Friday, August 22, 2008

When it all began...

A, ES, Dee, Ef, Jay, Kay, El, Sem. Over and over again. Sound familiar, anyone? I learned to type in high school on a manual typewriter. It was very good finger exercise because you had to really push down hard with the pinkie finger in order to get the capital letters to come up. Then there was reaching up to the top of the machine with the right hand and giving that carriage return lever a good, solid shove to the left. And you were rewarded with the sound of the tinny bell as the paper moved up and the next line was ready for typing.

Seems like alot of physical labor, yet the keys had to be arranged in a difficult pattern because women (I'm not being sexist here...this was a machine for the secretary and at that time it was a female dominated field!) became too adept at typing and so had to be thwarted by an alphabet pattern that would slow them down.

It didn't work. I remember battling on timed drills to see who was the fastest (oh, and ACCURATE, don't forget that, LOL) typist in the class. I even got an award for my typing skills!!


So many changes since then. But look down at your computer keyboard. It is fundamentally the same. A strange mix of past and present. An alphabet that is not in any recognizable order. But now your fingers don't have to be as strong!
Hmmmm. I wonder if the mouse lived inside of the original??!!
Have a phun day. (Well, I might have been a fast typer, but I never was a very good speller, LOL!)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had one of these old babies, then I got a "lectric" typewriter now I am high teck with a computer!! I use to love the clakaty clak sound did you??
Have a good weekend
Diane

Sandra said...

I used to LOVE my typewriter :) Thanks for taking me down memory lane.

Mary said...

What was that practice sentence we had to type all the time -- something about a brown fox??? I can't remember...

How much easier is it, though, to correct typos on a computer? Love that!
xoxo,
Mary

Mima said...

I also learned before computers, but it was on an electric, so no carriage return lever. I went to seccy college and spent so many hours going over and over those letters until I knew them like the back of my hand!! Once I started working my speeds went up even more, and I remember being tested at one point when I wanted to do temp work and I was 96 words per min which I was hugely proud of!! I am nowhere near those sorts of speeds now!