Have you ever owned and had to use a manual typewriter?

[Pryderi]

Poll question: Have you ever owned and had to use a manual typewriter?

[RebelOne]

1. I learned to type on a manual typewriter in high school.

[snacker]

82. Me too.

Typing was a required course.

[BigMcLargehuge]

2. I learned to type on a manual in middle school

and I borroed a ginormous old iron monster in college (before the era of even moderately affordable laptops) so write poetry and fiction in my dorm room.

[NewJeffCT]

3. my parents got me one for high school graduation

way back in the 1980s!

[Left Is Write]

35. A manual typewriter?

I got a typewriter for graduation in 1984, but that was electric. Most people had electric by then.

The manual typewriter I got from my grandmother dated back to the 1930s.

[NewJeffCT]

39. oh, sorry

I had meant an electric one. An IBM Selectric, if I recall now. It was a good one for its day.

[swag]

4. I really enjoyed using the manual typewriter I had in college.

Loved the whole process of drafting papers on legal pad, doing other drafts on the manual, marking up, then finalizing on the manual.

I miss that typer. I wonder what I did with it?

[reyd reid reed]

5. And, what's more, I still have one

under a bed somewhere, I think. I learned to type on one in Junior High (yes, Virginia, there once was such a thing) and Santa brought me my first one back when I was in the sixth grade, I think, when I decided I was going to write the Great American Novel.

There's nothing that can replace the sound of the keys striking the page, the ding it made when you got to the end of each line of text, and the ratcheting sound of the carriage return. The smell of the ribbon.

Remember re-inking ribbons? And the two-toned, red and black? And eraseable bond paper. The understanding that you had to be accurate because, if you weren't, you'd have to retype the whole page.

Elementary and middle schools should be required to use typewriters rather than computers and spell check. Then, when they're getting ready to make the move into high school, THEN let them start to use computers. After they've learned to type. And to SPELL. And to be accurate. And separate words and format a page the hard way. Center.

Okay...

*climbs off soapbox*

Carry on.

[WolverineDG]

26. Oh God

that brings back nightmares. I hated centering. :scared:

dg

[reyd reid reed]

32. Yeah, but you know how to do it

And I bet you know how to set tabs and margins and separate words between syllables at the end of a line.

[WolverineDG]

40. GAAAAAA

Who are you? My typing teacher come back to haunt me???? Please, dear God, don't make me put in footnotes! :cry: :scared: :cry:

dg

[reyd reid reed]

57. Okay...if you're good and behave yourself

no footnotes.

Never let it be said that I'm excessively cruel and unusual.

Only marginally....

Muahahahahahahaha

:D

[WolverineDG]

75. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Make it stop! Make it stop! For the love of Dog, what did I do to deserve this? :banghead: :banghead:


:7

dg

[Left Is Write]

6. Owned and used, yes.

"Had to" use? No.

The manual typewriter belonged to my grandmother. She never used it anymore after she got an electric one, so I got to have it. I taught myself how to type (correctly!) on it at age 8.

When I got to high school, I used my mother's electric typewriter for papers, and when I graduated high school I got my own electric.

[Left Is Write]

33. Forgot to add - no chagrin for me either.

I wish I still had that typewriter.

[bigwillq]

7. Yes.

My father use to have a really old one and had to use it up until 9th grade when we bought a word processor. I few years later we finally bought a cheap computer.

[Phillycat]

8. Yes, but there was no chagrin involved.

Thumping those keys was very satisfying. :)

[ScreamingMeemie]

9. I love my typewriter!

And plan to continue using it. :hi:

[catmandu57]

10. Ticka ticka ticka ding

I cut my teeth on a manual, finally I got a hand me down electric brother in the late eighties.

[Roon]

11. I took a quarter of typing in the ninth grade

on a manual typewriter. It sure came in handy when the internet came around!

[no name no slogan]

12. Yep. Used one through most of college

Used an old manual typewriter in Jr. High, and moved up to a brand new IBM Selectric for High School (1984). By 1990 I was a senior in college, and the student newspaper I worked for got Macs, and I used those for the rest of my papers, including my senior thesis.

I never actually owned a PC myself until the mid-90s. And now I make my living doing web development. However, I still miss the old typewriter once in awhile.

[Orsino]

13. Growing up, it's all I had to use.

Senior year, though, I took an actual typing class, and learned on electrics.

[bridgit]

14. of course...

