Typewriter Day

June 23 is National Typewriter Day.

Many students in today’s world have no idea what a typewriter is. I find it very amusing to see typewriters in history museums, especially because that is what I use when I was growing up. I don’t really consider myself that old! I still have my very first typewriter, It was a manual typewriter and not an electric one.

I remember when I was in high school, girls had to take secretarial courses while boys got to take shop classes. The boys’ classes always sounded more fun for me. Since I was college-bound, they let me skip secretarial classes and I ended up taking a summer enrichment class to learn how to type. When I went to college, my trusty typewriter came with me. In order to earn money, I even typed other people’s papers.

I remember how excited I was when I could afford corrective tape for typewriting. If you made a mistake, you put the tape over your mistake and retyped your mistake. There was white stuff on the back of the tape that covered over your mistake. It was much better than having to retype your whole paper again. Eventually, Wite-Out came into existence which was a correction fluid. You just dabbed the white fluid over your mistake with the little brush attached to the inside of the bottle cap.

When I showed my students my typewriter, they were amazed how the keyboard looked the same as a computer keyboard. When I let them type something, they were surprised how hard they had to hit the keys. When they made a mistake, they asked where the “delete” key was!

Have you ever used a typewriter? Please share.

Photo by mk. s on Unsplash