Clackity Clackity Clack Clack ... Ding!

A friend recently told me she was considering getting a typewriter.  It got me thinking.  I always had a typewriter--one Smith Corona after another, then an electric IBM, and finally a Xerox Memorywriter with its floppy disks.  But a typewriter can still be handy.  If non-electric it can carry on if the power goes out.  And it doesn't attract cyber-snoops.  Of course--disadvantage--if you do any editing at all, you have to retype everything.

The whole typewriter culture was a culture in itself.  All gone now.  But there was the special equipment such as typing erasers, now obsolete:  little round rubber erasers with a brush on one end to whisk bits away.  And ribbons.  All black.  Or the top was black and the bottom red.  Or, I had one once that was black, red, green, and blue.  Most of the ribbons were reversible so that you could use them over and over.  Until carbon ribbons came along--a one-shot deal only.

Then if the typewriter was portable, you had a case. My father had a Corona typewriter from sometime around 1920--I still have it--that folded down, something I loved fiddling with as a child.

Here it is folded down on itself

Then there was the paper.  You used carbon paper to make copies.  I used to work with what we called Jiffy Sets of some six different copies all interlaced with carbon paper.  Of course, that was even before duplicating machines.  Then, there were different weights and qualities of paper.  Onion skin was light-weight and crinkly.  Second sheet paper (used under carbon paper) was light-weight and smooth.  And the paper you actually typed on was generally a better quality than the copy paper we use today.

As for the font, except for my IBM and Memorywriter, there was no choice ... you took what you got, often Courier. 

Finally, there was the typewriter's song.  The "clackity clackity clack" with a "ding" at the end of the line to tell you to manually shift the carriage to start a new line.

Of course, I mustn't forget the practice of typing.  I remember once--I'd just arrived in Florence, Italy, hoping to work for an American there in the art book business--when, just realizing something, he stopped the interview and said,  "You type using the touch-type method, don't you?"  (That is, typing without looking at the keyboard. Whereas, having to look at the keyboard when typing is called "the hunt and peck.")

"Yes," I said.

He put his hand to his head and said, "Oh, you'll go mad, mad."  Italian keyboards, it turned out, used a different layout, not the one we use called the Qwerty system.  So the letters were in different locations on the keyboard.

"I'll use the hunt and peck," I offered.

"No, no ... you'll go mad, mad,"  he said, ending the interview then and there.  So much for my attempt to land a job in Florence.

But I still love typewriters.  We were good friends for a long time.