The first writing class I took at Northwestern’s journalism school – “B-01 Basic Writing” – was intended to weed out about one-third of the students. You had to make a “B” in the course or you were thrown out.
The class was intentionally boot camp-ish. And there were a variety of infractions that would result in an “F” on your day’s work, such as misspelling a proper noun. (I will never misspell “Nicaragua” again.)
Perhaps the most dastardly detail of the class was that you were required to type everything on manual typewriters in the writing lab. It was Spring 1987 when I took that class. And electric (even Selectric) typewriters were common, and dedicated word processors were in the writing labs for the advanced students.
A lot of my fellow students were freaked about the manuals. Plus how to use correcting fluid. And moans such as, “Where is the ‘1’ key? My machine is missing that key!”
Working on a manual was the only advantage I had in the class. For the first 20 years of my life, everything I wrote was on my manual typewriter, which had been handed down to me by my mother. I knew the machine inside and out. I had to repair the thing, oil the thing. Clean it to keep it working, especially the platen. And change the ribbon, of course.
I didn’t like electric typewriters. They made a hum like a bug zapper, and every time I brushed a key accidentally I’d jump in my seat. I needed a typewriter that required effort to use. And was quiet.
I barely passed Basic Writing with a B-, the absolute lowest grade that allowed me to continue in school. And I often attribute my love of manuals to be the reason I didn’t get a C or worse.
This week I took delivery of an amazing piece of work that has brought a lot of emotions to the fore. It’s a completely restored 1949 Smith-Corona Silent. A beautiful and compact piece of insane engineering.
The machine was completely rebuilt by Meagan Syata of the Unplug Typewriter Co. I have been following her work on Instagram for a while. And at some point our paths crossed. Her husband is a woodworker, and they live in Hope, Arkansas, my home state. We worked out a trade (I think I got the best part of the deal) – one typewriter in exchange for a huge pile of books.
The typewriter showed up yesterday, and I cannot take my eyes or hands off of it. It looks and works like it is new from the factory. And after reading about and watching everything that Meagan does to these machines, I am not surprised.
This typewriter is going to get used. I hate writing notes and short letters by hand. My handwriting is terrible. I’m a much better typist.
I doubt I’ll ever write a book using it. But who knows? I’ve done stupider things (such as our letterpress version of “Roman Workbenches.”)
To be honest, I don’t have romantic notions about using a manual typewriter. I don’t do detective cosplay, and I’m not a “His Girl Friday” reenactor. Like my handplanes and saws, this is a tool. And knowing how to use all the tools is part of my DNA.
As a writer with a long history with these machines, it’s nice to have one of these back in my possession.
If you have any interest at all in these old machines, do check out Meagan’s store. I am incredibly impressed. Plus, if you buy one, you might just save an old typewriter from getting cut up so its keys can be turned into jewelry.
— Christopher Schwarz
There is a fantastic 2016 documentary by Tom Hanks, “California Typewriter.” It’s just wonderful.
I love mechanical things. Typewriters, clocks. They make so much more sense to me than electronic devices.
You must watch “California Typewriter”
This post took me back a few years…. My first job i had while in high school was working in a typewriter repair shop….my job was to clean and dissasemble the hundreds of manual typewriters from schools and companies….and then deliver them all over the cleveland ohio area….
It would be interesting to me to have you and Meghan collect your thoughts on the writing processes you use. Like Ann Lamott’s Bird by Bird.
Nice machine! I, too, learned on my mother’s manual typewriter. Unfortunately, it didn’t help in my first college “cull” class: underclass common course at Beloit College in 1967. Each use of the verb “to be” lowered one’s grade a letter. It was (maybe still is) fatal, futile, and failure.
Hermes. Made in Switzerland. The war correspondents’ choice in a bombproof aluminum case. A classmate at Purdue had one. That’s why I married her. But she later loaned it to a brother who was enrolled at the aforesaid hated Northwestern University. Alas, it never returned home.
David McCullough, the well-known and best selling author of 1776, John Adams and many other popular historical works famously wrote all of his books on a pre-WWII typewriter. The reason: he thought using a computer was too fast. I think I know what he meant.
Super! Typewriters are a delight for me. I do a lot of personal and business correspondence on them. I encourage you to get inside and tinker. See how adjusting things changes the feel. Be “naughty” and remove a spring and see what happens, lower the rack that holds the key lever/typebar return springs, swap type bars from another Smith Corona with a different typeface, etc. I have really gotten naughty and started filing serifs off slugs to do things like turn Regency No. 80 slugs into “Regency Gothic”. I’m more of a sans serif guy but do like some of shaded serif :”Executive” typefaces that “add distinction to my work”.