[trof]

15. Still got my Underwood Master.

[Blue Diadem]

19. I think mine is an underwood too..

but a slightly smaller model. Those things are heavy! Mine's been stored in the attic since we moved in and hasn't been down since.

[Blue Diadem]

16. I have one of those heavy old metal ones

not sure of the name..but it's from way back. My brother bought it for me when I was in Jr. High school. In HS, we used manuals our first year, then electric for typing II class...that was in the early 70's. I still have that old heavy one and an electric one from the 80's.

[Bagsby]

17. God, that's one thing I don't miss

Those little white patches you inserted and typed on to white out mistakes......going back and trying to get the bar at the right height to correct an error.......buying erasable bond..........all nighters doing papers........No thanks. I will take Word Perfect any day of the week.

[Bagsby]

18. God, that's one thing I don't miss

Those little white patches you inserted and typed on to white out mistakes......going back and trying to get the bar at the right height to correct an error.......buying erasable bond..........all nighters doing papers........No thanks. I will take Word Perfect any day of the week.

[marigold20]

51. Erasable bond

At the time I thought it was the greatest invention - no more scratching holes in the paper, trying to erase mistakes. The coating on the paper made everything smear easily but it was worth it.

[Midlodemocrat]

20. Smith Corona with a manual return.

I thought my roommate who had the auto return had the coolest, most up to date thing on the planet.

Those were the days.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. That's all they had when I was learning to type

The IBM Selectric was considered a high-tec marvel.

True story: About ten years ago, I was volunteering as a receptionist at a non-commercial radio station when the office manager told me that one of the student interns needed to type up some labels. Would I show him how to use the IBM Selectric? (It was a low-budget station.)

So I did.

He nodded. "Okay, but what if I make a mistake?"

I showed him how to shift to the white ink correction ribbon, backspace, and type over the mistake.

His response?

:"Kewl!"

[Gormy Cuss]

76. That's pretty funny.

He learned that even in the dark ages we had our ways.

My older sister was an executive secretary back when Selectrics were the high end machines used only by business. She also used the early mag-card machines. She hasn't been a secretary in years but there's one other secretarial skill she finds handy. She takes her "notes" in shorthand and can record the discussion verbatim if she chooses.

[NewWaveChick1981]

22. *Old geezer voice* Back in my day, that's all we had...

Learned on an ELECTRIC manual typewriter in high school (we were so privileged, lol!), and actually asked for and got a great electric typewriter for graduation! I used the hell out of that typewriter for my papers in college. In the days before PCs, that was how you got things done. I will say in defense of PCs, though, that making corrections and rearranging text could be a long, painstaking nightmare with a typewriter. Technology has thankfully advanced, and I'm not going back! :)

[Left Is Write]

34. Manual typewriters were not electric.

Electric was electric.

Manual typewriters operated without any electricity.

[NewWaveChick1981]

37. Sorry!

They were pretty manual to me, lol! :) OK, so I learned on a device that was NOT a PC. How's that for clarification? :)

[Left Is Write]

38. There seems to be confusion elsewhere in the thread too.

The OP specifically said manual, and back in our olden days (:D) there were two kinds of typewriters: manual and electric.

I suppose I could ask the OP if he/she meant manual as opposed to electric typewriter or typewriter as opposed to computer.

[gollygee]

23. That's what we had at my house growing up

so until we went higher-tech (not high tech) we used that for school work. We got pretty high tech for the mid-80s anyway during high school though so it didn't last too long.

I still type hard on a computer because I'm used to that and the old IBM Selectrics we used at school and at my first job typing overdue notices at the library.

[Sisaruus]

24. I remember when White-Out was first introduced

Talk about exciting and life-altering moments!

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

50. Know who invented White-Out?

Michael Nesmith's mother, Bette Nesmith Graham. (Michael was in The Monkees.)

Cool but useless hunka trivia. :bounce:

[WolverineDG]

25. I learned to type on one

much to the chagrin of the IT department where I work. I'm kinda brutal on keyboards. (but that's okay, they think if you're internet is down, they can send you an email to tell you how to make it all better.)

dg

[CBHagman]

27. Yes, but without chagrin.

Chagrin doesn't come into it. When I was in high school, I actually used the typewriter my father used in college (in a dark leather case, with little round keys, clacking noises, etc.).

And no, dinosaurs were no roaming the Earth then.

