Of the many blogs I read, one that I enjoy is called Shareware Beach (http://www.shareware-beach.com/). It's written by a Thai writer who creates software that I'm unlikely to ever use, but have read good reviews about. The attraction is that he is a literate man who writes software for an income. And that's interesting enough to me, by itself.
His most recent post tells of his transition from a typewriter to a computer.
A typewriter is a device that USED to be a key writing implement, right up there with the #9 pencil J.K. Rowling used to write the Harry Potter books. Companies like Olivietti, Underwood and IBM were famous typewriter companies. I learned to type on an Olivietti at school, achieving the passing mark of 25 words a minute (corrected), while in Grade 10. Later, I took a single class in University, where the teacher spent ONE HOUR of my life instructing me on the proper way to insert paper into a typewriter. I then took the proficiency test, hit 50 on the results and never saw that fool of an instructor again.
In between, I went to work at a newspaper. The Bramalea Guardian, under the watchful eye of my boss, Ken Giles. As a student sports reporter, I got "stuck" with the oldest reject typewriter the paper had. An Underwood. Built in 1937. If it's possible to fall in love with a machine, I came to love that rickety old clatterbox, all burnished iron, with no attempt at a body case, just keys, platen, roller and ribbon. I wrote A LOT in those days. We filled a big sports section once a week and a lot of it was agate type, long listings of sports results. Lots of newsprint went through the typewriter, two copies and a carbon for each take.
The best part about using a typewriter was the feel. First, the keys had to be more than touched. You had to really pound them. Then, as you were getting near the end of the line, you had to intuit that it was time to reach out and pull the return handle, simultaneously moving the page up a line (or more) and moving the type head back to the far left. I am sure major league pitchers could do worse than train by typing on a keyboard. And it was fun to yank at the lever, especially if you had something you had to work out. And there was always the fun of pressing too many keys too quickly and having jamming the hammers at the point of type.
People might not realize that the layout of the typewriter (and subsequently the computer) was chosen to SLOW DOWN typists. Just to prevent the jamming I just described.
Now, I was a two-handed typist, but an awful lot of my contemporaries AND my forebears were incredibly speedy two finger typists. In fact, the Boss was a speed demon. And he did it without the full use of his left hand, an anomaly he was born with. The left hand was strictly for hitting the shift key. Otherwise, the Boss was a ONE-fingered typist. And he could outdo me on a speed and accuracy test hands down.
The funniest part of watching the Boss type was him peeling carbon sheets off his output. Where I could get 10-20 pages of work down with a single carbon, I watched while the Boss made a carbon last one, MAYBE two pages. The reason? He hit the keys hard, all the time, every time. You could hold a carbon up that he'd just used for a second time and SEE THROUGH IT! Every o and d punctured another hole in the fabric that was the carbon paper. I sometimes wonder if the reason I was hired wasn't just to off-set the Boss, when it came time to buying carbon paper in bulk. When the company did switch to computers, he went through three keyboards his first week. He's the only guy I know who could get a full workout daily JUST by typing.
Back to my Underwood. By the time I left the Guardian in the early 80's, the paper was still using typewriters, but was getting electric typewriters just about the time I left. Because of that, I got to take my Underwood home with me, since no intelligent newspaperman would be caught dead with the old manual. I already had my first computer at that point. An Apple with a ridiculously low serial number. But a bad experience where I lost some writing the first night I tried writing with the computer (as adverse playing and programming), prompted me to still use the typewriter a fair bit.
I used it a lot the first two months after I left. I was writing scripts for my radio broadcasts, having joined CKMW radio at the time. Two months into the year I spent there, I found myself with the time and interest to explore my computer in more detail. I started writing with scripts with the Apple more and more. Maybe six months after I left the Guardian, I put the typewriter in a corner and it stayed there for a decade.
One night at the Caledon Bridge Club, I was approached about any spare typewriters I might have. I admitted to owning one. A day later, the old Underwood was winging its way down to the Dominican Republic. For all I know, it's still in use today as it closes in on its 75th birthday. It doesn't need electrical power, although I imagine ribbons for it might be a bit hard to find. That, and a lotta love.
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