For this blog I was thinking about how lucky I was to have someone decide for me that I needed to learn to type and the evolution of the equipment I experienced while learning.
I was very fortunate to have taken typing in my freshman year at high school. I attended the first semester of high school in North Yorkshire, Harrogate, England at Rossett High. I'd ride the bus to school, dark in the morning and dark by the time school was out, then at school they put us on another bus, mostly girls, to go to a business school to learn typing. We used manual typewriters. I think by starting to learn typing on a manual typewriter it actually helped me a lot to reinforce my memory of the key board as you needed to use much force in hitting the keys and there is something to be said about tactile learning as I work in special ed. I think I learned to spell better too with the syllabic rhythmic taps that formed words. When I returned to US and entered back into the rest of the school year, I continued learning to type but this time we had electric typewriters. They were a lot of fun, but don't want to give the impression that I liked them better than the manual as I like old fashioned things. I remember using chalky tape to type over mistakes which we placed manually over the letters.
When word processors came out I was impressed. At that time they were a little pricey and I would have liked to have had one when I attended Jr. College. My dad had got me an electric typewriter with a little window for word processing. This was almost a joke, as you couldn't see the whole page you were working on and I was a bit jealous of others who had the full screen to look at. Non the less I was grateful for the gift and used the hell out of it. With my electric typewriter to change fonts, you simply would remove the plastic disc and install another font. There were cartriages for ink and correctable ribbon. I still have this typewriter and haven't used it much since I am on my third computer.
I remember having to use an electronic word processor. The screen only showed about two lines at a time. It always lost my work and drove me nuts. I get mad at my current computer frequently, but thinking back to the dark ages, I guess it is much better now.
ReplyDelete