080 typewriter adventures

Typewriter Memories

In my last blog posting that was devoted to spacing after periods, I mentioned the non-proportional spacing of typewriters. That thought brought forth reminiscences of my typewriting adventures. 



I took a high school typewriting class in 1963.  The room was crammed with gigantic manual typewriters.

Thirty manual typewriters all clacking, clattering and ringing at each carriage return--what a din!

I came from Phys. Ed. to typing, was usually one of the last to arrive, and so was left with the oldest and crankiest machine. I remember a hot topic in class was where to place those brand new zip codes when typing the address line!

I was a very good student but not a very good typist. I came in early each day before school to practice.  It was difficult to press the keys with my pinkie fingers hard enough to move the type hammer lever to strike and make a dark impression. 

The qwerty keyboard came about because the first typewriter keyboards had the most common letters in the center and constantly jammed together when r and e and a, etc., were typed in close succession.

Jam still happened--how aggravating when you were typing at a good rhythm!

I eventually became a slower and more accurate typist. I went off to college with my own portable typewriter. (I was so proud!) Being an English/journalism major, I had many papers to type.

I used erasable bond, and would stop every few lines to check my work, and then get out the typewriter eraser. It had a brush on one end to brush the eraser crumbs off the paper and often right into the typewriter works!  I ended up with some convoluted sentences in my attempts to correct the error in the newly erased space. The erasable bond that corrected most cleanly also came with a bonus--very easily smeared text--when even lightly touched. I carefully removed each typed page and then sprayed it with hairspray. No smears but the page was slightly perfumed--what message was I sending to my professors?

How I hated typewriter ribbons!  I would type several lines only to discover the ribbon had fallen below the strike plate, and there was no text to be seen. I was cheap and did not change ribbons often. I also flipped over the top part of the ribbon to the bottom in an attempt prolong its life, which worked for a brief period.

After college I started using an electric typewriter--those wonderful IBM Selectrics! My work compatriots and I were delighted when new typeballs became available.  No more 
Courier!


The selectrics also eventually added a correction feature although I never achieved the perfect corrections that the company promised.  I might back up to the wrong letter or the correction tape did not completely cover.

The other typewriter task I never completely managed was centering a line.  Count the number of characters in the line to be centered, move the carriage return so that it is ready to type at the center of the line, than backspace half the number of characters in the line to be centered.  I did but somehow it never looked exactly right. Being somewhat obsessive compulsive, I hated when the line to be centered had an uneven number of characters. Yes, I obsessed--do I backspace the higher number or the amount that was one less?

In conclusion, I looked for a picture of a high school typing class by searching typewriting lab:

I bet his typing was as good as mine!

Trish