I learned to type on my mother's portable typewriter. I believe it is a Remington but the gold label on the back of the machine is unreadable today. Mom used it to write her high school papers in the 1940's as I did mine in the 1960's.
Each letter had its own key as did basic punctuation marks and numbers. A Shift key moved the platen up and down allowed for the typing of capitals and characters shown in the upper part of the key. The red Shift Lock key allowed one to switch into all capital mode. The space bar is much as it remains on computer keyboards today although there were no Ctrl or Alt keys flanking on each side.
Pressing the keys required some effort. Application of uneven force could result in uneven inking of letters and spotty copy. Typing too quickly caused the keys to cross and pile up on top of each other. They then had to be manually put back into place. This problem may be the origin of the famous QWERTY keyboard which was designed to slow down fast typists to a speed the machine could handle.
A bell rang when the typing reached the end of the margins set. Check out this site if you want to hear that sound whether for the first time or once again. Hitting the carriage return advanced the paper to the next line. Two carriage returns provided the extra space needed between paragraphs. A special silver key in the upper left allowed one to adjust the platen position to produce such things are exponents or superscripts. The red Self Starter key advanced the typing position five spaces, useful for paragraph indents and table columns.
There was one and only one font available although the lever allowed one to switch between red and black, assuming one had purchased a two color ribbon. That font was, of course, monospaced and similar to the Courier font used by today's word processor's.
A limited number of type effects were possible. Underling mean backspacing (see the red key in the upper right portion of the top row), and then using the underscore key (Shift-6). Bold face could be simulated by over-typing.
Mistakes known as typos were dreaded especially those that occurred at the bottom of an otherwise perfect page. There were special typewriter erasers, white out, special easily erased paper know as Corrasable Bond, and our course there was pulling the paper out of the typewriter, crumpling it up and starting over.
There were no spell checkers, grammar checkers or other aids to the writer. But the clack on the keys, the sounds made by the carriage return and the bell could carry one along.
Here is an old copy of the first page of a paper I typed in high school. You can see underlined text created using the backspace key, a spelling error corrected by the teacher and an unevenness in inking that makes some words are all but illegible. The lack of proportional spacing meant that two spaces followed each period. The right margins are ragged and here only one carriage return separated paragraphs.
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| Mom's Typewriter Today |
Each letter had its own key as did basic punctuation marks and numbers. A Shift key moved the platen up and down allowed for the typing of capitals and characters shown in the upper part of the key. The red Shift Lock key allowed one to switch into all capital mode. The space bar is much as it remains on computer keyboards today although there were no Ctrl or Alt keys flanking on each side.
Pressing the keys required some effort. Application of uneven force could result in uneven inking of letters and spotty copy. Typing too quickly caused the keys to cross and pile up on top of each other. They then had to be manually put back into place. This problem may be the origin of the famous QWERTY keyboard which was designed to slow down fast typists to a speed the machine could handle.
A bell rang when the typing reached the end of the margins set. Check out this site if you want to hear that sound whether for the first time or once again. Hitting the carriage return advanced the paper to the next line. Two carriage returns provided the extra space needed between paragraphs. A special silver key in the upper left allowed one to adjust the platen position to produce such things are exponents or superscripts. The red Self Starter key advanced the typing position five spaces, useful for paragraph indents and table columns.
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| Keyboard closeup |
There was one and only one font available although the lever allowed one to switch between red and black, assuming one had purchased a two color ribbon. That font was, of course, monospaced and similar to the Courier font used by today's word processor's.
A limited number of type effects were possible. Underling mean backspacing (see the red key in the upper right portion of the top row), and then using the underscore key (Shift-6). Bold face could be simulated by over-typing.
Mistakes known as typos were dreaded especially those that occurred at the bottom of an otherwise perfect page. There were special typewriter erasers, white out, special easily erased paper know as Corrasable Bond, and our course there was pulling the paper out of the typewriter, crumpling it up and starting over.
There were no spell checkers, grammar checkers or other aids to the writer. But the clack on the keys, the sounds made by the carriage return and the bell could carry one along.
Here is an old copy of the first page of a paper I typed in high school. You can see underlined text created using the backspace key, a spelling error corrected by the teacher and an unevenness in inking that makes some words are all but illegible. The lack of proportional spacing meant that two spaces followed each period. The right margins are ragged and here only one carriage return separated paragraphs.
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| Typing Sample from 1968 |
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