I was involved in judging a writing competition recently.
One of the things that surprised me was the number of entries that came in that had clearly been done on old-fashioned mechanical typewriters. I didn't think anyone used them any more and kudos to those who managed to submit some quite long entries that way.
I used to have a mechanical typewriter and it isn't easy to write anything of any length on them because of the rigmarole you have to go through when you make a mistake. Type a letter wrong and spot it straight away and you have a chance - you can use a dab of correction fluid and type over it, but if, on proofreading a whole page, you find you missed out a word in line two you are buggered. You have to do the whole thing again.
I went up into the loft to look for my old typewriter but it isn't there. I expect it was long ago thrown away. The red box that it used to be in is there but it's full of 78 rpm records (and the fact that anyone under thirty has no idea what I am talking about tells you how long it is since I used a typewriter!). I remember it clearly though. My mother returned from Bilston market with it one day. It was a bulky cast iron red and black thing. It had the normal kind of typewriter mechanism where angled levers carry the letters up to strike the ribbon and print the ink onto the page but it could hardly be described as a delicate instrument. The muscular strength required to hit the keys hard enough to make an impression was quite considerable, for children's fingers anyway. I recall having a typing speed that was measured in letters, rather than words, per minute and sometimes in single digits at that. Now, as I sit here writing this, making on the fly adjustments as I think of a marginally better turn of phrase, popping off to find a picture of a typewriter to illustrate with, having the word processor tell me when (it thinks) I have made a spelling mistake, I can't help thinking how easy we have it nowadays. And how impressed I am by people still using equipment that most of us now only see in museums.
Anyway. Must dash for now. I have a box of 78 rpm records to look through.
2 comments:
A few years ago a new picture book came out called Click Clack Moo: Cows that Type about some farm animals that got hold of a typewriter and created mischief with it. It is a clever book with amusing illustrations and plot and it garnered a lot of attention at the time because it was so funny. I only ever used it with one group, though, because although the story seemed to lend itself to being read aloud, kids today have no idea what a typewriter is! There is no point in sharing those jokes with children if you have to preface the story with a 10 minute explanation of typewriters. It was quite frustrating.
That's the trouble with being "of the moment", the moment passes and you are left behind.
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