How/when/where did you learn to type?

[Road Rat]

Walkin' Jack................my reason was the same as yours. I entered my senior year with enough credits to graduate except for a semester of math...........so, since I had to go to the campus I filled in my day with electives; one of which was typing.

I have used it in every job I ever had!!

 

[mjr]

A typing class in my sophomore year of high school. We learned on old manual Royal typewriters. They encouraged everyone they thought might possibly get post-high school education to take the typing class.

 

[moosedog]

I never did, ever try to read one of my posts?

 

[CW Spook]

Had a year of typing in HS and aced it. Took a semester in college thinking it would be a throw-away course and only managed a 'C' with 60wpm. Went into the Navy where my typing and Morse ability got me a most excellent billet....even learned to type Cyrillic. ;-)

 

[GLV]

Radio school at Kessler AFB

in 1950/51. Never used as an RO, because there were no mills on combat aircraft.

Also, we learned on Western Union system typewriters, all caps. It a long time to get used to using a shift key.

Neat thread

 

[straightshooter1]

Well, I have to admit that in High School, I was a "troubled youth," I made a lot of "mistakes" or "poor choices."

Actually, I was beaten on the rear so many times by the Principal or Dean of Boys with that awful paddle, that I learned to walk back by the audience in the auditorium with a smile after the beatings (the auditorium was used as a study hall in those days) and the beatings took place in a room near the stage at the front to add to the humiliation. No tears slipped out till I was safe and secure in the rest room. I still remember how badly it hurt. But, I still wouldn't learn and was back again within a few days.

I was such a little jerk that it is a wonder that I was able to become a police officer and lawyer. I credit the Army with that, I guess. If not for the Army, I have no doubt I'd have eventually made it to prison, and not as a visitor.

So, for some reason I can't recall, I had to take a Summer School Class. Anything I wanted, as long as I had not taken the class before. I just can't recall how that came about. I recall my Mom and a meeting with School personnel, but not the details.

I picked Typing. Not because I wanted to learn to type, not because I was smart enough to see that it would be of immense value in the future, but, simply, because:

THERE WERE LOTS OF GIRLS IN THE CLASS!

Actually, IIRC, I was one of only two or three males in the class of 25 or 30 (since typing wasn't exactly a manly sport in those sweet days of the early 60s).

I found out that I had some aptitude for typing and, learned to type really well. Even 30 plus years later, I could still do nearly 60WPM.

As a prosecutor, and one of the so-called higher ups, I had a whole crew of Word Processors who would type up whatever I needed almost on the spot. I generally typed my own.

I was once lightly chastised by our State Attorney who said he paid me way too much to be wasting my time typing my own stuff, but I showed him how quickly I could do it and he, reluctantly, and with a couple of comments about my manhood , agreed that I could do reports, etc. quicker than the WP staff, and never mentioned it again.

Of all the choices I made as a kid, this was, as I look back, one of the few right ones I made.

Bob

 

[Iggy]

It was typing class or study hall. Turns out it is the only thing I got out of high school that was worth a damm.

 

[chez323]

I believe it was in my sophomore year in high school on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Typing class, was either this or home economics if I remember right. Though the girls were cuter in home economics, I believe I made the right choice.

I'm back in school working on my bachelors degree and in my morning math class (all freshmen but me, classified as a senior based on credits) the teacher asked about the first computer we were exposed to in school. When I said IBM selectric, the kids were like what the heck is that. LOL

 

[gunfighter48]

I learned in high school, 1965 and 1966. My Dad made me take 2 years of typing. I told him I wasn't going to be a secretary and couldn't see the need for it. Enlisted in the Army in June of 1967. Went into electronics repair, the second week of classes they set us down in front of Teletype machines and said who knows how to type!!!!!!

Out of everything I learned in high school this did me the most good. I've been involved in high tech electronics, computers, and repair work all of my working life. Typing is the skill that I always needed to know and used the most. Dad wasn't so dumb after all!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[swilli41]

Sophomore in high school....one semester. I got to about 25 or 30 wpm, but Joyce, next to me, could bang out 70 to 80 wpm with no mistakes. Kind of a humbling experience. I wish I had taken short hand the next semester. That would have been handy for college as well.

 

[Marshwheeling]

I did not learn to type until about 1990, when a client gave me a self-teaching program on a 5 1/2" floppy. I can do about 30 wpm, but never learned to look away from the keyboard. It helped, though, when I de-secretarialized my law practice. The joy of being free of employer's paperwork more than offset the hassle of typing my own pleadings and correspondence.

 

[rock doc]

Took a typing class in HS in the early 1970's. Bearly passed the course. I would memorize a sentance or two and then hunt and peck away using most of my fingers. Could never get the hang of it. Guess I'm a hunt and pecker typer.

