If you walk into my son's office, you might have to toe a typewriter out of your way. His collection of old manuals seems appropriate in a newsman’s office.
Like so much in life, these machines, which once put story to paper as quickly as the typist could strike the keys, are totally inoperable now from sheer lack of use. If a good typewriter repairman were available, maybe he could return some to action. For now, they make good conversational pieces.
I never see a typewriter, usable or not, that I don’t think of the late Lewis Grizzard, who refused to advance beyond his manual typewriter. The fact that editors gave in to his eccentricities is testament to his ability as a writer to communicate with a reader. To me, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s editorial cartoon at the death of this legendary columnist is one of the most memorable ever. As Grizzard, with his ever-faithful manual typewriter tucked under his arm, approaches the pearly gates, his equally faithful dog, Catfish, who has preceded his master in death, greets the man. Grizzard had shunned both electric typewriters and computers with ferocity. If he had lived longer, Grizzard would probably have to had learned not only how to repair his own antique machine, but also how to make ribbons for it.
Today, the typewriter, invented in 1867 by Christopher Latham Sholes, with the help of Carlow Glidden and Samuel W. Soules, has followed the way of individual letters for type. A late editor for the newspaper was the last man I knew who could set type by hand. He used to entertain the school children who visited The Press-Sentinel with a demonstration of his dexterity at this art. By the way, he could also type with two fingers almost as fast as those of us who took typing in school.
While I was growing up, I had two typewriters, first a manual, then electric. Although I used them a lot, I never liked them. In the days before the delete key, we used correction tape and correction fluid to erase mistakes. Even on good erasable bond paper, I never typed a truly clean copy. Oh, I know true typists could, but I wasn’t a typist, I was a writer who made mistakes while using a typewriter.
First, word processors, then computers have made the typewriter truly obsolete. Because I can no longer purchase ribbons or disks for it, my word processor is as useless as the typewriters decorating my son's office. However, I do not long for any of these obsolete items. In fact, I can’t think of any timesaving machines that haven’t been improved over the years. My mother used to have a wringer washing machine. She was one of the first of her friends to purchase an automatic one.
This is not a column of nostalgia. A recent feature on National Public Radio prompted these thoughts. An art teacher noted for encouraging his students to use the obsolete to make art has chosen, as this year’s prompt, the typewriter. While most have used the gutted body as a base for something still practical - a food processor, a hair dryer - one student created an ice hockey rink by cutting the base in half and Turing the round hole into an oval. He converted the keys into players and sticks. Of course, the purpose of such activities encourages aspiring artists to look at objects in a different way. It’s probably a good lesson for all of us to learn.
This particular program followed an interview with 95-year-old Staley Kunitz, U. S. Poet Laureate for a New Century. He still prefers pencil and paper for rough drafting so that the machine noise doesn’t interfere with the music of the words in his head.
While the art professor attempts to entice his college students to look at something in a new way, I just try to encourage my high school students to see. For years, I’ve used an old “Shoe” cartoon as a writing prompt. Since I never took the time to laminate it, it disintegrated in my hands one year. Today I ask my students to close their eyes and visualize the scene as I describe it. I remind them that the terminology shows how old it was. In the first scene, Shoe, the fat bird journalist, looks out a window. In the next box, the editor reprimands the reporter by saying, “What are you doing? Writers should be staring at typewriters." Without sifting his position, Shoe, in the third box, says, “No. Typists stare at typewriters. Writers stare out the window.”
I send the students to look out the window, to study one object they can see, and then to show it to me in writing so that I can see what they see.
While PCs are here to stay until something better comes along, I think it’s interesting to take note of the keyboard. While a computer keyboard certainly has more keys that its predecessors and its design supposedly is more comfortable to the frequent user, the placement of the letters remains the same as on a typewriter. The design of the original keyboard placed letters according to the frequency of their use in writing; therefore, the letters A and B are almost half a keyboard apart.
The other day, I tried to recall from memory the order of letters as they are placed on the keyboard. Although I can type with limited mistakes, I could not, in my visualization, specify which key was which. At the time, I was in a setting where I did not want to pretend a keyboard was in front of me and work out the order of letters. People think I’m crazy enough.
The computer is a good reminder to us in this fast-paced age that some things seemingly now antiquated, like the typewriter, have merit on their own. Thank goodness, some inventors are smart enough not to throw the well-proven keyboard out with the mangled keys and faded ribbons.
2001
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