Who can forget the Remington

Much as we think of the typewriter as a thing of the past, we forget that a part of it continues to live with us today, in the form of the qwerty keyboard.

Much as we think of the typewriter as a thing of the past, we forget that a part of it continues to live with us today, in the form of the qwerty keyboard. For well over a hundred years,  since its invention by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1867, it was an essential appendage of the modern world. Through several transformations, it was the perfect bridge between the manuscript age and the computer age.

My tryst with the typewriter began in the early 1970s when I joined a typewriting institute. I was given a old machine on which I had to hammer away at the keys a, s, d and f in quick succession, repeatedly. The manager-cum-master of the institute used to tell us that we wouldn’t get a better machine to work on until we achieved perfection at each stage. He was a hard nut to crack. One had to sweat it out to prove his/her mettle.

The typewriter allotted to me was an ancient one with frayed paint and keys extracted from earlier machines that had given up the ghost. While typing, some keys would come loose and fall to the ground and I had to frantically chase them before sticking them back in place. Once one got familiar with the keyboard, he/she would be given exercise work-sheets to type. Each assignment would be closely monitored. Once the initial exercises were completed to the master’s satisfaction, we were ushered to the ‘speed’ stage. There would be stiff competition among us to impress him with our speed, perfection and neat execution to get a better typewriter.

Once in employment, a typist or stenographer was required to give a flawless performance on a manual typewriter. Irrespective of one’s performance in the Lower or Higher exam, one had to prove his/her worth again and again to please the boss. Some persnickety bosses would demand a few drafts before settling on a final ‘fair copy’.

The coming of the electric typewriter took the labour out of the work but the feather touch it needed was difficult to master for typists reared on old Remingtons. Then came the electronic typewriters with their memory fields for texts, formats, etc., which facilitated editing any number of times. However, electronic typewriters with allied peripherals and accessories were costly. The onward transition to computers with their myriad mind-boggling word processing facilities has completely redrawn the contours of document preparation and left the typewriter on the verge of extinction. But the clickety-clack of the typewriter ruled for more than a century.

R Sampath

Email: sampathr@gmail.com

Related Stories

No stories found.
The New Indian Express
www.newindianexpress.com