I used to do all my writing on an Adler manual typewriter.<\/p>\n
That sounds a bit grand, so here’s some context.<\/p>\n
I was a ten-year old; we had a bunch of manual typewriters knocking around in various offices.<\/p>\n
On a quarter-sized desk in the accounts office was an Adler manual typewriter; it was so large, the footprint occupied the entire desktop.<\/p>\n
On days I wasn’t working – it’s a long story that involves twisted parental values in a Victorian kind of way, a strict rule that I had to work for every penny of\u00a0pocket-money, under the pretext that it would teach me the value of things, but in retrospect I feel I was slave labour – I used to sit in the accounts office and bang away at the big heavy keys.<\/p>\n
The whole machine was too heavy to move, the keys needed such force that fingertips would soon numb from the downwards pressure, and the manual return-lever was heavy enough to break your wrist if you got the timing wrong, but I did love that Microwave-sized monstrosity.<\/p>\n
Two sheets of A4,\u00a0separated\u00a0by a filing of carbon paper, that usually coloured my fingers too.<\/p>\n
What did these experiences teach me?<\/p>\n
That I hate manual typewriters; you can’t edit on a manual typewriter.<\/p>\n
Tippex – the Adler didn’t have correcting ribbon – is no substitute for having the immediate editing function that today’s technology has given us.<\/p>\n
How would, I wonder, most of us fare if we were transported back to the pre-electric office equipment era?<\/p>\n
Maybe like the good people over at JournoTerrorist?<\/p>\n
It’s an interesting\u00a0experiment; take a bunch of students, give them ‘old technology’ and ask them to produce a newspaper.<\/p>\n