Why did I learn to use the typewriter in 1982?

Three decades and a couple of years later, I still remember Mr Narayanan. A small built, balding, middle aged man who always wore an expression that had a half smile tilted to the right. He also always wore a loose white half sleeved shirt left untucked, paired with loose trousers, accessorised with black shoes. He had a partner,an older man, Mr Iyer, who did not make the same lasting impression. Mr Narayanan was in charge of the typewriting and shorthand class at the local college, where I was studying for my graduation.

A large room with four large windows that were always open, was his arena. His fiefdom. About 25 Remington typewriters lined the walls of the room, leaving open space at the centre. A nondescript table and chair were the only other furniture in the room. The table always had a stack of A4 sheet papers for typing. 

There was no real reason for me to join the evening batch of the typing and shorthand class. I am quite sure, becoming a typist, was not my dream. Quite possibly, it was my dad who wanted to keep his teenage daughter occupied during the evenings.

If you were born post Y2K, chances are you will not know what a typewriter is. Allow me to introduce you:

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Wikipedia description of a typewriter: A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for writing in characters similar to those produced by printer's movable type by means of keyboard-operated types striking a ribbon to transfer ink or carbon impressions onto paper. Typically one character is printed on each keypress. The machine prints characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the sorts used in movable type letterpress printing.

On a manual typwriter, each alphabet on the keyboard had to be pressed hard, hard enough to make the keypress - the lever holding the engraved alphabet - rise up with enough force, so that it reaches up to hit the paper. And with enough force to make an imprint on the paper using the ink or carbon from the ribbon in between the key and the paper. Every alphabet that got typed was done with a thwack sound. The keypress had both the capital and small case alphabets. Today, one can safely categorise this effort as 'manual labour'.

Then there was a complexity a new comer to typing had to deal with. The usage of the fingers of both hands to type. The initiation to this methodology went something like this: The fingers of the left hand had to press four alphabets from the middle row on the keyboard from left to right: ASDF - the little finger positioned on A, then the ring finger on S, then the tall middle finger on D and the forefinger on F. Now think about it. Our little finger has never done any real work. Ever. And it is substantially shorter than the three fingers next to it. It took a lot of effort, practice and mindful 'finger-training' to achieve this. Now similarly the right hand finger positions were semicolon, L, K and J, from right to left. It took about a week to achieve this feat. Then stage two: the same four fingers of both hands, had to reach out and position themselves sequentially on the top row of alphabets, on their respective sides of the keyboard. And stage three the bottom row. The thumb was assigned to the space bar - the long bar / button below row 3. This was only the positioning of the fingers on the keyboard and getting the hang of the correct fingers to use for every alphabet in the English language. This had to be the most rigorous of 'hand - eye-brain coordination' exercises. Hand-holding people and teaching this skill was Mr Narayanan's job. Quite literally.

A relatively smaller task to be learned was, the pulling back of the paper to start position to type out another row. The upper portion of the machine was a heavy cylinder onto which the paper would be held firm. It was called 'Carriage'. The carriage moved to the left as one typed on the paper from the left to the right. At the end of every line - and this had to be manually set - a bell would ring indicating that the paper had to be turned up and the carriage had to be brought back to the original position, to type the next line. .Maybe, 'dragged back' would be a better term. And slammed into position. This rather heavy carriage had a 'lever' - a sort of handle - that one had to hold and pull to the right, to bring it back to 'start of line' position. It would not glide back smoothly and made a clanking sound TTrreeeeiingggngggrgrgrg........thud, as it locked back into starting position.

Thats not all. 'Changing the ribbon when it ran out of carbon', a periodic finger staining and messy maintenance activity was inescapable. 

Typing mistakes-anything typed incorrectly-were fait accompli. Now the use of correction fluid. A Whitener paste had to be applied carefully with a small brush on to the erroneous alphabets or words. The thick liquid needed a few minutes to dry. Then the carriage had to be meticulously, manually manoeuvred to the correct position and the portion retyped.

The first few days are made up of unsuccessfully trying to type - I say unsuccessfully because, the pressing of the finger on the keyboard would most often NOT result in a print on the paper. The necessary force of action required just wasn't there. The occasions that the key press did make contact with the paper, the print was faint. Meaning that more force had to applied to get a darker print.

Mr Narayanan's  one hour class was noisy. Very noisy. 

The sounds from a typewriter being used by a new joinee would be something like this

- Thwack!          .............THWACK! ..................................thwik! ....tip....... THWACK! ............thwak! 

- Ting! 

- TTrreeeeiingggngggrgrgrg........thud

- Thwack!          .............THWACK! ..................................thwik! ....tip....... THWACK!

At the end of an hour of typing - the newbee  would have filled all of two lines in a page. And walk out dejectedly with aching arms, wrists and fingers.

The class was usually  filled with people with different typing proficiencies, typing away furiously. What a ruckus! Some job Mr Narayanan had!

The Government Education Department would hold half yearly examinations and issue certifications of proficiency at typing. A valuable document, if one's aim was to become a typist. There were three levels. 60 words/Minute, 70 words/Minute and 90 words/Minute. Duration of the test was 10 minutes. The text to be typed was provided by the department. The certification mentioned the percentage scored by the candidate based on the number of typo errors found in the final submission.

I got my certification in 1982. 90 w/pm @ 93%. It probably meant that I had made 7 mistakes in a total of about 900 words. I was a star performer.

I have never had to use the typewriter since. The advent of computers had already begun. 

Was learning this skill of any use at all? 

You should see me using a desktop computer or a laptop keyboard.  I use both hands and all 10 fingers. My fingers know their positions. Eyes on the screen and fingers on the alphabets. And very few mistakes that need correction. Not many millennials seem to do that, right? They seem to type with one finger of both hands flying across the keyboard.

The disadvantage? My handling of the keyboard can, by no means, be termed as feather-touch.

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Originally published in 2014