Typewriters, Cont.

I don't expect renewed interest in typewriters to have legs, so to speak, but I am grateful for the memories revived.

Typewriters, like the one that unrolls my blog above, engaged you totally as no word processor can. You were physically as well as mentally involved in the writing. You heard the clacking of the keys, the ping of the bell when you reached the end of a line, using you left hand to move the the carriage return to set up the next line. Sound and motion as part of the creative process.

Newsrooms were inherently noisy places, with banks of manual typewriters clacking away as deadlines neared. This was heaven to an aspiring journalist sweating in a non-air conditioned environment on Manhattan’s lower west side in the mid-50's.

I always had a typewriter no matter which newsroom I worked in. To me, that instrument symbolized an age when a writer communicated directly to his audience via words on paper.

We still use words, of course, but now it's all digital, including this blog. No more clacking, pinging or shoving the carriage return. Do I miss it? Not really. But it is fun to remember those times.

The internet floods us with so much information I'm concerned about its credibility and not only because it may originate on a hand-held device rather than a typewriter. It comes at us too often and too quickly with little time for substantiation. I take most of it with heavy doses of skepticism.

To be fair, though, I use some of these modern tools to muddle through. I just like remembering when the typewriter was a key player (pun intended).