[lg policy] Remembering the typewriter

[Baron, Dennis E]

There's a new post on the Web of Language: http://bit.ly/weblan

Remembering the Typewriter


Between the printing press and the personal computer, a writing technology emerged that spread like wildfire and then suddenly disappeared almost without a trace: it was the typewriter.

Typewriters began to appear in the 1880s, and they spread rapidly both in offices and at home, but in 100 years they were all but gone. L.C. Smith began selling typing machines in 1886 and was the first to introduce typewriters with both capital and lower case letters. A century later, the personal computer put an end to the typewriter’s meteoric success. Smith Corona, the leading manufacturer of personal typewriters, went into a serious decline in the mid-1980s and declared bankruptcy in 1995.

Other writing technologies have come and gone, though most stayed around far longer than the typewriter. People wrote on clay for thousands of years, and quill pens were a major writing tool for centuries. Clay is used for art now, not writing. We still use pens, just not ones made from goose feathers. And we still type, though we’re likely to call it keyboarding, because we don’t use typewriters anymore. Students entering college today may have never even seen one.

read the rest on the Web of Language: http://bit.ly/weblan
(and let me know if you prefer the new format)

Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-305-0067
fax: 217-333-4321

http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron<http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron>

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