Tappity tappity tap, clunk, ching!

[andrewducker]

Over on Twitter Niall Harrison mentioned that he was surprised that in the first season of The Wire looked so nineties, rather than 2000s, and mentioned the appearance of typewriters as one sign of this*.

Which made me think about when I last saw typewriters in the office...

(Treat "1991" as "1991 or before", not that many places shifted away from typewriters much before then, AFAIK.)

[Poll #1721492]


*Ok, so he mentioned the typewriters over on FB, but I can't link to that, and as I'm in work I can't easily link to Twitter either. You'll just have to trust me.

Comments

[andrewducker]

It was summer of 1992 that I was working in a hospital, doing some basic IT stuff, and I was given the task of training some medical secretaries in using MS Word on Windows 3.1. The delightful method used by management was to simply remove all of the typewriters one morning, and have large cardboard boxes full of tech left next to the now empty desks for me to set up.

To say that the secretaries (universally in their 50s and 60s) were unimpressed would be an understatement. It took me about three days to get them up and running properly, and that was managed only by identifying the alpha-secretary and getting her onside by catering to her every whim (and writing lots of document templates to make the generation of letters easier).

[hirez.livejournal.com]

[x] I bought a pre-war Underwood portable for £sixpence because, well, I wanted one.

I don't remember seeing typewriters very much since the mid 80s, but then I was employed to fix their replacements so I was concentrating on the Altos, Superbrain and T-A Bitsy kit instead.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Mind, the polis were still using five-level paper tape in those days, so I wouldn't point to their office(r)s or fictional portrayals of same as representative of UK office culture.

[hravan.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen a typewriter in practical use since the late 80s. My grandmother stopped using hers about then and switched first to a Commodore 128 (that thing was like a hell magnet for me - she had to beat me off it - "it's an office tool YOU ROTTEN KID") and then she progressed to a 486 in the early 90s. She just barely missed out on the popular internet. She would've loved it.

I inherited her old Brother electronic typewriter and I used it through secondary school. There was something wrong with me, I think, I didn't start properly fetishising tech until my early twenties...

[usmu.livejournal.com]

A question: could you please stop using the same icon as my little brother? I read your comment and was surprised my grandmother using a Commodore 128 without me having any recollection of it.

[hravan.livejournal.com]

Errr...

No.

That's assuming your question is a serious one.

[usmu.livejournal.com]

It wasn't. I was hoping the be mad icon would indicate that. Alas it didn't.

[usmu.livejournal.com]

The last time I used one for personal reasons was when I learned to type 20 years ago. I'm currently using a typewriter to write labels for the files we're keeping though. There's just no printer that could take the labels and print them. Well there probably is, but the bosses won't pay for them. I recently switched to an electric one, but would give good money to have my mechanical typewriter back. That thing was just like word 5.1: it does exactly what you tell it to do and doesn't start inventing crap ít thinks you want to have happen.

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

I have never seen a typewriter used for work. The only one I have seen in person (outside a museum) was one that my dad brought home for my younger brother and I to play with; we had a Mac at home to learn to type and basic computer skills, and had computer typing classes at school.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

I've never seen a typewriter being used for work. I was born in 1983, and after doing the requisite fast food rite of passage I work in the computer industry. Even the fast food industry was fully computerized.

I believe I may have seen my late grandmother in the former USSR use her typewriter for writing a personal document or two.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Never. OK, my parents have one stored away, and I do remember playing with it but that wasn't for actually doing any writing just for being amused by this obsolete piece of kit...

[miramon.livejournal.com]

Range error. When I started my first job (as a technical writer) in 1984, we were all using word processors. Some of our clients may have been using typewriters, given we were selling computer kit, but we were already on 2nd or 3rd generation WP. I think the last time I used my personal typewriter was 1982.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

1991 was the year I finally dumped my Adler 21C and bought an Amstrad PCW9256. Not one of my more inspired buys, but it soon got traded in for a Macintosh IIci, and the rest is history.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Your pop-up starts in 1991. Please extend it back a decade?

Because the last time I saw or used a typewriter in a work environment was 1988.

(This probably tells you something about my work history.)

[andrewducker]

Yeah. Livejournal only lets you have twenty options in a range, I think, otherwise I'd have gone back further. It does look like typewriters started to go out sooner than I thought.

[coughingbear]

I had access to a typewriter for work in 1990, but mostly never used it - after that I started working in HE and was always supplied with a computer. However, until about 1997 we had a couple of people on the floor below us who were still using typewriters, and I used to borrow one occasionally for grant forms which could not be filled in by hand or on a computer. In a subsequent building one typewriter was kept, and as far as I know is still kept, with ribbons carefully rewound as necessary, for one particular elderly professor who was still producing books on it, one peck at a time.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

The only time I can remember seeing a typewriter in reality (ie not in a TV programme or in a museum) was in my cousin's room as a piece of decoration.

I don't think I've even had a chance to use one.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

My 'used for a personal use' in 2010 is sort of work related, and I didn't actually see the typewriter; some of the people who wrote into my place of work about the work we were doing last year did so on manual typewriters. I work with some people who have just finished an enormous consultation exercise, and I bet they have a load of typewritten letters too.

It strikes me that J might find a typewriter nearly as interesting as he found the analog shortwave radio.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

My mother had an electric typewriter which she used until I would reckon the early 90's when we got an Amiga A600. we The Amiga was thew first computer we owned that had word processing software that was actually useful, although it was more like a DTP package than Word, but you could use different fonts and text sizes which was just incredible. I remember we also had a colour dot matrix printer which noisily spewed out actual colour pictures.

