Mark Twain was a famous early adopter of fancy technology, and he helped to popularize the typewriter. Isaac Asimov, author of more than five hundred books, had two IBM selectrics; if one broke, he shoved it aside and kept writing. It was a different time, when most information was distributed on dead trees. You know, right up until 22 years ago, before the World Wide Web.
Check out this video of kids reacting to a typewriter. Funny how a couple of them… want to keep it. It is sort of magical, letters appearing on the paper like that. The sound, the mechanism; this thing has authority.
I had a very difficult time with fine motor coordination* as a kid, and my handwriting was terrible. My sister taught me how to use a typewriter; home row, hands in position, strike the key – magic! A crisp letter on paper. I could get my thoughts out, finally.
I got very good at typing. In college, I made spending money typing papers for grad students who couldn’t spell. You kids, remember this: Spell Check won’t save you from using the correctly spelled wrong word. Homophones lurk, waiting to make you look like an idiot. But I will be sympathetic, pat you on the back and say; “There, they’re, their.”
Here’s what I like best about a manual typewriter: it has infinite patience. While you compose your next words (and you do compose, because it has no error correction), it waits, silent, wanting nothing. No electricity, no software patches, no pop-up ads. It offers no half-assed electronic opinions about your spelling or grammar. It has nothing else to do but wait for your next words. Now, that’s power.
NOTES:
- Dave Hill compares his Smith Corona typewriter to a firearm… (Give me the typewriter any day.)
- *Spinal meningitis, age 4. I was “lucky” but effects persist to this day. My handwriting has improved. The typewriter was a godsend.
- Today I use a computer. My favorite is my Chromebook, which has a very long battery life, and no fan.
- Next time you have some serious writing to do, instead of a word processor, try a code editor in “clean screen” mode. It’s the closest thing on a computer to using a typewriter. My favorite is Notepad++.
georgewiman 