For the creative writer

[alexkerhead]

Taken with Kodak Z712IS using lamp light. Greyscaled, sepia applied, and contrast raised in infranview.

[GeneW]

A beauty, Alex. And I'll bet there was many a would-be novel or short story banged out on a model just like this.

Gene

[mickeyobe]

Alex,

I used to work for a small, local weekly newspaper.
Since I was not a typist I was given a typewriter to use that was very similar to the one in your picture.
Crashes could be cured by giving a quick flick of the fingers to the jumble of tangled keys. No phone calls to India. It could be used during a power failure too.
And there was something so very satisfying in returning the carriage at the end of each line.
Oh yes. It could make 3 carbon copies at the same time if one pounded hard enough.

Mickey

[PeterW]

Alex,
When I first started freelance writing in the early 1950s I used a machine very similar looking to your Underwood but not as old. Mine was an early 1930s Imperial. Wonderfully ingenious machines, typewriters.

But, unlike Mickey, I found having to flip the carriage lever at the end of each line (8 characters after the bell went Ting) was far from satisfying, it was a damn nuisance. So was keeping an eye on the paper to make sure you didn't run off the bottom and type on the roller (platten I think is the correct term). So was putting in a new sheet of paper, plus carbon, and lining it up every 250 or so words.

I tried to learn to touch type but found it finger-aching because of the effort needed to push down the keys, and the long travel. Besides which I was one of those people with a 'blind spot' for touch typing (Deaf Sid instead of Dear Sir, etc). I was much faster and more accurate using two or sometimes three fingers of each hand.

As a working journalist I hardly ever touched a typewriter. I either phoned the story in to a copy-taker or dictated it into a small tape recorder and left the tapes with my secretary who typed them out and gave the copy straight to the sub-editor. I seldom saw it until it was in print.

But for freelance work I used that old Imperial for more than 20 years before I got a computer, the first model Sirius with a very light-touch keyboard. My typing speed almost doubled, but I never did learn to touch type. A twenty-year habit was too ingrained to break.

Would I go back to a typewriter? Not on your life!

PeterW

[alexkerhead]

Thanks fellas!

It is nice to read opposing views of these wonderful machines. I do agree, electric typewriters/computers are preferable when writing a lot, but for fun stories and inventory, mechanical typewriters are nice to use; at least for me anyway.

[Robert]

Ouch, I like that picture a lot, reminds me of the fact that I had to sell some of my mechanical typewriters, due to a lack of storage room...