I was browsing the internet for some gift ideas and by coincidence, I have found a shop that sells old but functional typewriters. They are pieces of vintage technology that I always wanted to have. I didn’t wait too long. I made an order. The next day a beautiful, yellow Adler Tippa S typewriter came by the post.
I knew the general concept of how does typewriter work, but I am too young to experience how to use it during my work history. When I opened the box and put Tippa S on my desk, there was my first contact with the vintage machinery. The first problem was how to unlock the carriage. I couldn’t find the switch. The machine has a cleverly designed lock, that puts the carriage in a fixed position during the transportation. I went online and found the manual of my typewriter. It occurs that the switch is hidden on the left side of the keyboard. Eureka.
I released the carriage, put the paper in and started typing. It was kind of rare, almost magical experience. Mechanical keys that move the type hammers up towards the paper started to live again. They hit the textile ribbon soaked with ink and made a type impression on a piece of paper. They produced a loud and characteristic sound as a side effect. It was extraordinary. I spent some serious time doodling on the machine. The next morning I found a shop where can I buy a fresh ribbon with ink and I decided that I must write an article about the unique experience of writing with typewriter.
As often happens, the first commercially successful typewriter was invented by coincidence. Christopher Lathem Sholes, printer, legislator and inventor wanted to create the machine to number pages of books. He realized that with a couple of adjustments, the machine could type text. He made the prototype and patented it. He sold the patent in 1873 to Remington and Sons company for 12’000$. His typewriter had QWERTY keyboard, layout which we still use today. Remington started to produce type machines. That was the beginning of its huge success. By the next forty years, the typewriters reached the kind of standardization of design. There were minor variations from one manufacturer to another.
In the most of the early typewriters, the typist couldn’t see the text as it was typed. The type hammers struck upwards against the paper, pressed against the platen. It was changed by introducing “visible typewriters” in 1890’s. Since 1906 there were portable machines on the market and in 1914 James Fields Smather invented the first typewriter with an electric motor. That was a golden age of typewriters. One of the early users of typewriters was Mark Twain who started writing on a machine in 1876 “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”.
My machine has more than forty years and it is in a perfect mechanical condition. As a product made before the age when items are designed to be broken as soon as warranty ends they could work for dozens of decades without a serious problem. There is a short movie on YouTube where Woody Allen tells about his typewriter he is using for 60 years.
There are a couple of funny technical features that were useful at the age of mechanical typing. My machine has a hole in the carriage protector, where you can place the tip of a pencil. If you move carriage up or down or left or right you could make a perfectly vertical or horizontal lines. Convenient.
For me, there are some interesting aspects of typewriter concept, that make this kind of typing unique. First of all, you cannot correct your text. There is no backspace option. You have to think about the sentence in advance. That makes you think sharper during the writing. You put more consideration to the words, to the spelling and to the idea you want to share. The print is all time in front of you, there is no need to use a printer. You work on the original. All mistakes you make will be there. The results can be very satisfying. When you write a text without faults, exactly as you imagined it before you feel kind of a satisfaction. For me, as an architect, it’s similar to feeling as you have after making a nice and crisp cardboard model of a project you are working on.
Of course, writing on a typewriter is not super practical in contemporary times. If you want to use it somewhere later you have to scan the page, use OCR program or rewrite everything on a computer. But for writing occasional letters, cards or notes it is a super nice alternative with a personal touch. The letters look differently when you press the keys kindly and softly than when you press them strongly and fastly.
There are still some writers and creators who don’t use modern word processors for writing their stuff. As I mentioned before, Woody Allen is one of them. Tom Wolfe, author of “The Bonfire of the Vanities” likes writing his novels on a typewriter. Danielle Steel, romance novelist uses her typewriter from 1946 for writing her novels.
When I was making a research for this article I found out that Stanley Kubrick used exactly the same model of the typewriter I have when he was working on “the Shining” movie. That was a fantastic discovery. I felt really WOW back then.
