’s a positive aspect to that, it makes it easier psychologically; one doesn’t worry as much about the rotten-ness of one’s first draft when it’s not staring one in the face.
My dad bequeathed his old Underwood to me. He earned a living as a writer on that thing for many years. It takes a lot of strength to get into a rhythm with that huge upright machine. But when you do, it’s very satisfying.
Before he was a writer, my dad was a proofreader. He was always finding typos in everything. Once when we were in New York he found a typo on a brass plaque.
Buckhead, it’s a pleasure to have seen your comment here. It’s odd to realize how many people don’t have this knowledge. At the time of the Rather incident I had a heck of a time convincing a friend that the proportional spacing issue was an obvious smoking gun. My friend had read the Mapes book and believed the story about the memo being a copy of a copy of a copy. I tried to explain that the two issues were not at all comparable visually but she just didn’t get it because she is younger than I am and didn’t remember the difference.
Yeah, the total implausibility, that Radar O’Reilly would have one of those fancy Selectrics with the proportional spacing and the fancy superscripts . . .