When I went off to college, the fancy electric typewriter stayed home. Still, Dad did come through with a replacement. Was it something along the lines of this gorgeous 1970 Contessa portable?
Was it this much more affordable option from Montgomery Ward?
Nope. It was Grandpa’s old Underwood. And I mean old Underwood. Circa 1940s.
(Found this pic on EBay. Hope using it here is allowed.)
I doubt this is the exact model. I don’t quite remember that “universal” logo at the top. I do remember this exact keytop, carriage, carriage return, and the bed of typebars. I remember the distinctive texture of the metal frame, very World War II industrial. I remember the thing weighed a ton. I remember lifting the front cover to replace the typewriter ribbon.
And I remember that the small “a” didn’t land right; it was always a hair above all the other letters in the line. Quirky, but adorable.
Everybody has to write papers in college. I wrote lots. As I mentioned in the previous blog-post, I’ve always liked writing. Never much liked taking tests, so I deliberately sought out classes where a midterm or final paper would be accepted in lieu of a midterm or final exam.
Writing papers in the ’70s on an old Underwood was a workout. You had to slam those old key-pads to raise the keybars. One would think the physical effort would have been enough to keep typing speeds at a minimum. Not so. The impossibly un-intuitive QWERTY keyboard was specifically designed to keep typists from outpacing their machines. Epic fail. I was hardly the fastest typist in the world, but this happened constantly:
Today’s college students write their papers on word processors. As long as they save the document file, they can generate limitless copies. Back in the day, copies were required, but a major operation to produce. You took two sheets of paper (or more, depending on how many copies were needed), placed a carbon between the sheets (making sure the carbon was facing the right way, or omg…), then rolled the whole wad into the typewriter carriage. Finally you started typing, and prayed that the pages would stay together, so the copies would come out legible.
For carbon copies, onion skin paper was de rigueur.
Modern word processors also make editing super easy. Automatic spellcheckers and grammar checkers may not always do their jobs right, but they are a boon to orthographically-challenged students who couldn’t construct a coherent sentence if their lives depended on it. Revisions, corrections, reformatting are a piece of cake: All Hail the Backspace Key.
When I was in college, long-hand rough drafts were the norm. Once you got on the typewriter, revising a single sentence meant retyping the whole damn page. As for typos — slips of the finger, accidental misspellings, botched words due to jammed keybars — there were a plethora of fixes.
Eaton’s Corrasable Bond paper was the ticket through the ’60s. By the ’70s there were loads of other brands; I’m sure I tried them all. With erasable paper, a bit of friction in the form of a pencil eraser removed the mistakes. Couldn’t remove them from the carbon copies, though.
Liquid Paper erased mistakes in originals and copies alike. Initially called “Mistake Out,” this product was invented by a woman (naturally) in 1951. Bette Nesmith Graham. Her response to the challenges secretaries faced with the advent of electric typewriters and carbon paper after World War II. Unsung heroine, terrific story, read it HERE.
I can’t for the life of me recall what happened to that old Underwood. Would’ve been worth plenty now…
Ah, well. Next time, part III : The Computer Age.