[bikebloke]

28. I had a portable Underwood

For college papers. A cheapie that did the job. Though one instructor would ding you if any of the letters had a faint shadow. My machine did that and there was nothing I could do to remedy it. Ergo. I was dinged a lot on papers, which is much more important than content by far.

Though later I typed a paper on manual, where all the rich eejits used word processing to enlarge fonts in order to get the page limit. My paper was waved around a being so good, I was awarded above the top grade. The eejits couldn't understand what I did. Higher education took a lower standing with me after that. Auto-didacticism rose.

[Bridget Burke]

29. I learned on a big old manual with blank keys....

I was taking "college prep" courses but my Mom suggested a summer school typing course. In a non-air-conditioned high school in Pasadena, Texas. Near the paper mill--& not far from several refineries.

Later, I worked on a law office with an IBM Executive. It was electric but it took a while for me to understand how proportional spacing worked. (Yes, we had PS back then!) My poor typing skills did improve--white out was OK, but not much help with the 5 carbon copies. Not to mention that missing one line could mean retyping many pages of a divorce petition.

Yay for the modern world! (Although I'm still waiting for the "paperless office.")

[noonwitch]

30. We used them in my middle school typing class

The high school had electric ones. My dad gave me a Smith-Corona electric typewriter for my HS graduation.

A few years later, everybody had word processors-my sister got one for her graduation. A year or two after that, home computers were everywhere.

[JVS]

31. I had to use my Father's when I was a little kid.

[NoPasaran]

36. You bet

Back when I was taking Newsgathering and Reporting 101 all we had to use were the crappy cast-off typewriters that didn't work so well. I've never really learned to touchtype, and it turned out that my four-finger typing speed was just about the maximum achievable on those old pieces of junk. My classmates who really knew how to type were always jamming them.

I still own a Remington Standard typewriter that was made in 1909. Typing on it is a very manly experience.

[peekaloo]

41. Yep. I still have an old, beat up Underwood that my parents gave me.

[kwassa]

42. I have my dad's 1935 Royal typewriter, and it still works fine.

though I can't live without my computer.

[dr.strangelove]

43. I still use my grandpa's typewriter

He was a newspaperman (which is very different from today's reporter) and had a wonderful old Underwood No. 5 from the 1930s. We had it repaired in the early 80s and it still works great. I type my annual state of the family holiday letter on it.

[yellowdogintexas]

44. learned to type on a Neanderthal Cast Iron Royal with blank

caps on the keys. Felt like bricks were tied to the keys. I got up to 60 wpm though.
Then I got an electric in my adv typing class senior year and got up to 90. But I sat in front of the Worlds Fastest Typist...she could do 110 wpm, after correcting for errors.. LOL her carriage returned twice for everyone elses in the class.

So I can cook up a pretty fast speed on the old PC

I often wonder if having a PC in college would have meant I made better grades because my papers were easier to produce or if I would have flunked out of school due to the Internets, and mass quantities of solitaire and Mahjong

[Buck Laser]

45. I wrote all my college and grad school papers on one..

But the last time I used a typewriter was probably in 1981, because I got an Apple 2 then.

[many a good man]

46. Learned to type wearing gloves during the "Energy Crisis"

My poor Franciscan high school had about twenty manuals in the classroom and five Selectrics. The boilers in the school ran on oil so during the oil shock of 79-79 they kept the temperature at about 50 degrees. It was so cold they let us wear coats and gloves and hats in the classrooms.

[Brigid]

47. Memories

Love the pic of the Underwood! We had those things in high school. Back then, the IBM Selectric was something new. I still think manuals are the best things on which to learn typing, at least to start.

[Fenris]

48. Blue Smith-Corona with a manual return.

Late 1970s model. Keys were horribly sticky. And the ribbon was a bitch to change. I wrote my first play on it.

[lavenderdiva]

49. that's exactly what I have...

Not that I use it anymore, but I can't seem to part with it. Used it all the way through college, wrote all my college papers and reports on it. Used it up until the mid-late 90's when I finally broke down and bought a computer!! It sits in its brown plastic carrying case, in the back of a closet....

[Fenris]

52. LOL. I remember the carrying case well!

Two steel briefcase-style latches. :D

[lavenderdiva]

54. that's the one!!!

I feel bad getting rid of it, as it got me through some tough papers... oh the guilt. :hi:

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

53. Still own one...

Black Remington...at least 50% more eloquent than Microsoft Word. Go figure.

