Evolution of Typing

Today when I finished typing some lists for our Activities Director, I discovered that I had left something out. Then I complained that it bothered me because I'm such a perfectionist. She said she could handwrite the time. Then we got to talking about the early days of typing.

She's at least 20 years younger than I, but since she worked for various governments while I worked in private industries, her office equipment was very similar to mine.

I know this will be a giveaway to my age, but I must admit that when I first started working, my typing wasn't that good. On my first job, I used a manual typewriter and had to type proposals with up to five carbon copies. For those of you too young to know about it, carbon paper is used to make multiple copies instead of having the printer make those copies. The problem with carbon copies arises when you make a typo and each copy has to be corrected individually. We eventually upgraded to electric typewriters, but were still using carbon paper.

When I worked on Wall Street and had to send personalized letters to about 30 brokers, each letter had to be typed separately. At least correcting errors was easier, there was only one copy to correct, using Korectype which was a chalk covered sheet of paper which was placed between the ribbon and the paper, and you typed the error to fill in the spot. Then you could type the correct letter.

When I returned to work after being home for 15 years with my children, things had changed a little. We had a typewriter called, I think Memorywriter, on which you could type your letter, save it on memory, see it on a little screen and then press a key and it would type your letter. This was great if you had to do multiple copies of one letter. But, that machine was so noisy.

Finally, we graduated to computers. It was wonderful. One time I had to send about 100 letters, all personalized of course. That was when I discovered "mail merge", another wonderful invention of the 20th century. I could set everything up, press a key and walk away, answer the phone, go to lunch, or whatever I wanted to do.

Then there was e-mail. Another wonderful invention.

Now I can do all this in the comfort of my own home, type my blog, send it and just wait for you to read it. I love, love, love my comuter