Also makes great novels….
It was the ultimate word processor
Portable.
Self contained.
Never ran out of power.
And to this day, the only one that had a self-contained printer.
You could do envelopes as well as legal papers or post cards without having to reset anything.
Required no software and no software updates.
Totally compatible.
Made multiple copies (with carbon paper)
Printed in black or color (well, red, if you had the right kind of ribbon).
It was a typewriter.
To anyone under the age of, say 30, it probably appears about as useful as a Model T. And about as old.
But for those of us who grew up with them, with their clatter, with the resonance of the key actually hitting the paper and printing an image made of ink, it was a romantic relationship – one that is about to draw to a close.
The last company on earth to produce the typewriter — Godrej and Boyce — has shut down its production plant in Mumbai, India, according to reports that, fittingly, are making the rounds via the Internet.
All of this reported in Mashable today.
This is not like iTunes making Tower Records redundant.
This is something deeper – at least for me.
Listening to records was and remains a passive activity. Typing – writing on a machine – was a creative one.
It produced an entirely new product with each session.
Now, you may say that computers do the job far better – to which I would reply, yes and no.
It is true that I can crank out a lot more content on a word processor (do we still say that?) than I could on a typewriter, but the experience is different. And for those who will clearly never have that experience again, let me tell you why.
When I write here, on my MacBook Air, I write quickly, in the sure knowledge that I can go back and delete or fix or change anyting I have written.
When I wrote on a manual typewriter (as they had at the Columbia J School when I went there), one that key struck the paper, it was there for good. You could use white out, but that was a mess – and with later IBM Selectrics, you could erase a word of two, but the idea that striking the key once was ‘it’ forever made you think a lot more before you hit the key. It was, trust me, a different experience. It was one that required a good deal more thought before you sat down to compose.
The keyboard, which we still have today, that strange QWERTY layout was a function of the technology. The keys are placed so that the speed of the letters striking the paper is both balanced between right and left, and also slowed down. The inventors were fearful that if the keys were hit too quickly they would jam together, which happened from time to time anyway. The very technology of the typewriter was designed to give us time to think.
Now, I fear, the most important part of writing – the thinking part, is slowly disappearing from the physicality of the act.
Too bad.
Well, farewell typewriter.
I will miss that clacking sound.
And the bell.
1 Comment
david April 27, 2011
And with it, the curt swipe of the paper, with the unfinished sentence.
The waste-bin in the corner strewn with scrumpled papers that didn’t make it in.
The illusion of being Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the plastic B-ball mount – Lakers rule!
The stuck “w” which you always had to pull up.
The “A” whose label had all but disappeared. Which key again?
The ribbon that annoyingly became a twister in the spool.
An aesthetic impulse where an idea lingered that much longer before it was pounded on paper.
Films that were defined by it as prop and part actor: All the President’s Men, The Shining and a host of Noir.
The thunderous sfx of its keys guaranteed to have the neighbours banging on your wall at 3 a.m in the morning as you fought writers’ block.
And the literally “medium cool’ effect it had on friends of the aspiring screen writer.
Happy retirement