by Diane Holmes

“Okay class, we’re due for another two-minute typing test. Let’s see how many more words you can type a minute now than a month ago. Get papers in your typewriters, feet on the floor, and limber up your fingers a bit. All these preps will help get your best score,” my typing teacher, Mrs. Hanson, told me and our class at AIB, the American Institute of Business. When I graduated from high school, I worked as a telephone operator. After fourteen months I saved enough money for tuition and enrolled at AIB. I wanted to take courses in business – accounting, business law, business math, anything related to business. Shorthand and typing were included in the program I planned to take.

Mrs. Hanson, this cute, precious little grey-haired lady, knew how to get us motivated to type our fastest and most accurate.

She continued, “I’m playing this jazz record, ‘Twelfth Street Rag,’ so try to type as fast as you can to keep up with the rhythm and beat. Type accurately, too. Strive for few mistakes, and hopefully improve your score with more words per minute. I’ll set the timer and call out one, two, three. The timer will ring, as your signal to start. Begin typing when you hear it and good luck.”

We typed away listening for the bell on our typewriter to ring. Then we’d swing the carriage back manually when we heard it ring. Heaven forbid, if we didn’t hear the bell, and typed off the side of our paper. Worse yet, it trashed our typing test score.

This is how we typed stories, manuscripts, and magazine articles, actually everything for many, many years back in my era – the early 50s. Finally, in the 80s computers were introduced and quickly received, used, and appreciated.

After completing my courses at AIB I applied for and got a job at a company that produced 16mm films and developed film in their laboratory. One of my bosses wrote scripts for different kinds of films including promotional ones, but the one I remember most was a personal story we did for Mr. Meredith, President of Meredith Publishing, and his son. They brought in several reels of 16mm film they shot when they traveled on an African Safari, a trip almost unheard of during that time by the average person. They wanted a personal film put together with a script to go with it. My boss went through the film and dictated the scenes. I typed the descriptions, and he wrote the script to match the pictures.

I typed that script so many times with several copies. Back then, making copies was torture. You had to use the purple carbon paper between each copy you wanted to make. If you made a mistake, it was murder! You had to start at the last copy, erase that, put in a little white piece of paper so when you went to correct the next copy, it wouldn’t smudge the one you just corrected. You continued this process until every copy was erased. Then you continued typing, correcting mistakes in this manner.

I had to type and retype the script/manuscript so many times. When we finalized everything I thought I had been on that safari, too, with the lions, tigers, wildebeests, and elephants.

How many writers/authors use these kinds of typewriters today? I bet not one. What great progress we’ve made in the field of communication through the use of computers. Now, when you are typing away and you make a mistake, it’s a piece of cake to correct. If you decide you want to move a paragraph from the middle of your manuscript to the beginning, you just highlight it, press cut, move to where you want it, and paste. There it is right where you want it. You don’t have to retype the whole manuscript.

Computers have quickened the writing process and made possible getting a manuscript completed and off to agents, editors, and publishers in far less time. And think of the time writers/authors save sending completed manuscripts over the internet. Back a few decades, manuscripts were sent via the post office. Imagine all the time it took getting the hard copy from writer to those for whom it was intended.

I could point out more functions of computers that make writing easier and quicker for completing a manuscript, magazine article, or any writing for publishing. The time saved comparing it to that old clunky typewriter is unbelievable. But some people still like the sound and feel of an old typewriter, and bless them for it.

Maybe writers/authors should be more appreciative of what we have at our fingertips today. We take so much for granted, but we did not always have the computer. Think of the great authors/writers from many years ago and what they had to go through to get their manuscripts typed, retyped, typed again when changes were made or paragraphs moved around. We should stop once in a while and thank God for this age we live in now, and how easy it is to use the computers we have at our access instead of the ancient typewriters.

But there are many other good uses for those treasured metal pieces. They’re used beautifully as pictures on the blog sites, websites, even as our Word Weavers header. The pictures bring back fond memories, and the machines served their purpose well during the earlier years. Thank God, though, they were replaced with computers!

Diane Holmes is a wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother and Iowa author who enjoys writing in her retirement. Her first novel, Two Sisters’ Secret, a historical fiction story about the immigration experience in Iowa and based on Grandma Bernadine’s life, was published and released in May of 2020. Diane works now on another story, a memoir, and just recently started blogging.

Diane was born on a farm in Iowa, attended schools in that area then studied at the American Institute American of Business (AIB) in Des Moines, Iowa. After having roots in the ground for many years, she married Lyell, a career Marine Corps Officer who flew helicopters and fighter jets, and made their home in many states, going from duty station to duty station, They raised two daughters and a son, all of whom they are very proud.

Diane and her husband returned to their roots in Iowa and now live near Des Moines. They enjoy special times with their daughter, son, daughter-in-law, son-in-law, five grandsons and two granddaughters – all living throughout the US. They cherished the time they had with their daughter, an angel looking down on them now from heaven.