Oh, and you can use the Holiday case with the typewriter locking mechanism removed on your next overnight trip.
and now you know how us “older” engineers feel about our slide rules
I grew up in the little town of Groton NY near Syracuse. Grandpa and grandma both worked in the Smith corona factory there before and after WW2.
enjoyed the story. the rabbit ears in the first picture has me wondering if she converted it to wireless in the rebuild 😉
Love it! There was a nice documentary on Netflix “California Typewriter” about a typewriter repair shop and the various people, like Tom Hanks, who collect and use old typewriters. A very good documentary for people to check out.
Yesterday marked ten years for me of writing Daily Pages from “The Artist’s Way”. A lttle way into this my Wonderful Wife Christine and I each bought a typewriter from Mr. Montgomery of Bremerton Office Machine Co. Ltd., a Correcting Selectric II for her, and a Remington Noiseless 7 for me. Typing on a manual machine first thing every day regularly helped my rheumatic hands get ready for a day of using a computer keyboard, with weekends of woodworking, and cleared my mind. No interruptions or distractions with a typewriter!
Craftsmanship transcends chisels and hammers. The typewriter is a precision instrument that was ubiquitous in society. How many people, while hammering away on reports or filling out documents on these machines really stopped to marvel at their design and accuracy?
I had my own typewriter sales and service for 12 years in the 80’s and 90’s until computers took over. I can appreciate your life experience with school and typing. I will check out Megan’s web site. Thanks for all you do for the woodworking community.
Dennis Meko
Back in the day you could always tell when someone using a computer had come of age with typewriters. They’d use lower case ell for the numeral one and capital Oh for the numeral zero. My mom did that for years.
I love the elegance and romanticism of a typewritten note an a piece of executive-size stationery with an embossed letterpress logo at the top. I’d be surprised if you don’t already have that in the works.
Drove me nuts. My folks kept the list of classmates, some 520 people, for high school reunions. Names, addresses, phone numbers, deaths, etc.
They made a spreadsheet at some point, and kept messing it up attempting to sort. About half of the number 1s were lower case l, and three quarters of the 0s were upper case Os.
Drove me nuts.
Here’s some serendipity. Tom Lehrer has released all of his songs and recordings into the public domain and created a website (tomlehrersongs.com) where you can download all of them. Today I’m downloading the albums and the link for “The Remains of Tom Lehrer (disc 1)” is broken. I looked at the link and it’s “trotll.rar”. I tried “trotl1.rar” and it worked. I’m guessing it’s a transcription error not someone deliberately using an “l” instead of a “1”. But still…
I picked up an early ’60s model a couple years ago. Back in the ’80s I learned on a cheapo my mom had. Since my kids are still young (late start, for those of you prone to doing math), it was put away until I can trust them to not jam all the keys in their exuberance. They’re about “there,” I think, and will get to learn to type on it (not a keyboard), as I learned as a kid. There is just something SO satisfying about the clacking of the keys. And there’s nothing like those moments where you find yourself thinking, “oh, poop… that word looks wrong! …now that it’s on the paper…” to teach you to value spelling! 😉
Great piece. Loved reading it.
Nice story and interesting. It amazes me to read once and a while a recent or current author produces their work by handwriting, not even using a type writer or computer program.
Many old manual typewriters have been cut up to provide keys for jewelry (?), but that is not their only purpose. I have purchased black glass keys to use for the keyboard on a Steampunk Computer I built that took first place in a competition. We have also used antique period keys for a reconstructed model of the WWII Enigma Machine we built.
When I arrived for my graduate assistantship, I was shown my office and led across the hall to a storeroom where I was told to pick a typewriter. Shelves full of manual office typewriters. They had been ratholed when all the departmental secretaries were upgraded to electrics. I looked them over and chose a huge Remington with a carriage long enough to take a stencil sideways. That machine was with me through my whole program, paper after paper. When it was time for my thesis, the graduate dean had used his wisdom to determine that all thesis submissions had to be printed out using a new ribbon on a dot-matrix printer. Grrrrr. When I graduated, I was told I could keep the typewriter. One of the best tool gifts ever.
OMG, Chris. As a kid, I’d sit on the floor admiring my mother snapping away on the powder blue Smith Corona that got her through college. She gave it the care of her fine glassware. I was delighted when she let me take it to college where despite its new owner, led to a second degree. In grad school, I cursed it while writing/editing 20 page papers. Somehow, punching the keys harder does not improve spelling. As a University instructor with Peace Corps Morocco, I searched desperately for an English or Spanish typewriter. I needed QWERTY; the more common French keyboards were not. We found two manuals, one for parts. I loved those machines.
Never realized you’re a Wildcat! (Somehow thought you were a Buckeye). I recently tried to switch my desktop computer keyboard to an old clickety clackety mechanical one from years ago. It was alarming how much it slowed my typing. That being said, there’s a serenity to never typing faster than your brain can conjure a phrase. Makes it a more relaxing writing experience.
