by Victoria Lucas
There is a miracle of modern technology that I haven't yet seen covered in these pages. It's not much bigger than a breadbox (as Steve Allen would say) and has fewer moving parts than others of its kind. If it weren't so expensive I would have bought one of my own by now. Hint: you roll paper into it and type on it. And it's electrical.
But first… a little story to explain why this invention is so exciting:
When I was 10, my mother, who was not allowed to work outside our home because people might think my dad couldn't support us, worked for my dad. He purchased a used IBM Executive for her so that she could type a TV guide he published at the time. I wanted to help, so she taught me to type, and specifically to type on the Executive, which allows for print-type-like spacing (half spaces, etc.).
It was a little difficult to learn, but I soon got the hang of it. It was fun to figure out how many words a line could hold and still be flush with the line above it at the right as well as the left, so you could do columns and "justified" pages (the term for flush right and left). I will never forget typing rows and rows of local television programming of our three network stations in Tucson.
At the same time our baby grand piano that moved with us from California took up so much room that it occupied our small dining room by itself. I took piano lessons until I was about 12, caressing the 88 keys. Little did I think that one day I would use a typewriter with 88 characters on each type element!
Reluctantly, I skipped third-year Latin in high school to take secretarial courses (including a typing course) so I could make a living. That was painful. The old upright manual (no electricity) typewriters had keys so far apart that it was difficult for my little hands to reach from one side to the other to hit the "Return" key. And the rows were far apart too. The Executive had the advantage here: its keyboard had rows of keys at different heights, but the relative height of the keys was less and the spaces between them were filled. (Coming from a theater background, I would call the height of the keys as they march up to the type basket a "rake.")
On the Executive it was easier to make my fingers fly over the keys, even for my hands as little as they were when I was 10. On the manuals, my little fingers fell between the keys, squeezing them painfully, almost as often as they hit them. Even reaching the space bar was a stretch.
(A friend of mine reads detective stories, and, knowing about my way of making a living, he showed me some lines where Nero Wolfe's man Archie is asked to type and sign a statement. He replies, "Glad to, if you'll give me a decent typewriter [in 1951]." Then, he recalls, "What I got was what I expected, an Underwood about my age." The Underwoods seemed to me to have the highest raked keyboards with the keys the farthest apart, but that's just my impression.)
Of course, in high school, I found myself envying Felicia Samoska, a tall woman with proportionately larger hands that easily spanned the manual keyboards and provided her with
beautiful and A+ CWPM (correct words per minute) scores. We became friends, nevertheless; hers was the first and so far only wedding I’ve attended. I had to accept the fact that I could never be a decent typist on a manual typewriter. Both at home and at my mother's place of work (after she and my dad were divorced), I could use electric typewriters, and I enjoyed that. (I think she also had an old L. C. Smith manual. Ugh!)
She taught me statistical typing, a specialty that required great accuracy and precise tabulation, done on an electric typewriter with an extra-long carriage. I wanted to help, so sometimes when she picked me up from school we would go back to her work and I would help her finish up.
Later I got the portable electric Smith Corona that came with its own rounded case, and except for the fact that it has a key basket and regular keys instead of a molded keyboard, I thought it was great. I've typed hundreds, maybe thousands of pages on it by now, and it is wearing out. It tires me out with keys that have to be punched, and my fingers still occasionally get stuck between keys, although the whole typewriter is smaller and has a lower what I think of as "rake" of the keyboard height.
But oh, then came the love of my life, my soul-mate, the IBM Selectric.
The Selectric typewriter one-uped the Smith Corona by singlehandledly destroying the carriage return. When the Selectric's "carriage" "returns," it does not include the platen. The only "carriage" is the metallic-looking plastic "type element" that looks like a little golf ball and moves on a slim wire from side to side inside the open top (making it all the more necessary to cover it when not in use to keep dust from getting on the works). The keys are movable projections from a nearly flat surface, they are closer together than the keys on a manual typewriter, and they take little effort to press.
"This is the best thing that's happened to typewriters since electricity," the commercial says. Oh, yes! Aw, look at its little face. I want to kiss it!
I'll never forget the day I first set eyes on you, lovely Selectric, at the University of Arizona Drama Department, where I now work. You, embraceable you, with the little ball that moves and the platen that stays put, so the whole thing doesn't shake between lines. You make it possible for me to type 120 correct words per minute without hardly trying. Where have you been all my life?
Apparently, in the mind of architect Eliot Noyes, a frequent consultant to IBM who designs their buildings as well as their products. This beautiful machine was first sold in 1961, and according to typewriter salesmen they're still a big hit.
What are you going to do to steal my heart next, IBM? For example, where is this computer thing going? Will it be the next love of my life?
