Typewriters

[Mel]

I was finally able to toss the last typewriter at work a few years back. We had a few old timers who were sure if we didn't have a typewriter that someone would send us an important document that could only be filled out via typewriter. I only convinced them by demonstrating that the stockpile of tapes was so old that the carbon had flaked off the tape and were unusable and we couldn't buy new tapes. There was still much trauma and panic as it was carried away to the dumpster.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

For me, the typing class I took in school is one of the few classes that taught a skill that I actually used after school. The typewriter is pretty much obsolete but those hours learning to touch type have stood me in good stead over the decades of using computers.

Yes, the same for me, but I have to say my touch typing skills have degraded a lot over the years, because it's so easy to fix errors on a computer. It's no longer necessary to get it right on the first try.

[mlewis78]

I have never owned a typewriter. I used IBM Selectric ones at jobs from 1975-1987. After that we had something called Syntrex and two years later went to computers with WordPerfect. Later used Word. I retired in 2018.

[Solitaire1]

OtinG wrote the following as part of a post:

Originally Posted by OtinG

Just some fun facts:

Computers greatly affected the way many people edited their written work. With typewriters, which were very labor intensive, people tended to spend less time editing and reorganizing the papers they wrote because it was too inconvenient to have to retype several pages. But when PCs began to become more available in the 1980s, I remember reading research on how people who used them to write papers would typically spend way more time editing and reorganizing them because it was so easy to do on a PC. So quality of content tended to go up with PC use compared to typewriter use.

The irony of the situation is that it was said that computers would reduce the amount of paper produced but it actually increased the amount of paper produced. This is due to the ease of reprinting.

Like you mentioned, in the days before word processors you would rarely retype an entire document for a minor correction, especially if your typewriter allowed you to easily make a neat correction (like an IBM Selectric II). For me there was one exception to this, I had a one type of document that had to be letter perfect and if I made the slightest error I had to retype the entire document. Once I was just about finished and all I had to do was type a period...but I hit a comma by mistake so had to retype it. That type of document made word processors a blessing.

Once machines that could store documents (such as memory typewriters, dedicated word processors, and word processing software on computers) became common, you would often see a document reprinted for the most minor of corrections. Plus, people would often repeated make revisions to documents just because it was so easy to do so.