In 1977, I took a typewriter class at Luck High School. I estimate there were about 20 seats with mostly manual typewriters on the desks. There were a handful of electric typewriters, with two being the favored IBM Selectric. I think seating was first-come / first-serve, so you had to line up in front of the room door early to get one of the good ones.
For those who are unfamiliar, typewriters existed before the prevalence of computer keyboards. The key layout was the same. As you hit a key, the symbol attached to the end of the key was physically printed on a piece of 8.5 x 11 paper by pressing on a cloth ribbon containing ink. Just like reel-to-reel tape recorders, typewriter ribbons unraveled from one spool to another as you typed to expose new ink. To move to the next line of a piece of paper, you had to use your left hand and whack a lever firmly to make the printing ‘carriage return‘. On a manual typewriter, if you tried to type too fast, the metal keys might bind together on the way to the paper. Nothing would get printed and you had to reach up and pull the keys back to their starting positions. So many keys in the classroom got bent because of it.
After a few rotations, the ink on the cloth ribbon would get used up and you would have to replace it. If you pressed the wrong key, too bad! “tomorrow” might be printed on paper as “tonarruw“. Unless you were allowed to use Whiteout correction fluid or had a special ‘correction ribbon’ on your typewriter, your mistakes were exposed for all to see.
Remembering where the alphabet keys were on the typewriter reminded me of remembering where the keys were on a piano. In fact, those of us who were taking piano lessons were some of the better typists because we had trained our fingers and minds to know where to press.
Based on our typing speed and accuracy, I and another classmate earned the right to participate in a county typing challenge based on our word-per-minute typing skills. To be honest, I didn’t practice for the event, nor did I give the event much credence. I didn’t win any award, but I didn’t care.
Obviously, with my career being computers, I took to the computer keyboard easily and have been using it for decades. However, I never took the time to learn the numeric keypad by memory as would anyone who was doing mainly data entry or entering a lot of accounting information. I have used ergonomic keyboards that were supposed to prevent carpal tunnel injuries, but those have fallen out of favor since the trend for data input into computers has moved away from keyboard to touch screen technology.
These days, I use a hard-wired, ancient Dell keyboard. It’s a bit noisy, but I get a satisfying tactile response from the keys. I prefer a keyboard I have to ‘pound’ than one that is soft or has very little feedback. I make so many spelling mistakes using the virtual keyboard on my smart phone that I rely heavily on its built in dictionary to figure out what I really meant to type!
