tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030382899924785918.post5847659082610031516..comments2023-09-15T08:21:36.514-04:00Comments on simply sowpar: catching up, over a TBT.sowparhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10731284869251458636noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030382899924785918.post-17799836964775020712015-03-31T22:53:39.108-04:002015-03-31T22:53:39.108-04:00wow, you seem to have a lot of memories with the t...wow, you seem to have a lot of memories with the typewriter ! i dont have much, since i was very young during the time they were in active use at home - but i distinctly remember the bell tone of the carriage return and fiddling with it to hear it ! also remember my mum typing out labels for my books, using the sticky shift keys with the asterisk and @ symbols to make borders :)<br />yeah you could spot your own amateurishness with the difference in pressure obvious from one letter to the next ! - do you know that sherlock holmes says that the characteristics of each typewriter are so distinct, and no two of them are exactly alike, unless they are quite new ? <br />yes the typewriter of hunter.s.thompson (not &) is electric - an ibm one. funny thing is that i have never seen an electric typewriter up close. by the time i was growing up, my folks didnt need typewriters anymore, and eventually pcs became part of the landscape - even though not everyone could afford them initially...sowparhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10731284869251458636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3030382899924785918.post-69847991973170678652015-03-29T14:09:04.126-04:002015-03-29T14:09:04.126-04:00Typewriters are really fascinating. I was always r...Typewriters are really fascinating. I was always reminded by the people at home not to type on a bare roller without paper. But imagine having to type really hard especially when you had a couple of carbon paper copies at the back. the impressions they left, not alone on paper, but also on your life. My twin sister could type quickly whereas I cant.<br /><br />The old model typewriters didnt come with spool reversers. After the ribbon ran out, you had to take them out, manually respool them and use them again.. and during the process messing up your fingers with the black ink. Modern typewriters came with a small lever which reversed the direction in which ribbons move and the more modern ones come with an auto reverse that senses end of ribbon and changed directions.<br /><br />Did you also notice the hunter & thompson model doesnt have a manual carriage return / line feed lever ? possibly because its an electronic one. they had the first enter buttons :)<br />and also that they supported A3 sizes against the other A4 ones.<br /><br />the carriage return line feed levers also ended up producing a nice 'bell' tone and it was always fun engaging them. and getting smacked for fooling around with the type writer. :)<br /><br />modern day computers have the carriage return line feed as two separate actions than a single one. kind of an inefficient aspect to it. but they haven't changed it in the last 40 years.<br /><br />a person conversant with typewriting can easily spot an amateur's typing just by looking at the impressions made as amateurs would be inconsistent with pressure and get exposed.<br /><br />even the paragraph alignment and line spacing by a professional would stand out against an amateur. of course, computers mask all these to a great extent now.<br /><br />nothing against manual typewriters, but in the late 80s, I saw an electronic typewriter that could churn out copies after copies and they used audiotapes that recorded the first time as you typed. and the playback feature would type out exactly the same way as you did the first copy. the let down would be that any mistakes you made in the first one would remain part of every copy. but the biggest draw for me towards them was their fonts. They had a more shaper and clearer font than the manual ones. <br /><br />sticky 'shift' keys and temporary shift keys were a wonderful phenomenon of their own. you could create beautiful underlinings using the asteriks or the quotes and they'd look brilliant.. but it took the more adept ones to create a subscript or a superscript. <br /><br />Whoever found the typewriter had a lot of inspiration in my view, though typewriters were extensively used during various wars.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com