Who still owns a typewriter?

[65-2x2]

My handwrithing has never been a work of art, so I typed my love letters to my sweetheart on a 1940s Vintage Royal typewriter in the 1960s. I still have the Royal and the sweetheart; I no longer use the typewriter, but the sweetheart is handy. Where I went to school there were two classes that were required, both of which I hated at the time, and both of which were important later in life; typing and bookkeeping.

 

[DWalt]

Have told this story before. I once had a boss who firmly believed that his typing ability saved his life. He had taken typing in high school, and was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. Just before his unit was to be shipped out for combat, a request came down for someone who knew how to type. He volunteered, and fought the Korean War from behind a stateside keyboard.

 

[peterdeb]

Had an Olympic manual that I used in high school (1960's) and College. Used as partial payment for home repairs. I serviced all IBM typewriters in my career and kept a Selectric II and Selectric III as nostalgic mementoes. Got tired of moving them and they are gone as well.

 

[dockmurgw]

I use one every day, then I take what I type and send it using my thermal paper fax machine.

 

[Mister Coffee]

My handwrithing has never been a work of art, so I typed

^^This.

One of my girlfriends commented that I typed my Post-it notes.

 

[rustythread]

I have a portable manual, two color ribbon. I forget the make. Still works. Haven't needed it lately. Fits in a little case to lug around. Maybe I'll grow a man-bun, buy some skinny jeans, and a pork pie hat, park myself in front of a coffee shop and offer to write people poems.

Nah…

I still have the Olivetti portable I took to college in 1960. Ribbon is defunct, though. Put a lot of strokes on Underwood Fives after the Army found out I could read & write and snatched me out of the field.

 

[GaryS]

I was still a kid when I saw my first one in the 1970s. That ball was incredibly high tech for the time. I never owned one, but would have liked to back then.

First the word processor and then the PC killed them. Well, along with dot matrix printers.

We have an old one. Still use it occasionally. I had an IBM Selectric Type 1, a red one like Hunter Thompson used, that I used at work in the 80's. Loved that typewriter. I tried to buy years later when the company was closing its US operations, the guy over the surplus couldn't find it. Somebody knew what it was and took it.

 

[Jerry in SC]

I was still a kid when I saw my first one in the 1970s. That ball was incredibly high tech for the time. I never owned one, but would have liked to back then.

First the word processor and then the PC killed them. Well, along with dot matrix printers.

They were cool, the Pica typeface was more legible than the Elite and it was preferred by newspapers. It was heavy but not like the later monsters. Easy to clean as well.

 

[65-2x2]

I still have the Olivetti portable I took to college in 1960. Ribbon is defunct, though. Put a lot of strokes on Underwood Fives after the Army found out I could read & write and snatched me out of the field.

The ability to type made my boot camp a breeze. I spent all of my time in the Batallion office while my buddies were marching in the Orlando sun. Our Bat commander was a WO taking classes to advance. One day he gave me some of his homework to type up. This guy was even worse in English than I was. When I got the papers, I timidly knocked on his door and asked if he wanted me to correct the grammar and spelling. He bowed up at first, then, on reflection, he gave me his school work to do, not just type. I was pretty much relieved of all of the normal boot camp experience.

Hell, I was probably promoted to to Ensign before I got out of boot camp!

 

[Phenix]

This was a fun thread about the ancient days of computering.

Thread 'The people stuck using ancient Windows computers'

May 18, 2025

BBC article here.
Some comments re using "ancient" Win7 on LVSteve's post about looking for a small, cheap computer made me think this might be interesting. We're surrounded by some seriously legacy software in all sorts of places.

Here's a look inside the strange, stubborn world of obsolete Windows machines.

Earlier this year I was on my way to a checkup at a doctor's office in New York City. As I rode up to the 14th floor, my eyes were drawn to a screen built into the side of the lift. Staring back was a glimpse into the history of computing. There, in a gleaming hospital full...

• oldbrownhat
• Replies: 59
• Forum: The Lounge

• 

QUERY - who still owns a typewriter, whether you use it or not??!!??!!

I have an IBM Selectric (I think that's what it's called) high up on a closet shelf. Hasn't been used in years and years.

Or better yet, which models of the manual typewriters are considered the best and most user friendly?

 

[Phenix]

The ability to type made my boot camp a breeze. I spent all of my time in the Batallion office while my buddies were marching in the Orlando sun. Our Bat commander was a WO taking classes to advance. One day he gave me some of his homework to type up. This guy was even worse in English than I was. When I got the papers, I timidly knocked on his door and asked if he wanted me to correct the grammar and spelling. He bowed up at first, then, on reflection, he gave me his school work to do, not just type. I was pretty much relieved of all of the normal boot camp experience.

Hell, I was probably promoted to to Ensign before I got out of boot camp!

