Klack goes the keyboard, blink go the eyes through the rose-tinted glass

A large part of my working life was dominated by the typewriter. The klack (sic) of the keys dominated all my various offices. I was in my early forties when electronics first intruded on an office life that had changed very little in the previous century. We were still writing in ledgers, typing letters (with carbon paper and a “flimsy” sheet to record for posterity) and keeping records on little filing cards. At the time, I loved my typewriters, just as I now love my computers, my automated systems and, of course, my digital cameras.

Now, of course, most people have used computers all their lives. They have little idea of what it was like to type one copy, hoping for no serious mistakes, which would mean starting all over again. And with no realistic expectation of incorporating revisions or improvements. You had to get it right first time. Now, we revise to our heart’s content before issuing a document. And, in most cases, documents are never printed.

Yet, there is just something satisfying about using a manual typewriter, and I’ve been suffering withdrawal symptoms for several decades. Today’s computer keyboards, especially the Apple Magic Keyboard which I use, are virtually silent. And the key travel is measured in millimetres rather than inches as on the old typewriter. To assuage this long-lost tactile and audiological deprivation, I perform regular exercises.

Klack: Typewriter lore

I keep an assortment of functioning typewriters in my study. There is a brace of Olympia semi-portables, the early 1950s SM2 and the more streamlined 1960s SM8, plus one of the most popular true portables, the Olympia Traveller De Luxe (which started production in 1969). Then there is my favourite portable of all time, the Olivetti Lettera 32. It was produced from 1963 and was once described as “one of history’s most beautiful writing machines”. Sadly, mine has lost its front badge. But it continues to work with precision and provides one of the most satisfying typewriter clickety-clack experiences imaginable. With its svelte profile and zippered faux-leather carrying case, the Lettera 32 was my constant companion on business trips before the arrival of the laptop computer.

Interestingly, my stable of typewriters gives me a choice between the two major systems of “shift”. Pressing the shift key on a mechanical keyboard causes the capital letter section of the type-bar to hit the paper instead of the regular lower case. It’s how this is achieved that matters.

The two systems of shift

There is the original carriage shift where the shift key raises the heavy carriage to meet the capital letters, and there is basket shift where the type basket itself lowers to achieve the same effect. Basket shift is much to be preferred because the shift action requires far less effort. Furthermore, it is more precise, with less chance of misalignment. Raising the heavy carriage is much harder work. And there is a danger of misfire — when the capital letter is misplaced on the line.

Basket case

Unusual in such a small machine, basket shift is standard on the little Olivetti Lettera 32. It is one of the reasons I preferred this machine over the Olympia competitor, the Traveller De Luxe, which uses the older carriage shift system. Of my two semi portables, the older SM2, features (a very heavy) carriage shift. The newer SM8 has graduated to the improved and much lighter-action basket shift.

Every week, I lift one of these rather heavy machines from its shelf and spend a glorious fifteen minutes pounding away. Time-honoured sentences such as “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” and “now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party” exercise most, it not all, keys and all the fingers and bring a tear to my eye. Nevertheless, I still lust after a grown-up “standard office” typewriter, especially one of the later Olympia SG3s or the lust-worthy Hermes 3000.

These monsters were the pinnacle of mechanical typewriter technology. But, even if I were to acquire one, I really don’t know where I would put it. These things are big. And heavy. And, sadly, many of these heavy-duty machines were destroyed as offices changed over to electric typewriters or, eventually, computers. Portables, such as Olivetti and Olympus models, have survived in far greater numbers because they were mostly in private hands.

The office-standard manual typewriter faced extinction in the late 1960s with the popularity of electric-powered machines, in particularly the revolutionary IBM Selectric with its futuristic interchangeable “golf ball” type head.

The Klack of the “Office Standard”

At the age of just 19, I was exposed to the “office standard” when I started work as a journalist on Britain’s leading national motorcycle magazine. Our office in Dorset House, near London’s Waterloo Station, hadn’t changed much since the early thirties. The mouldering and rather smelly antique Bakelite telephones were standard fare. As were the battered wooden desks and the ranks of dark-green utility filing cabinets. Carbon paper and flimsy paper were our stock-in-trade, with the top copy going to the printers and the carbon copy being filed for future reference.

Here is a little ditty composed by one J.W.Mattucks (né William S) printed in a local newspaper in Robinson, Kansas, in 1895:

It’s “clickety click, clickety click,” / Till the very sound of it makes me sick; / “Clickety click” from morn till night / And then in my dreams until broad daylight / “Clickity click,” my living to win, / Till my finger tips are all worn thin: / “Clickity click,” till my brain’s a whirl — / So sang a pretty typewriter girl. / “Clickity click,” with the senior pard / Eyeing me over his spectacles hard / “Clickity click”, with the junior pard / Whispering “really don’t work so hard;’ / “Clickity click” till my eyes are blurred, / And I scarcely see of my notes a word, / Till my frizzes droop and my bangs uncurl, / And I wish there was never a typewriter girl. / “Clickity click” is the only song / That rings in my ears through the days so long; / “Clickity click,” though the heart may ache, / Still the weary fingers no rest may take. / “Clickity click,” the machine must go, / If one girl dies there are others you know; / But when I’m dead, on my tombstone stick / These words, “She died of the clickity click.”

J.W.Mattucks, 1895 (alternate spelliing of clickety / clickity down to Mr Mattucks’s inconsistency, not ours)

The above quotation comes to us via Type-writer.org where you can see a facsimile of the original.

