Typewriter

“ At the small table, on a chair less comfortable than the one at the writing-desk sits an [Pg 6] old gentleman in an affluent dressing-gown of deep rich tones, dividing his attention between a bowl of “Benger’s Food” and the typewriter, at which he clicks with portentous gravity and occasional pauses in the fingering. He is evidently inexpert, perhaps through short-sightedness; but the typewriter helps him to feel, even in his study, that his words are destined for print and the laying-down of the scientific law for the generations to come after. ”

“ Those who write for publication find a typewriter practically imperative. Editors will not fuss to decipher hand-penned copy. The time it takes [104] and the strain on the eyes are too great. A professional writer must now turn in his manuscript neatly typed and in good form if he expects to have it meet with any attention. The old, blotted, finely written and much marked-up article is a thing of the past. Typewriters are so cheap in these days and so simply constructed that there is no excuse for people not owning and running them."
"I wonder who thought out the typewriter, Dad," mused Paul. ”

“ Such is the story of the early development of the typewriter. It has become so widely used and is so indispensable a part of the business office that it arouses the utmost astonishment to learn that there still are a few old-fashioned houses so conservative and so far behind that they continue to write their business letters with the pen. ”

“ With the more general use of the typewriter it became possible to write libellous letters with much less risk of detection than in the case of letters written in ordinary pen and ink, for the machine eliminates the personal characteristics of the writer. ”

“ The principle underlying such identification is that the letters upon a new typewriter are arranged at very nearly equal spaces from each other and produce a fully horizontal line of writing. But after being in use for a very short period some of the letters are certain to get out of alignment, and to give faults in their relative position, which are usually reproduced every time those letters are struck. ”

“ In process of time the lime decayed, and the inscription on the marble alone remained.
ORIGIN OF THE TYPEWRITER.
Many persons will be surprised to learn that the typewriter is not, as they imagined, a distinctly modern invention. So long ago as 1714 a patent was taken out in England by Henry Mill for a "machine for impressing letters singly and progressively as in writing, whereby all writings may be ingrossed in paper so exact as not to be distinguished from print." ”

“ The typewriter, invented about forty years ago, is parallel to stenography in importance. The daily volume of the world's business could not be accomplished without it. And, as in the case of all the great inventions, men do not see how they got on before it came. ”

“ Great improvements have been made in typesetting. Several late inventions largely take the place of the old-fashioned setting by hand. One of these which is much used in newspaper work, and to some extent upon books and magazines, is called the linotype. By pressing the key of the proper letter upon a keyboard arranged something like a typewriter, the letter is pushed down, and when a line of letters and words has been completed, and the words properly spaced, this matrix is pressed down upon the melted type metal. ”

“ It may, at once, be understood that anyone who is expert at the typewriter, will have no difficulty whatever in becoming a speedy Stenotypist.
8. Stenotypy dispenses with the use of text and exercise books, and saves the time (averaging from six to twelve months) necessary to acquire proficiency in shorthand, besides the expenses of a teacher.
9. As no pen wielded by a human hand can compete in speed with an ordinary typewriter, for the same reason can no reporter or penman write as fast as a Stenotypist. Stenotypy is simply shorthand operated by a typewriter. ”

“ If you have a real "story" up your sleeve and know how to word it in passable English, the next thing to learn is the way to prepare a manuscript in professional form for marketing. In the non-fiction writer's workshop only two machines are essential to efficiency and economy. The first of these, and absolutely indispensable, is a typewriter. The sooner you learn to type your manuscripts, the better for your future and your pocketbook.
It is folly to submit contributions in handwriting to a busy editor who has to read through a bushel of manuscripts a day. ”

“ The addition of the typewriter to the printing-press has given a new and horrible impetus to the spread of half-baked thought. ”

“ I have found that practising on the typewriter for twenty minutes a day for two months, namely, a total expenditure of twenty hours, will enable people to write faster, not to mention legibility, than they could after eight years of schooling and twenty years of practising with the hand, though doubtless it is this practise that makes typewriting easy to learn. ”

“ Nothing is more exasperating than certain examples of modern fad-writing, where one might as well attempt to translate a page of Chinese script. Despite the typewriter, one should endeavor to be a good penman, because the typed letter or note is inadmissible in polite society, being reserved for the world of business. ”

“ Her problem has affinities with the task of the inventors of typewriters, who, having to produce the same collision of inked type with blank paper, have found so many ways of achieving it that their machines resemble highly organised creatures of curious conformation, one having no resemblance to another. Some are annular and some are cubical, some have wheels of letters, some have letters that fly singly. ’Tis scarcely credible that they all do the same work. ”

“ TYPEWRITER FOR BOOKS.—We have for years had typewriters that would write on loose pages of paper, but the making of a perfect machine that could write in bound volumes has not been successfully accomplished until the present time. ”

“ On the typewriter she had to learn the alphabet all over again in a new order, and this was fiendishly hard. She studied the touch-system with the keyboard covered, and her blunders were disheartening. Her deft fingers seemed hardly to be her own. They would not obey her will at all.
Shorthand was baffling. It took her five times as long to write in shorthand as in longhand such thrilling literature 187 as: “Dear customer,––Letter received and contents noted. ”

“ In point of speed the typewriter depends entirely upon the aptness of the operator. For ordinary copying work, where much time is occupied in deciphering the illegible scrawl, probably forty words a minute is the average work. ”

“ On the contrary, the public will always be inclined to prefer the typewriters with visible writing, because by a natural confusion the feeling arises that the production of the letter is somewhat facilitated, when the eye is coöperating, just as in writing with a pen we follow the lines of the written letter. ”

