How many of you have actually had to pry the hammers apart to make the keys go back up, getting ink on your fingers? ..
Oh yes, that would be me. To say nothing of the joy of those round rolling erasers with the brush on the end that tear through the paper when you're trying to erase the typo(s) created by said hammer jam. I was thrilled when my dad actually bought me an electric typewriter from Sears.
And, uh, how many of you learned to touch type while you were still using that sort of typewriter?
Again, me. My first typing class in 8th grade (1970-mumble) had manual typewriters. We didn't get to use electric ones until high school. It took me a long time to learn not to pound on the keys (creating whole groups of the same letter) since what I really typed on at home was my Grandpa's ancient Underwood that he used to type his sermons on. I asked my mother once if it came over on the Ark. She got a little thoughtful for awhile....
Oddly enough, despite having taught myself on a fully manual typewriter, I was one of the few people at my university who didn't pound the $%@* out of the keys on the computer terminals. Dunno whether that was because I was alternating between typewriter and TRS-80 in high school, or whether it was some early recognition that I could go faster if I took advantage of the responsiveness of the terminals' keys, but that wasn't a retraining-myself issue.
Come to think of it, it may be just that I had more patience when the HP3000 got slow than my classmates did, and they were poinding the keys in an instinctive attempt to be more emphatic at the machine or something.
(no subject)
Oh yes, that would be me. To say nothing of the joy of those round rolling erasers with the brush on the end that tear through the paper when you're trying to erase the typo(s) created by said hammer jam. I was thrilled when my dad actually bought me an electric typewriter from Sears.
And, uh, how many of you learned to touch type while you were still using that sort of typewriter?
Again, me. My first typing class in 8th grade (1970-mumble) had manual typewriters. We didn't get to use electric ones until high school. It took me a long time to learn not to pound on the keys (creating whole groups of the same letter) since what I really typed on at home was my Grandpa's ancient Underwood that he used to type his sermons on. I asked my mother once if it came over on the Ark. She got a little thoughtful for awhile....
Hitting the keys hard
Come to think of it, it may be just that I had more patience when the HP3000 got slow than my classmates did, and they were poinding the keys in an instinctive attempt to be more emphatic at the machine or something.
The comment about the Ark amuses me.