 

[mountaingun629]

My experience is just a bit different from CW Spook's in that I didn't learn to type before I went into the Navy.
The Navy taught me typing and copying Morse code simultaneously. I never could copy Morse without a keyboard, and after the Navy it was over 30 years before I used a keyboard again.
In the Navy, I was typing on 3-ply fan-fold paper with carbons between them, and you had to hit the keys on the old manual typewriters so hard that the keys were cutting through the top paper or the back page wouldn't be readable. When I started using a computer keyboard, I was hitting the keys almost hard enough to break them! Took me a long time to settle down and lighten up on the keys.
If it weren't for spell-check, my typing would really suck. Don't quite know how I pulled it off in the old days.

Myron
CTR2 USNR
Sidi Yahia Morocco '65 - '68

 

[Big Cholla]

I was a Junior in HS and was 'after' a certain girl. I had an hour open and found out that she was going to take Typing in that hour. I signed up and found that I was one of two boys in a class of 24 girls. I never did get a date with that girl but I discovered that I enjoyed typing and I did get to date several of the other girls. Much to everyone's surprise including me at the end of the semester I was the third fastest typist in the whole class. I have used that skill in every job that I have ever had. I too regret not taking Shorthand. That skill would have been very valuable later in my professional career as a Construction Manager. I was introduced to the IBM Selectric in College in a mandatory Business Communications class. I tested right at 100 wpm! When I obtained my first PC with Spell Check, I quit using secretaries because it was faster for me to type my own letters ready for the mail. My Secretary loved working for me. Being a good typist has been one of my better accomplishments skill-wise. ............ Big Cholla

 

[G.T. Smith]

I learned in high school, 1965 and 1966. My Dad made me take 2 years of typing. I told him I wasn't going to be a secretary and couldn't see the need for it. Enlisted in the Army in June of 1967. Went into electronics repair, the second week of classes they set us down in front of Teletype machines and said who knows how to type!!!!!!

The only difference gunfighter48, is that I crapped out at book keeping and transfered to typing my Junior and Senior year, '67 and '68. Joined the Army and wound up as a radio teletype operator in the Army Security Agency. I can still type pretty good but I catch myself looking at the keyboard more than I need to.
Peace,
gordon

 

[Bert Man]

Walkin' Jack, my story is very similar to yours. Took beginning typing in 9th grade. Can't remember the teacher's name but she also had the dark framed glasses with the neck chain. She didn't use a pointer though, she used a measuring stick. If you looked at the keys she would "correct" you with the stick. She kept a tight rein on the few boys in the class regarding our propensity to direct most of our attention to the many girls in the class.

In the 11th grade, remembering my pleasant experience with all the girls, I took advanced typing as an elective. I managed to pass the course with at least 45 wpm. Just like some others here it was probably the most valuable thing I retained from high school. Oh, and did I mention the girls?

 

[Cyrano]

When I was about 5 (before WW II), they switched me from writing with my left hand to writing with my right hand. Since then NOBODY (including myself on occasion), has been able to read what I've written.

My junior year in high school it got so bad that during the summer I had to take typing lessons at a business school in a neighboring city; for you from Connecticut, it was Danbury. I learned pretty well, and had lots of practice during my senior year in English Biology, and History. It's stayed with me ever since, and now I have a computer in front of me, I use it every day. Still can't touch type the numbers, though.

Went to visit a friend in France last year. E-mailed home that everything was OK and I was having fun. Unfortunatly they don't use a QUERTY keyboard in France, and it took me half an hour to type about three lines.

Sign on the desk of one of our clerks: I type like I live; fast with a lot of mistakes.

 

[nicky4968]

gunfighter48 and G. T. Smith, my hat's off to both of you. I type pretty well, I know 3 different typewriter keyboards, and, of course, Stenograph's keyboard.
I really wanted to be on the teletype; my problem was when I tried to hold my speed down (the machine can only take so much), my accuracy went out the window.
I am old enough to remember communicating with the computer (we spelled it computor then) with a teletype machine (in both directions).
Now we have a monitor, spell check, and who knows what-all.
I did learn on my mother's Corona 4; later on a Corona Silent. I took typing in high school for an easy class and worked mostly with Olivetti manual machines.
When I typed my transcripts (an original and two carbons, and a 9-pound onionskin for the file) I used only Adlers. They were made in West Germany and made out of steel. I could break one, but it took about 25,000 pages.

 

[Frank46]

So thats what you call it. I just pick up my index finger on the right hand and whack the key for the letter I want. Same for the left hand. Frank

 

[bloo]

class A radioman school Bainbridge MD 1966 USN



Ted