Before that various computers had Word Processors. I remember that the BBC Master had a built in word processor of sorts, but it really wasn't up to much, and there were programs for the Spectrum that were sort of word processors, but we only ever had a tiny thermal printer for the Speccy that took paper about as wide as a coffee cup.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I learned to type when I was at school in Australia on an electric typewriter. That would have been 1989 or 1990. Dad used to use one to write to us because he had damaged a nerve in his wrist and holding a pen was difficult, again very late 80’s. I was actually quite a good typist. 100 words a minute at 99% or better accuracy.

That was the last time I saw or used one. I had a word processor thing at Uni and it’s been Word ever since.

Learning to type was one of the best things I ever did. Not only did I make more money as a secretary during the Uni holidays than my mates made as barmen during the whole year but being an “expert” with Microsoft Office meant I learnt how to use Excel early on and I am now an accountant.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Waves to fellow accountant!

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Waves back.

[tobyaw]

I was walking through St Andrews a couple of weeks ago with Beth (aged 6). Looking in a charity shop window she saw a typewriter, got very excited, and asked if she could have one.

I replied that if she practiced typing on her Mac, and saved up her pocket money... we'd think about it.

[zz]

my garage still uses typewriters.

before i had a PC (-1994) i had an electronic typewriter, with something like 6k of memory and a 1 or 2 line LCD screen.

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

I've never seen a typewriter being used for work. Even when I visited my mum or dad's workplaces in the 80s, they were using computers. My dad was a programmer (well, a Systems Analyst) so that's understandable, but mum was a teacher.

I did see one being used for personal documents, around 2000 or so... because a few friends and I were walking through Cambridge one evening, and spotted a just-about-working typewriter thrown away, lying on a wall. We took it back to one of our rooms and occasionally used it for the retro-novelty for a few weeks. I don't know what happened to it in the end; probably thrown out when moving out of the room at end of term.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

There is no "Never" option...

[andrewducker]

Yeah, sadly LJ's polls don't allow extra options in a range field. I really wish they did.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

Incidentally (and totally OT) I discovered that you can output an RSS feed from Pinboard and then use twitterfeed to transfer it to Twitter, which I am now doing, so you'll be able to keep up with my links again XD

[andrewducker]

Oh, cool.

Next you'll be posting them to LJ too!

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

The last time I saw a typewriter being used for work was when I was in primary school. The school secretary had an electronic typewriter in the office. I have never seen a manual typewriter used for work.

For personal I said 1991 because there probably was a manual typewriter in my house around that time, but I don't really remember it being used in anger after the 80s.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

I don't recall ever seeing one in an office - even when I was very small (early-mid 1980s) and went in to dad's work on a Sunday (when he was doing overtime, as Iw as small being in an office was like THE MOST EXCITING PLACE EVER) he was a software engineer and so no typewriters there. I suspect there might have been one in the office of my primary school at around the same time, but I don't remember.

We did have a typewriter in the house that I was absolutely obsessed with, but I never remember it being used for anything other than me messing around with it.

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

I can't remember when I last saw them used in an office. Sometime in the 80s maybe? I've been working since 1978 but can't remember when they went away.

The last time I used one was on a vacation when I took my grandfather's Hermes Rocket along so I could write a zine.

I have about ten vintage portable typewriters now, and a couple of standard ones, for no good reason. People have started giving them to me...

[snarlish.livejournal.com]

last time i saw a typewriter in use at a workplace was at a hotel in Morocco a few years ago.

we own 3 typewriters, one of which i'd love to convert.

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

wow, thanks for that link.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

For work? Never. Born 1971. Was never in an office until I started working myself in 1993.

ah, hang on, I think I typed up my 6th year Biology and English Dissertations (very slowly) in 1988.

[andrewducker]

Ooh - when I arrived at uni they were still pretty-much insisting on hand-written essays, was that your experience too?

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I don't have the faintest idea when my IBM Electric (I was never able to afford a Selectric, with all its different typeface possibilities) developed Serious Problems and I got a Brother Computer/typer with dot-matrix printer. (Put that down to senility -- I'm 82 -- or an inherent lack of chronology sense, as you wish.) I think (but wouldn't bet much real money on it) that I first got a computer (Mac, with MS Word 5.1a, and a printer) in about 1990, by which time xerography was sufficient available that the Gestetner 120 mimeograph was no longer necessary for fanzine production, and I never looked back. Well... hardly ever.

[laplor.livejournal.com]

My husband's office kept a Selectric for a very few forms that required impact printing and for envelopes.

I actually still have and can use an ancient Underwood (like this one: http://www.8pmdaily.com/images/20070129230831_underwood_typewriter_tehran_bazzar.jpg).

It's become rather hard to find ribbons for it though.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

I used a typewriter occasionally as a temp secretary until 1996 because they were our secret weapon for addressing envelopes until printers got better at doing single labels sensibly.

I assume the typewriters in season 1 were meant to look massively out of date because the point is how under funded the police are. Also, the pagers were based on a gang that were busted a few years earlier so they were dated too. The writers lampshaded the existence of mobile phones a bit making out they were seen as too easily traced.

[genre-savvy.livejournal.com]

I work at a public library in a small town. We have one typewriter. Old people like it. No one's been in to use this year yet, though.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

The only thing I've seen done for work on a typewriter was the grant application forms for the Australian medical council grants. They insisted, even in 1996.

I had a friend who swore by typewriters for story-writing, until 1994...

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

I started regular employment in 1991, and have never seen typewriters used at work.
Last I saw being used for a personal document was probably 1985 or so - by then, my family had a Microbee (Z80-based computer running CP/M) with a (dot-matrix!) printer, and that replaced the typewriter pretty quickly for us.