Thank you so much for sharing another wonderful writing! And secondarily for the tribute to the typewriter.
For 45 years I earned my living banging on typewriters. Other people's words, but that let me into other people's worlds, too. I learned to type on my godmother's manual. My brother and I typed the final manuscript of one of her published books. She paid us to type it as a means of encouraging us to acquire the skill.
Manual was replaced by one of those huge, heavy IBM workhorses during the first year of my first job. Not long after began the glorious era of the Selectric. For one brief period I had to use a Wheelwriter. I was a super-fast typist and I remember how that delayed action/sound disturbed my wa unbearably. In that respect the Selectric was just wonderful. You couldn't type too fast for it. It kept up with you. And the magic of the typeface Elements. I used the Orator for the first time to type some speeches for Mayor Lindsay in New York. I actually bought several (unaffordably expensive) Elements for personal use on office machines.
In time I inherited a small Selectric from some project or another and had the use of it at home. One year when we went absolutely broke I sold that lovely machine for $100 and couldn't be sorry because it "made" a wonderful Christmas for my young son and the rest of the family.
Can't live without the computer now. I don't think it has really changed, or eased, the process of writing. It has freed us from whiting out and retyping. What I appreciate most about it is that it allows the mind to spill faster. I can't bear not being able to retrieve a thought or a phrase because I was writing something else while it was hovering around my brain.
For all that, there was something about using a manual typewriter that is lost. I loved the feel of the treadle sewing machine, too.
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For 45 years I earned my living banging on typewriters. Other people's words, but that let me into other people's worlds, too. I learned to type on my godmother's manual. My brother and I typed the final manuscript of one of her published books. She paid us to type it as a means of encouraging us to acquire the skill.
Manual was replaced by one of those huge, heavy IBM workhorses during the first year of my first job. Not long after began the glorious era of the Selectric. For one brief period I had to use a Wheelwriter. I was a super-fast typist and I remember how that delayed action/sound disturbed my wa unbearably. In that respect the Selectric was just wonderful. You couldn't type too fast for it. It kept up with you. And the magic of the typeface Elements. I used the Orator for the first time to type some speeches for Mayor Lindsay in New York. I actually bought several (unaffordably expensive) Elements for personal use on office machines.
In time I inherited a small Selectric from some project or another and had the use of it at home. One year when we went absolutely broke I sold that lovely machine for $100 and couldn't be sorry because it "made" a wonderful Christmas for my young son and the rest of the family.
Can't live without the computer now. I don't think it has really changed, or eased, the process of writing. It has freed us from whiting out and retyping. What I appreciate most about it is that it allows the mind to spill faster. I can't bear not being able to retrieve a thought or a phrase because I was writing something else while it was hovering around my brain.
For all that, there was something about using a manual typewriter that is lost. I loved the feel of the treadle sewing machine, too.