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Ode to the Type-writer
May 11, 2011 - 12:20pm
Here is a secret: I am obsessed with the typewriter. It is an amazing little machine. I recently purchased this photograph from Toronto artist Todd McLellan and became a little bit mournful when I read this story about the last mechanical typewriter factory closing in India. I'm reading a lot of c-20 literature about type-writers (an alias for both the machine and the person using it), like Grant Allen's The Type-Writer Girl (1897) and composite novel The Sturdy Oak (1917); and reading book-length studies on it like Darren Wershler-Henry's The Iron Whim: a Fragmented History of the Typewriter. Fun!
Today, the Guardian published a series of photographs of authors and their typewriters. Check it out.
Any other typo-philes?
Cool thread, Catchfire. I can remember using a typewriter in grade school and i can still remember the smell. How did people get any work done when you couldn't jump from babble, to facebook, to google, to flash games while typing a report?
I used to use a secondhand one to write letters (in 2004 or so) until my roommate went insane and made me get rid of it.
My first roommate used to tape his own essays. He was also a procrastinator. He would stay up all night the day before the essay was due. Didn't I mention we shared a large bachelor apartment. R. would be in the kitchen typing. Not being a good one he often made mistakes that needed to bre corrected with correction tape. I would hear the sound of backspace, backspace, backspace, followed by wacka, wacka, wacka.
It all worked out in the end; I'm married to his ex-fiancee.
Nice! I haven't been to this, but an amazing local lithgraphic shop (ATTN: Vancouverites, of which I think LS is one) has a letter-writing club where you use vintage typewriters and wonderful stationary in store. The Regional Assembly of Text on Main St. You should check it out, LS! (If you haven't already.)
I use an electric typewriter occasionally. Brought it new in the 1970s, works like a charm. I wish I had my dad's manual typewriter from the 1950s - that was a dream machine.
My handwriting was so poor in school that when I started highschool, my parents promised me a typewriter if I would take a typing class. I did, and they followed through. We learned on Selectrics, and Selectric IIs (much less charm than an old Underwood, but they had that neat 'golf ball' in place of the usual arms, so you could change "fonts"!).
Trivia: what is the longest word that can be typed using only the top row (QWERT...) of a typewriter?
Qwertyuiop?
Typewriter. How perfect is that?
^^
LIKE
I must say, the only thing I miss is the machine-gun action of the IBM Selelctric. I swear that is what got me up over 40 WPM. Back in the day of manuals I always opted for hand-writing.
Family legend has it that my grandmother, who was an executive secretary for Alcan, in Arvida, could get up past 90wpm on a manual. I have to also assume she could push her baby finger through a tin can.
My mother typed my undergraduate essays on an old manual. Probably about half of my undergraduate essays were handed in handwritten. Those were the days.
One of the things that interest me the most about typewriters is their association with firearms. "Machine-gun action," as perhaps you know, is a descriptor that has followed typewriters since their inception. Look at the terminology too: slugs, cartridges, etc. And perhaps we should recall the fact that the writing machine came to prominence under Remington: a company famous for manufacturing two things: typewriters and firearms.
Also: I just found this old babble thread on the typewriter. Whoa.
A history of the typewriter courtesy of wikipaedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter
@ Catchfire
You are right there, though I don;t have any problem with the visceral association - I was aware of what I said - nor do I have a problem with with firearms used responsibly. I am aware that they are a necessary thing, after all.
More than anything, this thread makes me want to watch Cronenberg's Naked Lunch again, just for the movie's treatment of typewriters as a fetish. It is certainly a teratment of their importance which is more vital than the historical reality.
Or if you want to see another take on the significance of typewriters, watch the East German film "The Lives of Others".
I think "The Jagged Edge" also used the plot point of typwriter as fingerprint.
I also remember hearing that at the Winnipeg Free Press they kept a desk with a manual typewriter in the press room for the great journalist Vince Leah, even after the point at which he was no longer on staff, and was freelancing
I read "Naked Lunch' this summer. Mind-blowing.
I agree . Great book, but the movie is a different beast.
IMO this is perhaps the coolest thing that Snert has ever posted on babble!
rupturewort & proterotype
I had no idea.
Friedrich's writing machine
Friedrich Kittler argues that the writing ball tweaked Nietzsche's prose style, making it tighter and more aphoristic and punny--a fascinating if ultimately flawed argument.
Interesting thread, as it awakens my own journey with the type writer, from manuel to electric. To what we have today.
I learned to type when manual typewriters were in use ... got up to 60 wpm and then had to do it all over again with them newfangled electric typewriters. Made about 65 wpm with that. Never had any ambition to be faster than that.
I'm still, at my best, at 60 odd wpm. And I still have my Smith Corona (electric) in working order. mwa ha ha
Come to think of it, the Selectric was the first typewriter I ever got comfortable on, but I learned to type and got fast using compugraphic and AM typesetting machines (speaking of obsolete technology).
Many years ago when we were looking to hire an office manager who could double as an executive secretary for my CEO on those rare occassions he wasn't travelling we gave the applicants typing tests. The individual we ultimately hired tested at 93 words a minute (and didn't complete the sample text that made up the test). The lady we didn't hire completed the test and started over from the beginning before she stopped typing and pointed out one of the keys was sticking. We never did figure out exactly how fast she was typing but it was far over 90 wpm.
@ Lefauve
On the other hand, you should see some of the mistakes that have been "corrected" into copy I have written. It is definitely a two-edged sword, and I tend to leave mine off.
Me too i saw some mistake generated. For me as long as they point out possible error i keep the last decision for me. For me it more like crutches, it help me but don't do the work for me. Right now, i use Antidote, for french this one is the award winning and beats the one embeded in word. The one in word is very basic and do lot of mistake.
Still there is time when i envy people who don't need this!The typewriter lives on in India