Today is a snowstorm (1-2 feet in Boston) and it reminded me of being stuck inside with a typewriter when I was little. In the early 1970s (possibly the Blizzard of '78) or so my Mom was typing up some letters for a while for my Dad who was trying his hand at small-business at the time. She was a great fast typist having done it for a living for a while in offices.
I was just amazed at the way it worked. It being an old heavy Underwood from the early 1940s, and totally mechanical you could see all of the linkages and all these tiny springs and hinge points. For someone who is 10 or 12 or so and stuck in the house with snow, this was just amazing to look at. I was asking my Mom all about it and she showed me how to type on it. The key-travel distance was amazingly long compared to the tiny movement of today's computer keyboards. I'm was surprised at how difficult it was to press each key down hard enough that it would leave a mark on the paper. My Mom won new respect for me that week for certain. Additionally, you had to learn to press all the keys at the same rate, even though your pinkie isn't as strong as your index finger, you had to press your pinkie smartly and your index finger lightly, in order that your Fs don't appear distractingly darker than your As. So all of this took lots of practice. Pretty sure it took me all day just to write one paragraph. I think I recall that one of the two typewriters was broken (just dirty) and I was able to fix it through basic mechanical cleanup and a bit of light oiling.
It's interesting how all things build upon each other sometimes, such as legos or in Tetris. I actually leaned into it and learned how to type properly, with my Mom encouraging me. I think by the time I was thirteen I was typing over 25wpm, and it's all just speed practice from there. When I got my first computer and got into programming in ninth grade or so, I was one of the only ones in the class who could type without looking, and so I was always done my assignments very quickly. Programming requires lots of special characters, not just the home row keys therefore the good self-discipline my Mom gave me to learn all of those really paid off when I first began programming. She still has one typewriter back home filed away, some where.
I eventually (decades later) did a lot of work in computers, so that influenced me. The fact that I did learn to type was influencial in my life for sure, I'm glad I got into it back then, before it was really A Thing. Today one can still find these 1940s typewriters in local Craigslistings for $100 or so. They are really engineering marvels considering the time.
