Typing in the old days
Jan. 7th, 2003 08:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susandennisEstis started this... They didn't offer typing at my school, but I took a summer school class to learn. We were taught on manual typewriter (the one you see in the beginning of Murder She Wrote). This was way before white out. As Estis remembers we did have typewriter erasers.
Claes Oldenburg even made a sculpture of one...
And we had carbon paper. The fancy places had carbon sets where the typing paper and the carbon paper were attached with a strip across the top to be separated when done. We had carbon erasers which were like typewriter erasers. Neither did a very good job.
In the early 70's when I decided that newspaper reporting was not the career for me, I went on to join the sales team at IBM. I sold typewriters. Selectric. The balls.
They were space age... They were cool. They took no selling ability. It was 'how many do you want and in what colors?' There were six standard colors BUT the factory would paint them to your specifications. I had one savings and loan that wanted them the colors of the draperies which were, sadly, pink. I think they cost about $800 and I know they took 6 weeks to 6 months to get after the order was placed.
My Daddy's father had come to the United States from Germany. He had run away from home and joined the British Navy. When war broke out between Germany and England he figured he'd better get off the boat and he did and he was in Texas. (I've always wondered how - in the middle of war - a British ship ended up in Galveston, Texas... but war was never my long suit.)
When he retired from the railroad, my grandfather filled his days at his typewriter. He wrote letters to everyone everywhere on every subject. I got 'em in college, Sonny and Cher got 'em at the studio, Senator McCarthy got 'em in Washington. We all got 'em.
My Mom suggested that he write his life story for his grandchildren ... which he did. Typed out on his portable manual Royal (which I still have, by the way), complete with typos and broken English. It was about 400 double spaced typewriten pages. Daddy asked me to re-type it and fix the grammar and spelling.
I rented an IBM Executive typewriter. This was electric but it proportional spacing. By this time we had Correct Type. You backspaced to your error - stuck this white stuff in and retyped the error to cover it up. Then you typed in the correction on top. When used correctly on the right paper it was pretty good stuff. BUT the Executive typewriter was a bitch because you had to hit backspace 1 time for an i and three times for an m and you had to know the worth of each character.
But, I digress... again... Anyway, I finally typed it all. I didn't fix everything. He still sounded like him. Why we even thought it was necesarry to fix anything is kind of a mystery to me now. It took me a month to retype it all. Daddy had it bound in to books for each of us.
Wow, Tom, you really hit a cord today!
Claes Oldenburg even made a sculpture of one...
And we had carbon paper. The fancy places had carbon sets where the typing paper and the carbon paper were attached with a strip across the top to be separated when done. We had carbon erasers which were like typewriter erasers. Neither did a very good job.
In the early 70's when I decided that newspaper reporting was not the career for me, I went on to join the sales team at IBM. I sold typewriters. Selectric. The balls.
They were space age... They were cool. They took no selling ability. It was 'how many do you want and in what colors?' There were six standard colors BUT the factory would paint them to your specifications. I had one savings and loan that wanted them the colors of the draperies which were, sadly, pink. I think they cost about $800 and I know they took 6 weeks to 6 months to get after the order was placed.
My Daddy's father had come to the United States from Germany. He had run away from home and joined the British Navy. When war broke out between Germany and England he figured he'd better get off the boat and he did and he was in Texas. (I've always wondered how - in the middle of war - a British ship ended up in Galveston, Texas... but war was never my long suit.)
When he retired from the railroad, my grandfather filled his days at his typewriter. He wrote letters to everyone everywhere on every subject. I got 'em in college, Sonny and Cher got 'em at the studio, Senator McCarthy got 'em in Washington. We all got 'em.
My Mom suggested that he write his life story for his grandchildren ... which he did. Typed out on his portable manual Royal (which I still have, by the way), complete with typos and broken English. It was about 400 double spaced typewriten pages. Daddy asked me to re-type it and fix the grammar and spelling.
I rented an IBM Executive typewriter. This was electric but it proportional spacing. By this time we had Correct Type. You backspaced to your error - stuck this white stuff in and retyped the error to cover it up. Then you typed in the correction on top. When used correctly on the right paper it was pretty good stuff. BUT the Executive typewriter was a bitch because you had to hit backspace 1 time for an i and three times for an m and you had to know the worth of each character.
But, I digress... again... Anyway, I finally typed it all. I didn't fix everything. He still sounded like him. Why we even thought it was necesarry to fix anything is kind of a mystery to me now. It took me a month to retype it all. Daddy had it bound in to books for each of us.
Wow, Tom, you really hit a cord today!
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-07 08:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-07 08:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-07 08:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-07 12:24 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-01-07 09:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-07 08:51 am (UTC)Yes, I bet those damn things did sell themselves.
I did not!
Date: 2003-01-07 10:01 am (UTC)Cool!
Re: Cool!
Date: 2003-01-07 11:12 am (UTC)Re: Cool!
Date: 2003-01-07 12:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-07 10:51 am (UTC)Oh yeah, and I knew about the Michael Nesmith white-out connection, too, but never sniffed it.
Susan, it took a while to get un-stuck from the IBM stuff. In 1974 I was using an IBM MT/ST typing up soil surveys for the USDA, and even as late as 1981, I used an IBM Composer for working on PR stuff and proposals.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-07 11:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-07 12:34 pm (UTC)But, uh, I have in my 'sewing' room an early 1980's model Phillips Micom 3000 word processor. It has a daisywheel printer, and uses the big floppies, the ones like the size of old 45's in the paper sleeves. I bought that baby in 1988 for $700. The Corps of Engineers paid something on the order of $20,000 for them in 1981. It's a dinosaur, yeah, but I tell you what, it's a damn sight better at word processing than Lotus, Word, WordPerfect or any of those will ever be, still.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-07 03:16 pm (UTC)I also remember taking typing on a manual. Then the electric ones came out. We still use an old IBM and 2 selectrics at work. Unbelievable!!