Our collection of typing artefacts

The tops of these cabinets in my office were occupied by a fantastic collection of, mostly ancient, typewriters. Some of them dated back to before the First World War and hardly any were of post-WWII provenance. They were truly antebellum artefacts. There were many Imperials, Underwoods and Royals, and even one fascinating Remington Noiseless, which had featured an unusual and small type basket with all type bars very near to the paper. There was much bodywork to cut down on sound. I was spoiled for choice. My favourite, which I snaffled for my desk, was the Olympia SG3, perhaps the only modern post-war machine in the entire office. It was a paragon of typing perfection, compared with the haphazard results produced by most of the earlier machines.

As a journalist, I was unusual among men in being a proficient typist at an early age. At that time, typing was regarded as a female pursuit. Every man in business had a secretary to type his letters and make his tea. More junior gentlemen had access to the “typing pool” which consisted of rows of women sitting at little typing desks, copying shorthand or listening to antique Dictaphones.

Long before that, however, the typewriter was hailed as a wondrous invention in the 1870s. A flavour of the excitement surrounding the invention can be tasted in this extract printed in Dublin in 1877:

We are indebted to a London contemporary for a description of a new and wonderful machine named the “type-writer”, and we can only exclaim, “what next!” The telegraph was a wonder, and is a wonder still; the sewing machine was another marvel; the type-composing machine amazed us next, and then came the telephone to startle us…. With Babbage’s calculating machine perfected, and the “type-writer” complete and in working order, there is only one more invention to smash this shivering universe into “smithereens.” Who will win the laurel by inventing a “thinking machine”? Who?

The Irish Builder, Dublin, October 1, 1877

Again, you can see a facsimile of this original article from 146 years ago (but with much more detail) here at Type-Writer.org.

The QWERTY question and the speed of Klack

Now, of course, every young person soon becomes a proficient typist. What is remarkable, though, is that despite the progress of technology, we are still using the same keyboard layout Christopher Latham Sholes developed for what became the Remington typewriter in 1873. Legend has it that the keys are arranged in a fashion that favours the most commonly used letters in the English language.

Others believe, probably with better reason, that the letters are jumbled up to discourage fast typing that would have caused mechanical clashes in those early typing machines. Who knows, but QWERTY remains as a modern shrine to the inventiveness of the 19th Century pioneers. I still fondly pronounce the keyboard as qwerty uiop asdefugikal zuksvebenum. It’s a sort of Lorum Ipsum for the age of the typewriter.

The little duck

Strangely, there is one character that was thought essential on the first typewriters and which fell into disuse gradually throughout the 20th Century. Initially used in accounting and in bill preparation, the little @ — as in “12 eggs @ 1d each = one shilling” — was all but redundant by the late 1970s. I often wondered why typewriter manufacturers didn’t think of something more useful to fill the precious top row above the numbers. Then email came along, and the little “at” gained a whole new life. The resurrection of @ is a saga in its own right.

“@”, though, makes real sense only in English. In other languages, it frequently has a name of it own. My favourite is the Greek usage, where @ is commonly called the “papaki” or duckling. That’s because it looks like a little duck, and it’s as good a reason as any. So I can be contacted on Mike duckling Macfilos.com. In your travels you might also come across @ as little worm, spider monkey or moon’s ear. See this BBC expose of more versions of @.

Those were the days…

All this pure nostalgia, of course. I wouldn’t swap my Mac, iPads, and iPhones for a mechanical typewriter, landline telephone or handwritten journal. Everything I could do in my entire office can now be accomplished on an iPhone, from bed if necessary, far quicker and more efficiently. Rose-tinted glasses can do only so much. But I do pine for those days of physical, tactile contact and the encouraging noises that typewriters made. The boss certainly knew you were hard at work, even from the next office. No chance of a bit of time on Facebook, even if such wonders had existed.

Another curiosity from my collection, again in need of a service and some spare parts. The Corona was one of the first truly successful portable machines, featuring a strange folding design so that it could fit into its leatherette-covered wooden box. This particular model was made just before or just after the First World War. On the front it bears a “Factory Rebuilt by L.C. Smith & Corona” but without a date.

Klack of the typewriter sounds again

All that is left of the quintessential office machine of the 20th century, the typewriter in all its guises, is the sound. Clickety clack.

With this in mind, I have just discovered a way of persuading Apple’s Magic Keyboard to simulate the sounds of the old typewriters. Klack is a native macOS application that adds keyclicks as you type. At first, the clicks are definitely heard to come disconcertingly from the speakers in the monitor, rather than from the keyboard itself. But after a month of fast typing, I no longer notice this dissonance. My senses have been persuaded to imagine the clicks and clacks are emanating from the keyboard itself. Perfect!

How you get the knack of the klack

One thing Klack cannot do is emulate the (with hindsight) enormous key travel of an old manual typewriter. The keys drop by around one inch as the type bars rise to strike the paper resting on the platen. This long travel is perhaps the least appealing part of using a typewriter, as are the frequent clashes of type bars if you type too erratically. No, I can manage without that. But I am now fully addicted to Klack. I can thoroughly recommend it to nostalgic types who spent their formative years pounding away on old machines.

While this article is a little off subject, I hope readers will find it a fun read at the start of 2024. Happy New Year to all our readers.

What about your experiences with the old mechanical typewriter? Can you tell tales of pounding on the keys, frustration over typos (and wielding of the Tipp-Ex bottle containing that liquid white magic)? Or, maybe, you still hold “carbon copies” of articles, theses, and letters from decades ago. Let’s discuss…

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You can find Klack in the macOS App Store or download it here.

Read more on typewriters on Macfilos

If you are interested in the world of typewriters, pay a visit to Type-Writer.org.

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