Manual Typewriter
Watching ‘The Family’ on television over Christmas 2017, I saw De Niro open up a Brother manual typewriter. This reminded me of the year that my parents gave me a manual typewriter and a spiral bound Pitman typing course book as Christmas presents. I wonder when that was?
Lorraine and I were at home so it must have been before Lorrie moved out of home. I wonder if my dear Sis might recall the year. I would imagine that I would have been attending BGS which would have meant that I was at least twelve years old. More likely it was when I was involved in writing, for the school newsletter? This suggests the sixth form at school so 17 years old? I’ll settle for 16/17 y.o.
I no longer have that typewriter. If memory serves me correctly it went with Lorrie. I gave up on manual typewriting as soon as I could get my hands on a computer keyboard. I was not impressed with Gestetner duplicator paper and whole business of running off purple copies of documents! The lingering smell of industrial alcohol and fingers covered in purple dye for days. The computer provided liberation from such tyranny. Yes even the little rubbery keys of the Sinclair computer were better than having the arms of the typewriter clash, or the infernal part red, part black keystroke that would occasionally happen. Tippex anyone?
As for the Pitman system. I did some of the exercises that were supposed to ensure that I trained my fingers to stay on the correct keys. On learning that the keyboard layout had been conceived expressly to slow down typists I gave up the behaviour and went for my own version of two finger typing which over they years has stood me in pretty good stead. I now type with two or three fingers on each hand!
That typewriter was a pastel blue colour. I recall that it had a plastic lid and a bell that would ding as I approached the end of the row. There was a ruler that had little mechanical tabs which had to be set to obtain consistent line length etc.
I also remember the ‘fun’ of changing the ribbon. The new ribbon came in a sealed package. The top cover of the typewriter had to be lifted off, the spools of old ribbon had to be released from their pegs and lifted up. With the ribbon now slack the challenge of unthreading the ribbon from the carrier, the metal frame that held the ribbon close to the paper, could be attempted. Over one, behind and under another, across the divide and then the reverse of the first stage was alll that was needed. This in my experience meant fingers covered in ink! The next step was to attach the new reel to it’s post and attach the free end of the ribbon to the empty reel having detached it from the old ribbon. The used up, old ribbon was then discarded into the rubbish bin. We did not have any concept of recycling in those days.
Loading up a sheet of paper one could experiment to see how much ink was delivered onto the page. Not too much, not too little and proper alignment, no red in the black or black in the red was the order of the day.
Reflecting on the business now, I can see that typewriter ribbons were like ink jet cartridges. They were exposed to the air and as a consequence would dry out. It took the advent of laser printers to overcome the biggest gripes about printing the written word.