Thread: Typewriters
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Old 02-22-2022, 11:02 AM   #2
OtinG
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The last typewriter I used was a Smith Corona. No clue what model it was. That was 40 years ago in graduate school. For my usage, a typewriter was more distracting than the Macintosh SE which replaced it in 1984. I'm neither a good typist nor a fast one, so making corrections on a typing mistake was labor and time intensive, and broke up my train of thought. And of course corrections on a typed page looked terrible. I remember writing out my paragraphs by hand with each on a separate index card so I could rearrange them if necessary, then trying to type out the research papers. I often had too little time in which to get them typed and had to resort to paying a typist to do them, which meant going without a meal or three! When I got the Macintosh SE, used the better part of a student loan to buy it, I could type my own papers and make a gillion corrections and changes. It was a game changer. So I will never say that computers were a great distraction to my writing. Quite the opposite in my case. Typewriters were a huge distraction and a huge PITA! Everyone is different of course, but since I went on to have a career writing and programming on computers I clearly was destined to be an early adopter to computers, and technology in general.

Computers changed the way I wrote in a significant and good way. Before with a typewriter, it was difficult to make changes that required a retyping of several pages. With computers I could make as many changes, including major reorganization changes, and the simple press of a button printed it out in just a few minutes! So in my case the quality of the content I wrote went way up, as did the ability to produce more writings without having to pay a typist.

Of course, for others YMMV.

I think my old Smith Corona wound up in trash dumpster sometime in the mid-1980s.
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