In Which We Give Thanks for Teeny Tiny, Light-Weight Technology
computing, work May 4th, 2011My team was recently moved to new offices at the university where I work. We’re now housed behind rows and rows of stacks at one of the two campus libraries.
Taped to the door of our makeshift kitchenette is this “Carrel Policies” note, apparently written for library patrons in 1972, where I suspect it remains as a reminder of how far technology has come.
To wit:
Did you see it? At the bottom?
OK, here’s the part of the show where we find out who’s old enough to have lugged a typewriter to the library to work on a paper or other scholarly work.
Also, how far out of alignment is your back?
Ahhh, the good ‘ol days. No thanks!
Stumble it!
May 4th, 2011 at 6:02 am
I don’t know the first thing about using a typewriter !
My cousin had a typetryter in the early 90s if I remember, it used to be ‘portable’ and came with a carrying case.
I think he may still have it !
I imagine a typewriter at a library would be very loud ! Imagine if there were even two scholars working at the same time !
May 4th, 2011 at 6:16 am
Can you still see Windy from your new location?
May 4th, 2011 at 7:48 am
I had a portable typewriter, some time in the 70’s. It came with a pale blue carry case. It was very compact and as light as my laptop if I remember rightly. Noisy though.
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May 4th, 2011 at 8:17 am
I am one of a few men at work that can actually type at a decent speed. Most of them poke at the keyboard as if they were trying to find out if it were dead or alive. And I learned to type on a typewriter in a class that taught this skill in High School. I guess I would fall into that category of Old. Yikes.
May 4th, 2011 at 11:24 am
i was always amazed by the carrels in my college and some of them had engravings of the person who had used it or had donated it. i guess it was a big deal to have a carrel signed out to you. ahh the bygone eras.
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May 4th, 2011 at 11:45 am
The only typewriter I ever had was an extremely heavy one from the 1940’s. I can’t imagine lugging it around. But I’m sure they got lighter by the 70s and 80s.
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May 4th, 2011 at 12:01 pm
This is especially interesting because the worlds last typewriter factory just recently closed it’s doors http://www.businessinsider.com/last-typewriter-2011-4. Now no one makes them anywhere in the world. How ironic that you get moved to a place where they have warnings about thefts of things that aren’t even made anymore. Do they also warn about not playing 8 track tapes, because it would be too loud?
Also, I too had a had a portable typewriter when I was a kid. It came with it’s own case as well, I think I still might have it kicking around somewhere.
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May 4th, 2011 at 12:12 pm
I had a Royal electric in highschool. Man, was that thing noisy! Several years later my parents gave me a SmithCorona electronic typewriter that could hold 6-10 pages worth of text, and I used that for all my college papers. I could tell it to print out my paper and walk away until it beeped to tell me to change the paper. I used to take it down to the dorm’s big parlor and write there for a change of venue. I even set it up in the tv room and worked on a paper while some big movie made its tv premiere. :o)
I never took it to the library, though. I preferred to work on my papers in my room.
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May 4th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
I, too, learned to type on a typewriter when I was 14, and I’ve been typing ever since. We are not old, just experienced!
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May 4th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
I never carried a typewriter into the library, but I did have a portable electric one, in a black case. I became a master of white-out in college…
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May 4th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
I always rember my excitement as a secretary in the 70’s when I got my first Selectric Golf Ball. Almost the same buzz as my first Ipad! lol
May 4th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
I remember my father having a typewriter in the house when I was little but fortunately I have never had the burden of lugging one around on my back all day, can’t imagine it was the most comfortable of things to do!
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May 4th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Jaffer — You’re just a baby then! I love the quaintness of carrying around a portable typewriter and paper. That’s it. I don’t now how people did it. But then, that’s what kids say today about us old timers who didn’t grow up with internet. Oh, wait. You probably did.
Lynski — I love that you asked that! When we left the old building, my heart sank because I knew I wouldn’t see Windy every day. But the good news is the clients I serve are back in that bldg, so I get to visit her about 2-3 times a week when I’m over there. So all is not lost! Windy still has me to check on her.
Babs Beetle — The idea of carrying around a typewriter is hysterical to me. But for its time, I bet every body thought “Ooo! Cool!” I like that you remember what color the case was. I suppose people learned to ignore the noise. But libraries are supposed to be so quiet.
Dave — I’m so proud to tell people that my husband doesn’t type like a Neanderthal. WTG!
sparklins74 –I would love to have a plaque with my name on it stuck to a carrel that students through years and years of classes had to look at. Our carrels are full to the max. It’s the week before finals. Some students sleep there when the library is open 24/7. Crazy! Did you ever?
Berryvox — Cool. I bet it looks wonderfully antiquey. You could kill a person with a typewriter from that era. In fact, isn’t that how Kathy Bates got it in Misery?
Keshyra — Aw, so sad. Now all that company makes is refrigerators. Don’t you just love the hairdo on that lady in the picture? Oh, man. Eight track tapes. We had a boat load of those and a giant suitcase to put them in. Remember that?
Ladybuggz — Your Smith Corona sounds delightful. What technology for its time! I used to sit on the floor of my bedroom and type out my papers. We never had a desk big enough to hold it. God, I can remember how crooked my back was by the time I was done. Boy, really flashing back here.
Linda — You know, I’m embarrassed to say I took a typing class in community college. Probably the first class I took so I could test the college waters. How weird!
