Now, I really am feeling old! I realise that whole generations are 
living now who do /not/ know what a typewriter looks like nor how it 
worked. Incredible and sad but that is progress ;-)

My father was a journalist so the typewriter was the centrepiece of his 
work and I played/used it too from my most tender years. I knew all the 
bells and whistles, and all the smart tricks you could do with them. 
Later, at university, I typed my reports on my own typewriter. And then, 
during the early years at the Geological Survey, we wrote all the drafts 
of our reports and books in the same way. You know where the expression 
"cut-and-glue" comes from? Exactly! Writing books was writing (by hand) 
-> typing -> emending with pen and and ink -> cutting -> glueing -> 
typing again, and again, and again. We also had a nice lady who would 
help with the typing of course, whose typing errors we had then to 
correct again with pen and ink, and so on... ;-)

The coming of text editors on a central main frame computer you could 
reach by /dialling/ a phone number on your phone then changed the world 
for ever for us...

...but I suppose even that has been lost from memory and experience.

Thomas

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> On 22/12/2014 03:04 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:
>
>> IBM Selectric typewriter.
>
> Does that mean you have to change the golfball for each individual
> character? (And is that how the subscripts and superscripts work?)

No.  You just select a ball that has regular letters and math symbols. 
(each ball had 72 characters, IIRC.)

Super/subscript was done with a different lever or key that raised or 
lowered the key slightly.  Many typewriters - even the kiddie one I ah 
when I was but a wee lad - had that option.  and for those that didn't 
you simply rolled the sheet up or down using the big rollers at the 
back, and then put the sheet back in place to continue typing.

Now, before you say: "but that was a lot of work"  We were used to it as 
we had to do it whenever we needed to correct a mistake and apply 
white-out.

>
> I presume the underlining is done by hand with a ruler.

Probably.  You could return the carriage to the left (hence the name 
"carriage return" for \r) and type over the words that needed 
underlining with the underline symbol, as well, but if you needed to 
underline a big portion of the line, it was easier to use a black pen 
and a ruler.


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/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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> Now, I really am feeling old! I realise that whole generations are
> living now who do /not/ know what a typewriter looks like nor how it
> worked. Incredible and sad but that is progress ;-)
>
> My father was a journalist so the typewriter was the centrepiece of his
> work and I played/used it too from my most tender years. I knew all the
> bells and whistles, and all the smart tricks you could do with them.
> Later, at university, I typed my reports on my own typewriter. And then,
> during the early years at the Geological Survey, we wrote all the drafts
> of our reports and books in the same way. You know where the expression
> "cut-and-glue" comes from? Exactly! Writing books was writing (by hand)
> -> typing -> emending with pen and and ink -> cutting -> glueing ->
> typing again, and again, and again. We also had a nice lady who would
> help with the typing of course, whose typing errors we had then to
> correct again with pen and ink, and so on... ;-)
>
> The coming of text editors on a central main frame computer you could
> reach by /dialling/ a phone number on your phone then changed the world
> for ever for us...
>
> ...but I suppose even that has been lost from memory and experience.
>
> Thomas
>

I don't believe a single bit of it.  You're just pulling our leg.  Next 
thing you're going to tell us you had to stand up and walk to the tv to 
change the channel!

Sheesh! old folks with their made up stories to make us feel bad!
-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
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/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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On 23-12-2014 15:43, Francois Labreque wrote:
> I don't believe a single bit of it.  You're just pulling our leg.  Next
> thing you're going to tell us you had to stand up and walk to the tv to
> change the channel!
>
> Sheesh! old folks with their made up stories to make us feel bad!

Ha! My lad! What do you know! I remember the days we had radio's with 
glowing lamps inside! And you had to turn a dial until - through the 
static - you could hear a /voice/ talking! /Music/ sometimes!

That was before we had television even... And they told wild tales of 
the past in those days too: about people taking a Hansom cab to get 
places, and horse-drawn tramways... phew!

THomas

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Francois Labreque <fla### [at] videotronca> wrote:
> I don't believe a single bit of it.  You're just pulling our leg.  Next 
> thing you're going to tell us you had to stand up and walk to the tv to 
> change the channel!

> Sheesh! old folks with their made up stories to make us feel bad!

I have heard stories that in antiquity you had to buy games in these
square-shaped disks. Square shaped disks! That doesn't make any sense.
That's like saying that wheels are square.

And seemingly they could only hold like a megabyte or so of data. Can
you believe that? That couldn't hold even one single HD jpeg image,
and that was supposed to hold an entire game? Hah.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 23/12/2014 08:33 AM, Thomas de Groot wrote:
> Now, I really am feeling old! I realise that whole generations are
> living now who do /not/ know what a typewriter looks like nor how it
> worked. Incredible and sad but that is progress ;-)

For what it's worth, my parents had a typewriter. They never *used* it 
for anything (as far as I can tell), but my sister and I had endless fun 
playing with it.

...fun, that is, until you make a mistake. For typewriters offer no way 
of correcting a mistake, other than to retype the entire page from scratch.

Now that I think about it, it's kind of odd that I spent so much time 
playing with a typewriter, given that I hadn't learned to read or write 
yet...

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> ...fun, that is, until you make a mistake. For typewriters offer no way 
> of correcting a mistake, other than to retype the entire page from scratch.

Sheesh, kids these days. You used correction fluid or correction tape
to white out the mistake, and re-typed it over.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 23/12/2014 22:12, Warp wrote:
> Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> ...fun, that is, until you make a mistake. For typewriters offer no way
>> of correcting a mistake, other than to retype the entire page from scratch.
>
> Sheesh, kids these days. You used correction fluid or correction tape
> to white out the mistake, and re-typed it over.
>

Don't tell him that. He needed the practice. ;-)

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On Tue, 23 Dec 2014 22:23:57 +0000, Stephen wrote:

> On 23/12/2014 22:12, Warp wrote:
>> Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> ...fun, that is, until you make a mistake. For typewriters offer no
>>> way of correcting a mistake, other than to retype the entire page from
>>> scratch.
>>
>> Sheesh, kids these days. You used correction fluid or correction tape
>> to white out the mistake, and re-typed it over.
>>
>>
> Don't tell him that. He needed the practice. ;-)

The phrase "the gift that keeps on giving" comes to mind. ;)

Jim



-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 23-12-2014 17:04, Warp wrote:
> Francois Labreque <fla### [at] videotronca> wrote:
>> I don't believe a single bit of it.  You're just pulling our leg.  Next
>> thing you're going to tell us you had to stand up and walk to the tv to
>> change the channel!
>
>> Sheesh! old folks with their made up stories to make us feel bad!
>
> I have heard stories that in antiquity you had to buy games in these
> square-shaped disks. Square shaped disks! That doesn't make any sense.
> That's like saying that wheels are square.
>
> And seemingly they could only hold like a megabyte or so of data. Can
> you believe that? That couldn't hold even one single HD jpeg image,
> and that was supposed to hold an entire game? Hah.
>

Well, the data were wood and/or cardboard so the megabyte was rapidly 
filled up.

Thomas

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