Nicholas Howe [03/03/2009]

By Nicholas Howe

The first thing to understand is that our standard typewriter keyboard, the familiar qwertyuiop layout, was designed to be as difficult to use as possible. This was not some long-forgotten trick of misanthropy, it was to make the typewriter work as well as possible.The problem was that all early typewriters were mechanical, and the mechanics depended on gravity. Each letter and symbol was carried at the end of a lever laid out in a fan something like the tail feathers of an angry turkey. Each lever was connected by a mechanical linkage to a key on the keyboard which, when struck hard enough, made the lever whack an inked ribbon and inscribe the chosen letter or symbol on the paper carried by the roller.All this coming and going took time, and a skillful typist could get ahead of the time required to cycle each lever. This meant that a lever going down could pass an adjacent lever coming up, and if they were not perfectly aligned theyd collide and no more work could be done until the operator untangled them.One remedy was found in our neurological wiring. The thumb and next two fingers are easy to work separately, but the last two fingers are not. (Try drumming them.) So speedy typists were slowed by putting several of the most frequently-used keys under their least-competent fingers. Theres also a trick hidden in the keyboard. Whats the longest word that can be spelled with the top row of letters?A more reliable remedy to the collision problem was to remove the human element altogether, to remove the typist from the typing, and this introduced a whole new set of problems. One solution was still lurking in a back room of a huge old summer hotel where I once worked, both machine and building now mercifully removed.The inspiration for this relic was obviously drawn from the parlor organs that were found in almost every well-mannered 19th-century household. These looked like an upright piano with keys but no strings, and two treadles near the floor were pumped by the musician to drive air through the organ pipes and make music. In this apparatus, the air pipes were activated with typewriter keys and the thing still had all its parts, but they were suffering from both age and mice, so a considerable amount of the air was used to make wheezing sounds without much happening at the business end.Nor was that all. The business end did not make letters on paper, as a typist would expect, it made holes in a paper tape. Then the operator would take the tape off the spools and send it to a shop in Boston where the tape was run through a machine that completed the parlor organ job and produced paper with words and numbers printed on it which was sent back to the business office of the hotel and used as mail designed to make departing guests want to return next season or, perhaps, pay for the season just passed, all of which may have contributed to the eventual collapse of the summer hotel business in New Hampshire. (Yes, I know that sentence is too long. So was the procedure.)Something like this sustained the international ski racing circuit when I was on the staff of the U.S. womens alpine team. My job was to be the link between the team and the on-site media and the teams home office in Utah. The basic reality of international ski racing is the season-long World Cup circuit. There were usually 15 countries and 34 events, with breaks for more races in Olympic and World Championship competition, and there was a huge and often rabid following in Europe. If the Austrian team faltered in the production of the expected top finishes, the op-ed pages of the newspapers would be flooded with editorials and letters demanding that the head coach be fired immediately.One collateral effect was a very large press room at each race site, and before I left for my first season with the American women I asked if I should bring a typewriter. No, said the home office, the local organizers provided everything Id need.They didnt. Every reporter and journalist covering the circuit brought his own typewriter and gave his text to operators in the traveling telex van, which put it on the wire with equipment that I did not understand. ("His" is not a sexist conceit, no country had female reporters on the international ski racing circuit.) The telex office was on wheels and it followed the teams with a full complement of electronic equipment and a staff of operators, one of whom was from Italy and had only two fingers on one of his hands and a wife who kept up a running discussion of what she should make for supper, all of which made his flawless performance all the more remarkable.Telex was the accepted medium of communication for all important uses, and it had a duplex system that made a simultaneous copy of every message. This was not done with carbon paper by the sender, it was the original message bounced off the receiving end and sent back for his inspection and correction if necessary. This meant that if there was any high-level dispute, the sender could not say, "My message must have been garbled by the operators."So there I was with every hyper-modern electronic device at my command and no typewriter. Then the work of miracles came to my aid, as it so often does. One day the whole press corps had gone on to the next race site and there was a typewriter left behind. I brought it along when I left and asked around, but no one claimed it, so I kept it.Not only that, but it was The Tomato, finished in bright red and so elegant that it was exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art in New York with a matching waterproof case thoughtfully provided for reporters who might fall overboard on their way to the next job. Ive owned numerous electronic word processors since then including the legendary but rarely-seen KayPro 2000, but the ancient hand-operated Tomato stands by in case of need, long since discarded as utility by the Darwinian forces at work in the press rooms of the world, but still unmatched as art.