August 06, 2011
Let's do the time warp again
- it's just a carriage return...to the left...and the typewriters don't have a 1.
I pointed to the lever that would propel the carriage back to the left, while the gears inside would simultaneously ratchet the paper to the next line.
She tapped it lightly.
“No, this is a manual typewriter,” I told her. “You actually have to expend some calories.”
I slammed the lever to the right, and the carriage flew back to the left margin, stopping with a thud. A look of understanding, laced with horror, crossed her face.
“It’s going to be like this the entire time, isn’t it?”
“Not at all,” I said. “It gets worse.”
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Ahhh - I remember the dreaded SHIFT key - sometimes you had to use *ugh* both hands. And the SHIFTLOCK - wait for the click.
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No. Backspace erase. *shudders*
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I have an old book by Dean Koontz called How to Write Best Selling Fiction,referencing manual typewriting with a vengeance. He says to begin typing with not just a top sheet, but also a carbon copy. That way, if you make a mistake you throw away the whole two pages and start over. Some kind of discipline.
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And a cloth ribbon that was red on one edge (half) and black on the other. I forget how we switched colors - maybe took both reels off and flipped the whole affair upside down. Ahhh... the wonders of multi-colored text... a feature still not available on the monkeyfilter ;-)
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From memory, switching colours was done with a separate key for typewriters that had them. Our dad had old Remingtons in his office that must have been 1930s vintage. The problem with the multicolours was if the ribbons weren't aligned, you'd get colour-banded printing.