My undergrad is at NU; my graduate degree is at Ohio State University, so you had it right.
I took that Intro to the Soviet Union class! But by the time I was there, it was called “Intro to USSR and Successor States.” I suspect we both had Irwin Weil, though, because I think he’d been doing it since the 60’s.
Yup. Hope he played folk songs for you!
I got through high school and the first two years of college with a gray steel 1940s Underwood Champion portable. During the last two years of college and in grad school in the 1970s, I had a late 1950s Royal Futura 800 manual portable that had belonged to my grandfather. I majored in English, so there was a lot of typing (including typing my syllabi, etc. on spirit masters when I was a teaching fellow). The Royal also got me through at least three job searches and most of law school. By then, the letters on the typebar heads were pretty worn down. I still have it, though I haven’t used it in decades. I’m a lousy (and slow) typist, and had to tape up the tips of my fingers before I typed a long paper so my nails didn’t pull away. By my last year of law school (1986-87), I had access to a computer and keyboard and was able to type my writing/research requirement on that when the office wasn’t open. I also used it for resumes and a search for a job as a lawyer. It had a nasty tendency to print things out in Early Gobbledygook, though.
Those days of Wite-Out liquid and correction tape, and allegedly erasable paper. At one point in college, I used “onionskin” paper because it was cheaper. I learned the error of that when I was teaching in grad school and found that some of my students were using it, and that I was going blind (not literally) trying to read their papers.
Wish I had nabbed my mom’s old Underwood at the auction. I’d forgotten about it and hadn’t seen it for years. It still had the caps on all the keys from when she took typing in college. I learned to type on it from her college instruction manual on rainy days and when I was home sick from school. And she wouldn’t take the caps off of the keys for me either so it was use the home position and memorize.
We lived just up the street from the typewriter repairman for Iowa State and, boy, did he have some stories.
I was born in ’87! That must make me a young ‘un round here! XD
And have you seen this online copy of Woodworking Joints? It’s part of The Woodworker Series originally published by Evan Brothers. http://www.timberframe-tools.com/reference/woodwork-joints/
That’s a lovely machine. I’ve got a Smith Corona of that vintage and one slightly older, with glass keys; the feel of those keys under the fingers is magical.
They’re both in reasonable condition, but they could certainly use a little TLC.
This was fun to read, Chris! Thanks. I remember typing on a Smith-Corona manual typewriter in high school and college.
For some more fun, here’s a quiz for the younger folks out there:
How did you type a numeral “1” on a manual? Hint: it was not in the row of numbers at the top of the keyboard.
On our computer keyboards, why is key we use for Enter usually (or at least often) also labelled “Return?” Hint: something had to move at the end of each typed line on a manual.
It has been demonstrated that the QWERTY keyboard arrangement is not nearly the most efficient layout for speed or accuracy in typing. So why did it develop?
What is the V-shaped thing at the back of Chris’ typewriter? What did you do with it when you were done typing?
What are three tools you could use to correct a mistake? (That’s in addition to pulling out the paper, crunching it into a ball, then shooting for the waste basket when you made a long mistake.)
Our thinking and planning processes differ quite a lot when typing on a computer versus a manual. I think it is a change for the better, especially for clearer and more economical writing. Any thoughts?
Rob
“Writing was never work for me. It had been the same for as long as I could remember: turn on the radio to a classical music station, light a cigarette or a cigar, open the bottle. The typer did the rest. All I had to do was be there. The whole process allowed me to continue when life itself offered very little, when life itself was a horror show. There was always the typer to soothe me, to talk to me, to entertain me, to save my ass. Basically that’s why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.”
― Charles Bukowski
I had a great uncle who was a sportswriter for 50 years, mostly at the St. Petersburg Times in FL. He and Aunt Peggy were great travelers, overseas and sailing and crisscrossing the US in an RV. On one visit passing through New Mexico he talked about writing, which afforded him much pleasure and seemingly no angst—said he got up and wrote 3500 words every day, no matter what. He pulled out a green Hermes manual small and sturdy enough to go anywhere. Don’t think he worried too much about the tool except that it worked, which it did as well as any Yankee brace or Type 11 Stanley. I prefer the electrics for their speed and lighter touch, but you’re right, they’re clattery jumpy things that whirr when you’re trying to think. And nothing beats an IBM Selectric for speed, but dang it sounds like a .50 caliber is in use nearby. Good luck with your new old machine, and may the power go out soon!
I love the sound of a manual typewriter. And your comment about “Where is the ‘1’ key? My machine is missing that key!” cracked me up because I completely forgot about that. Thanks for the memory booster.
I’ve been looking for an old machine like the one my parents had. I forget the exact model but I’ll know it when I see it. I’ll keep Meagan’s website in mind. Thanks.