“ You can get away with it for book manuscripts, especially if you already have a contract.
4. Letter quality. That’s typewriter quality.
A friend described my Microprism’s supposed “near-letter quality” as looking like “an upscale grocery store receipt.” It was a long way from a daisy wheel.
Still, Judith Axler Turner, a nationally syndicated computer columnist, says dot matrix might actually help her at times; she can print the letters larger than regular typewritten characters. Her manuscripts command more attention. ”

“ Fifty years ago a skilled shorthand writer was rare, and the art was looked upon as a sort of mystery, and so formidable of attainment as to deter all but the most courageous from attempting to fathom its mysteries.
To write the latter extract, the keys and spacer of a typewriting machine must be struck 150 times according to Stenotype; and 344 times according to the ordinary method. To write the same according to Pitman's phonography, 221 motions of the hand or pen are required; Munson's system 195, and Graham's 193. ”

“ A man lacks something in his make-up when he is satisfied to be rated as a twenty-five or fifty per cent printer.
Tickets, altho only a minute part of the printing-office product, afford opportunity for the practice and development of art printing. In typography there are many themes and styles and their incorporation into type-designs is an interesting and instructive study. The compositor or layout man should know and understand these various styles, that he may be able to adapt himself to any demand made for “something different.” ”

“ Your writing hand will get so tired that sometimes you’ll wish some wizard would come along smart enough to invent a machine by means of which everything you think can be transferred to paper as you think it, without the necessity of writing. But as yet the only relief to the man whose hand is worn out by the amount of writing he has to do is the use of the type-writer, which is hard only on the fingers. So to help me in my work two summers ago I bought a type-writing machine, and put it in the great bay-window of my room at the hotel where I was stopping. ”

“ Indeed, the dust of battle has added to, rather than diminished, the mysterious clouds which envelope the problem, and we are tempted to seek refuge in an agnosticism which almost refuses to believe that printing ever had an inventor.
It would be neither suitable nor profitable to encumber an investigation of that part of the History of Typography which relates to the types and type-making of the fifteenth century by any attempt to discuss the vexed question of the Invention of the Art. The man who invented Typography was doubtless the man who invented movable types. ”

“ Dummy smiled at her respectful use of his name and took them into his own hands. “It’s that sport editor,” he mused, motioning to the final paragraph in the story. “I know ’most every one’s typewriting from comparing the proof sheets with the original copy, and he put this extra paragraph on to this story of your brother’s.”
He pointed with a crooked finger. “Typing is really just as characteristic as handwriting. That fellow, Mack, is always in such a hurry that he never holds his shift key down when he typewrites, and the capitals are always a bit above the line.” The man’s face wrinkled up. ”

“ If it be urged that the twentieth-century comparison should be between typewriting and print, we may reply that typewriting is print, though it lacks most of its condensation, and that the credit for its superior legibility belongs to typography, of which the new art is obviously a by-product. ”

“ Art is essential to printing; so are Uncle Sam’s specimens of steel engraving. The more art the printer absorbs the larger should grow his collection of these engravings. Study of art arouses ambition; ambition brings better and harder work. It reveals in the typographer the difference between mere lead-lifting and the artistic selection and arrangement of types. The boy who sweeps the floor and does his best is nearer art-heaven than he who sets type and cares not how he does it. ”

“ Any man who is not interested in his vocation is to be pitied. Unless his heart is in his work, a lawyer, preacher, editor, ad-writer, artist or printer will not be successful.
Interest may be developed. If the typographer will devote a portion of the time now spent on outside matters to the study of his craft, and especially the art side of printing, his work will become lighter and the hands on the clock will chase each other. The same concentration of thought now devoted to unimportant side interests would bring large dividends if invested in the study of typography. ”

“ My classmates, we meet to-night to prove that patient effort on the part of teacher and pupil has not been in vain; that our busy Winter has left us rich in knowledge of this noble art, and that, though oftentimes discouraged in our progress through the alphabet forward through the intricacies of dots and dashes, hooks and circles, and outlines dark and light, over these apparently insurmountable barriers we have reached the height on which our hopes and our ambitions had been centered during our daily pilgrimage toward it. So has it been with typewriting. ”

“ Well, it is difficult to explain. There is character in typewriting, just as there is in handwriting, only, of course, not quite so much of it. Every operator is liable to his own peculiar tricks and blunders. ”

“ Perhaps the best-studied case of invention is that of the learner in typewriting, who, after laboriously perfecting his "letter habits" or responses to single letters by appropriate finger movements on the keyboard, may suddenly find himself writing in a new way, the word no longer being spelled out, but being written as a unit by a coördinated series of finger movements. The amazing thing is that, without trying for anything of the kind, he has been able to break away from his habit of spelling out the word, and shift suddenly to a new manner of writing. ”

“ Example 355.—This card in Bodoni and Bodoni Bold capitals, letterspaced, with the use of a few rules, has distinction that could be successfully carried to other forms of stationery. The contrasting heavy and light rules blend with the heavy and light lines of the Bodoni Bold.
These specimens will convince both printer and user that there is more than “one right way” to design business cards. Typography is the interesting study that it is because, to paraphrase the words of Shakespeare, age cannot wither nor custom stale its infinite variety. ”

“ The plain, legible typography ably supports the strong illustration and attractive border treatment. By the Matthews-Northrup Works, Buffalo, N. Y.
Before proceeding with the composition of a catalog the printer should insist that the copy be legible, orderly prepared, and all points settled as to type-face, headings and position of illustrations. A dummy page should be planned and set up, and it should be studied and discussed by customer and printer before work is begun on the catalog as a whole. ”