That's a great story.
When I was in Army Officer Candidate School ( which was a mostly miserable high-stress sleep deprived harassment program) with a 60% washout rate my hut mates noticed early on that I was somewhat of a whiz at cleaning M-16 rifles so quickly and thoroughly that the Cadre could find nothing to gig me on during the almost daily inspections like they did on everyone's rifles and all our other stuff. When they found anything wrong ( and they almost always did) what followed was screaming, yelling, cursing, and ripping our beds and uniform displays apart and throwing our stuff on the floor, out the windows, and up in the rafters. Then we only got an hour or less to make everything right again for a remedial inspection, which was basically impossible due to the short timeo allowed; followed by more yelling and other unpleasantness.
Often these fun and games were still going on until midnight.
After a couple of weeks my squad mates offered me a deal-if I would clean all their rifles, they would pitch in and keep my boots and shoes polished, sweep the floor in my area, make up my bunk and press my uniforms to the highest standards as required by the TAC Officers who ruled over us. I took them up on it and it all worked out great.
I believe I got the better part of the deal.
And I graduated.

 

[Turn4811]

I have a Blickensderfer portable typewriter with a 1943 manufacture date. Blickensdefer had one client, the US Navy. Back in the late 80's I worked as a typewriter repair tech. A lady dropped it by the shop where it needed a good cleaning and lube as keys were starting to lock up. I had about 6 hours of labor and we had quoted a flat rate. She never came to pick it up. After 6 months I gave my boss $20 for it. If I ink it up it still works.

 

[65-2x2]

That's a great story.
When I was in Army Officer Candidate School ( which was a mostly miserable high-stress sleep deprived harassment program) with a 60% washout rate my hut mates noticed early on that I was somewhat of a whiz at cleaning M-16 rifles so quickly and thoroughly that the Cadre could find nothing to gig me on during the almost daily inspections like they did on everyone's rifles and all our other stuff. When they found anything wrong ( and they almost always did) what followed was screaming, yelling, cursing, and ripping our beds and uniform displays apart and throwing our stuff on the floor, out the windows, and up in the rafters. Then we only got an hour or less to make everything right again for a remedial inspection, which was basically impossible due to the short timeo allowed; followed by more yelling and other unpleasantness.
Often these fun and games were still going on until midnight.
After a couple of weeks my squad mates offered me a deal-if I would clean all their rifles, they would pitch in and keep my boots and shoes polished, sweep the floor in my area, make up my bunk and press my uniforms to the highest standards as required by the TAC Officers who ruled over us. I took them up on it and it all worked out great.
I believe I got the better part of the deal.
And I graduated.

That was similar to my situation. They offered me OCS but it came with a six year enlistment so I turned them down. Then they offered Nuclear Power School, which I also turned down for the same reason. I just wanted to do my time, avoid the war in Vietnam, and start my life as an adult.

In our boot camp, we were restricted to going to the exchange as a group and only allowed to buy stuff like tooth brushes or shaving cream, shoe polish, etc. The bat commander would send me to buy him cigarettes and I would load up on candy, newspaper and magazines, things that just weren't available to the rest of my company and stash it in the Bat office. After the regular officers and enlisted men went home for the evening, I would take the stuff up stairs to my company and give it away. The other guys kept my locker tip-top. It was not a pay to play, but a general spirit of cooperation against the "man." I was caught laughing at one of my company mates who was doing some punishment routine in front of the batallion and they told me to go get my piece (rifle) and I didn't know which one was mine. I came out of boot camp not knowing a damn thing that I should have learned.

 

[DWalt]

I have a portable manual, two color ribbon. I forget the make. Still works. Haven't needed it lately. Fits in a little case to lug around. Maybe I'll grow a man-bun, buy some skinny jeans, and a pork pie hat, park myself in front of a coffee shop and offer to write people poems.

Nah…

I could do 40wpm on what we called a "mill". A manual typewriter on 3 carbon copies and damn it, it better look good. Typing was an immediately endearing skill in police work.

I can still hear the sound of a typing pool of about 50 Seelectrics sounding like machine gun fire when the elevator doors opened.

Back in the early 1980s I was working for an unnamed federal agency. We had one of the earlý dedicated word processors with a large impact printer. Talk about sounding like a machine gun, that printer did. It had to be mounted inside a sound insulated cabinet because it was so loud. We had one clerk who was the only one authorized to use that word processor, and the only one who knew how. I remember document storage was on huge floppy discs, about 8".

 

[YeshuaIsa53]

No typewriter, but my Father was a typesetter until they stop using the printers.

Isn't a keyboard and a screen, combined with a printer, similar to a typewriter?

 

[rockquarry]

My wife still has a manual (can't remember the make) that her daddy gave her when she was a senior in high school (1966). I think it works fine, but finding replacement ribbons might be tough today.