@dancinyogi
I actually had a manual typewriter. You really had to push each key down hard (and as an 11-year old, that took strength). My Mom saw I was serious at writing and got me a Smith-Corona that had switchable cartridges, one for ink, one for white-out. I really needed that! The keys had a nice feel. My recollection is that I wrote my first novella and my first novel on the machine. After the novella, I was a touch typist. Never took a class.
Soon it was on to a terminal with a typewriter keyboard and a 56K Cat modem to use a time-share computer at university. That seems like so long ago that my memories should be in B&W and sepia-toned.
@dancinyogi Consider my mind blown by these results.
69% of 1432 fedi votes! wow. I thought I was relatively old.
I learned to use a real typewriter (feeding paper, moving it around, making corrections) but at that age typing fast was not needed. By the time I needed to start typing properly the school had typing classes on PCs.
@dancinyogi I went to some manual typing lessons with Mrs Knight (her daughter Zoe was in my class) but it didn't sink in. Probably learnt properly 10 years after that, from Mavis Beacon (that was the name of the computer program)
@dancinyogi Very surprised to see things skewing that way – I had no idea the demographic here was so old! 😳
I’m a ‘nope’, although it’s likely that the first QWERTY keyboard I used was on a manual typewriter
I can’t remember where I was when I was using it, or who it belonged to, but I do remember typing Italian* on it, which probably dates it to the late ’70s
Saying I learned to type on it would be a stretch though! 😊
My first computer was a ZX81 (the MK14 and ZX80 had been way too expensive!)
I obviously didn’t learn to type on that! 😂
I probably got used to typing reasonably quickly on a neighbour’s CBM 8032, though never ‘properly’
At some point later, I did try to learn ‘proper’ touch-typing, and that influenced my current technique slightly, but like my piano-playing technique, it’s a bit make-do-and-mend! 😊
*Well, what I thought was Italian. I was actually just doing word-by-word translations of English sentences using an English–Italian dictionary. (This was before I’d studied any languages at school.)
@dancinyogi I should clarify... I did a lot of typing on electric typewriters as a kid, but I didn't truly learn to type until my second or third computer. 🙂
@dancinyogi I worked in an office and we had a high school intern for a few weeks who had no idea how to deal with the typewriter. And that was 30 years ago!! 🤣
Most of what we did was on computers, but there were some things we had to type on metal labels (to stick on RVs bound for certain states) that still needed an impact device. 🤷♀️
@dancinyogi I've used type writers but really learned to type on a pc. Wordstar! Old school typewriters with the lever swinging like a catapult to smack a single letter, definitely a whole different feeling.
I used an IBM Model 029 keypunch and it’s Burroughs equivalent before I could type, which convinced me to register for a commercial typing class in my senior year of high school. We used brand new typewriters from a mfg in the German Democratic Republic, our school district having tailed on to a US Army order(!).
@dancinyogi IBM electric while listening to the “Singles” soundtrack. The electric whirr of the body waiting to respond thunderously to a snappy key press was a sort of lyrical miracle of physics.
I taught myself on this at home when I was a kid. Borrowed it from a relative. I used it for years at home even after I took typing in high school. Those they were electric, (not the Selectric) with ribbon and automated carriage return, that sounding like the TIE Fighters in Star Wars.
@dancinyogi Hard question to answer. My first keyboard was on a Commodore PET, and I learned two-finger typing there. I learned touch typing on a Smith Corona electric several years later.
At high school my year group tutor was the typing teacher so we all sat at the typewriters during form time. She was lovely, always commented on my smile when I arrived in the morning. Made me self conscious in a good way, like, I realised that most kids in my school didn't smile. I'm still aware that I smile more than most people, at least socially. I think it's a friendly thing to do. However, I don't laugh much... I still need to work on that.
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