Shadowsrider — Hated white-out! Globs all over my paper. God bless the backspace key, huh?
judy – I bet you can still hear the tap, tap, tap, ding when you think of it again. Awesome.
Suzy — You know, when I see the kids in our library lugging around books this week, and laptops, and snacks and drinks, I had to wonder if things really got any better in terms of carrying crap around. It’s like they’re 22 year old sherpas, for crying out loud.
May 4th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
I wrote all my high school papers on a typewriter but by college I had a computer that ran one program. That computer was archaic, even back then, I don’t think I would have any idea how to use it. Typewriters on the other hand are pretty easy to use and there are some days I almost miss them.
Remember mimeograph machines, when you got those papers in class and everyone had to smell them?
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May 4th, 2011 at 4:59 pm
Oh, Jen, do I ever remember that. I was a teacher’s pet and always got to clap erasers and go the mimeograph room and help the secretary with papers. They need to bottle that smell. I’d totally buy it. Eu de Mimeograph. $50/oz.
May 4th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
My supervisor despises computers and uses an electric typewriter. The office recently got a new electric typewriter from Office Max. The funny thing is how many people come to the office and have never seen an electric typewriter being used.
May 5th, 2011 at 12:34 am
Err lugged a typewriter to the library? I think I used the library in college almost before they invented electric typewriters at least. I think they would have been too noisy to allow at the library?
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May 5th, 2011 at 12:34 am
Wow, and that Carell policies still looks good, no torn or whatsoever damage eh. That’s good right considering the number of years it was taped there.
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May 5th, 2011 at 5:24 am
hahaha… lets just say … I didn’t have the opportunity for sitting on a typewriter. Believe it or not I felt left out sometimes in those days – unable to use one – or not feeling the need to use one !
It seemed even the little kids were typing. You know that feeling. LOL
Anyway… going from pencil & pen and straight to keyboard wasn’t too bad. 🙂
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May 5th, 2011 at 3:11 pm
I couldn’t even imagine lugging around a typewriter! WOW.
May 5th, 2011 at 5:04 pm
O.K., now I am really feeling old. LOL A typewriter just doesn’t feel that outdated to me. 🙁
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May 5th, 2011 at 6:36 pm
I’ve had several typewriters in my day, but I never lugged them to the college library. For that matter, I never lugged myself to the library when I was in college, either.
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May 5th, 2011 at 8:29 pm
My great aunt was a secretary back in the 40’s and not only had the portable black-case typewriter (the kind with the individual strike keys) she also wrote a mean shorthand. I used to lug that thing around myself.
Came in a black case. Can’t find a picture that matches but OMG you needed MASSIVE finger muscles to type on that thing.
May 5th, 2011 at 9:21 pm
Of course I used typewriters.
I remember making an error on the very last line and having to type the whole damn page over again for certain teachers. Then my father got an IBM Selectric that had an eraser tape that lifted off the typed ink, leaving nice clean paper. High tech! Geesh.
May 6th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
I remember typewriters well. Put me behind a keyboard–any keyboard–and God knows what will come out. For some reason, writing on paper doesn’t compare. Oh, and I should mention, I had a college roommate throw a typewriter at me when she was drunk. Thank God she missed.
Thanks for your post.
May 6th, 2011 at 8:22 pm
I am looking to buy a typewriter as an antique decoration for my new living room!!! lol 😀 These things are actually very expensive because they are considered as antiques! Maybe I can try buying one from the university where you’re working in :)))
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May 7th, 2011 at 2:44 am
I remember writing out first drafts all my college papers in longhand and then typing them up. Correcting typos was enough of a pain that, whenever I mistyped something, my preferred strategy was to try to change the wording of the rest of the sentence to fit in with whatever I’d typed.
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May 7th, 2011 at 6:50 am
Hang on, the mimeograph machine kicked out papers with purple ink, right? I swear I remember having the privilege, once or twice, to go down to the office to help make those copies.
I was in college from ’86-’90 and there were no computers, I definitely had my bitchin’ ELECTRIC typewriter that had a half lid so I could carry it around.
The lid only snapped on top of the typewriter so I didn’t have to lift it up and set it in a case each time I wanted to move it.
And. AND! My state-of-the-art typewriter had an LED printout just below the paper that showed 25 characters sort of like a computer. So if I had a typo, and I caught it in the first 25 characters I could fix it BEFORE it was typed on the paper.
Boo. Yah, gingah! I loved that typewriter. But I still kept a stash of little slips of plastic that had whiteout all over the back so I could backspace, hold it in front of the paper, type that same key to white out the mistake, backspace and type the correct letter over that whited-out letter. (Is that a word whited-out?)
Good. Times.
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May 14th, 2011 at 3:40 pm
I have to admit. I had no idea what a “carrel” is. I actually had to Google it. Now that I know, and now that I read that sheet in which “carrel” appears a thousand times, I can safely say that I now know what “carrel” means and that I hate that word.
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May 15th, 2011 at 5:14 am
They’re absolutely right, no one will be responsible for a typewriter theft! As i used those long time ago
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May 17th, 2011 at 10:13 pm
i REFUSE to believe i’m old. but, facts are pointing otherwise. i, like your husband, took an actual typing class in high school. and, i took a Brother wordprocessor to college with me – but it was ONLY 1992! that’s not old, is it? *hanging my head… pushing my grey hair out of my face… watching my neck waddle swing…*
but, back to this notice. how hysterical is that?! why isn’t the paper yellow?!
also? i’m still laughing that you called today’s college kids “sherpas.”
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