[fortyfeetunder]

55. We got one here

And when we can't use computers, I'll still have the good old manual, I am not throwing out this guy!!

[SofaKingLiberal]

61. You can't use computers?

Okay, I have a question.

:silly:

[fortyfeetunder]

83. think about it...when there is no electricity.

and we don't have a generator...what am I going to use for word processing? (I write reports occasionally)....

[havocmom]

56. Yes, but no chagrin.

Why should there be? If one is over a certain, rather limited, age, that is what was uses.

Now, clay and cuneiform, that might be a bit embarrassing.

[wickerwoman]

58. I think so.

It was a typewriter but it plugged in and could do automatic spelling corrections. I owned it in high school but really only ever used it to fill out college applications in the days before word processors could handle that kind of thing.

[nonconformist]

59. Yep. It's what I learned to type on in middle school

The keys were SO far apart, and you had to put a little muscle behind it. I remember getting cramps in my hand after using them.

We got to use electric typewriters in high school - it was a big adjustment!

[Oeditpus Rex]

60. Chagrin, hell

I loved my 843-pound Smith-Corona. You could beat the hell out of those old monsters, and I did. I loved to pull a finished page out of the carriage and make the roller go zzzZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz.

I even took a typing class in summer school between 7th and 8th grades.

When I was little, we had an old Underwood. Used to bug me that there was no '1' key. In those days, you used a lower-case 'l' instead.

This is gonna make me sound really old, but the first stories I wrote for a newspaper were on manual typewriters. It was 1978, but many newspapers were slow to embrace those new-fangled "computer" things. (And when they did, they had little resemblance to what we're all sitting at now.)

[RevCheesehead]

62. I borrowed my cousin's typewriter when I went to college.

After saving up some $$, I bought my own electric for $200. I still have it, because there are SOME things a computer simply cannot do for you.

After using the manual typewriter, I grew to love it.

Oh, BTW - I went thru college and grad school with that typewriter. When I went to seminary, I bought a word processor (I think I still own that, too.)

[SeattleGirl]

63. I learned how to type on a manual typewriter.

Unbelievable!

[REP]

64. Yes, A Royal That I Wore Out The Platen On

I couldn't vote, because it wasn't to my chagrin - I loved that typewriter.

[alfredo]

65. I used a Smith Corona Telegraphers Mill for four years. I had to

type through six copies. Touch typing was out of the question. You used your middle finger with the index and ring finger for support. The keys did have a long throw. My touch typing suffered.


On my computer I really pound the keys. Old habits die hard.

[mykpart]

66. Has this ever happened to you?

http://s76.photobucket.com/albums/j4/mykpart/?action=view¤t=SeniorMoment.flv

[Iniquitous Bunny]

67. Good one!

:rofl:

[madrchsod]

68. i had a mimeograph machine just like this one

to print my left wing newspaper. the mm cost me about 15 dollars.i`m not what kind of typewriter i had but it was something cheap. if i smoked a few joints and then used that dup fluid well i didn`t get alot done...

[TheBaldyMan]

69. I still haven't got out of the habit of hammering the keys. n/t

[riona]

70. Yes

And not the most co-ordinated person, my fingers kept getting caught between the keys.
:grr:

[samplegirl]

71. learned how to type

9th and 10th grade on manual typewriters. Oh those speed tests were so much fun.

[likesmountains 52]

72. yes, with carbon paper too! I really loved the way they sounded..

[GalleryGod]

74. Yup. That sound! I had forgotten. Thanks!

O8)

[GalleryGod]

73. Sure. Back in the 20th Century.

JAFO...every day it's something weirder.

[Patiod]

78. GG - not only did we get frozen out last night, but the Phils lost

at home.

Again.

:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

What are they doing to us?

[Orangepeel]

77. my Dad had one

I learned to type in school on an IBM Selectric, but our home typewriter was manual.
In school, I could type 80 WPM, but at home I had to use the two finger approach because my pinkies weren't strong enough.

[Jade Fox]

79. Hon, I don't know how to tell you this.....

but for decades that was the only kind of typewriter that existed! Many, MANY, braved the manual typewriting challenge, and survived! :)

[Nikia]

80. I didn't own one but I've used them

My grandparents had one. I typed on it for fun when I was in elementary school.
I had a summer filing job between high school and college. I used their manual typewriter to type on the lables for the file folders. Neither of these were electric.

[tigereye]

81. yup

that was college, back before the era of the ubiquitous PC.