A lot of my work has been done on a typewriter. Not in a pretentious way, at least that's not how I see it, but mostly for efficacy, the allure of using such a mechanical and loud beast to singly type out each letter and see it imprinted on the paper in front of me by a rather simply designed machine but one that still seems so much more technical than a vastly superior computer, and my longing to keep my romantic view of writing intact. The typewriter had been in the minds of inventors since as early as the late 1500's when Francesco Rampazetto invented a basic machine to impress specific letters directly onto paper. Throughout the years, numerous inventors had thrown their ideas in to the fold and from there, basic modern typewriters started out as giant print machines and slowly shrunk into a more portable version in order to be used by a single person in a household or in an office. In my belief, the model of the modern typewriter was finally honed by Thomas Oliver, a Methodist minister, in 1888 in order to induct an simpler way to produce more legible sermons. He got his final patent of the modern typewriting machine in 1898 and basic designs of typewriters from there on out relied on his design, they just became more well built and much easier to produce.

A typewriter is a much more efficient machine in relation to putting my own writing down, solidified and finished, than a home computer. I used a computer to write down stories and thoughts ever since my father brought home a Gateway desktop in 1997 with Windows 95 installed which we could launch instantly or with a simple keystroke after initially turning the computer on, we could boot up straight into MSDOS. But even then, with this shiny and somewhat unimaginably beautiful machine that had been placed on an old and cheap wooden desk in our basement, I found that the pieces that I wrote and read over I ended up editing and re-reading and hating as per usual. But with this computer, I was able to easily delete these pieces, the process in cyberspace of crumpling the piece of paper that I miss-typed on and tossing it into a hypothetical minuscule basketball-rimmed trashcan in the corner of the room that was surrounded by all my other missed shots. But once I threw these discarded works away and went to bed, I came back the next day and the paper balls would no longer be there. I could delete my work with such ease, like it was basically nothing, and I would have no second thoughts about it until the inevitable day that I would check and realize that I was not just missing those pieces but that they were indeed no longer there. Now with a typewriter in front of me, I could discard these crumpled up pieces of paper and come back to it the next day to unravel in front of me and view with a new set of eyes as easily as I had tossed it away the day before.

Further, there is a certain allure to the act of writing when one does sit down and type on a typewriter. The click clack of the keys as one slowly types out the work in order to not press the wrong key on the draft and have to edit it with whiteout and pen, or can it completely, which also helps the writer think about which words to use and handpick the ones they thought were best with more actual thought put into it. This is unlike the keyboard and a desktop computer where, at a rate of 90 to 100 words per minute, I myself can vomit out constant, frivolous ideas that come from my head and out of my fingers. This causes me to see the work typed out onto the screen as an abstraction rather than as a reality. With a typewriter, the writer creates something concrete that can then be held in their hands, words that were physically there on paper that they could not just backspace out into oblivion. This gives me the mindset that using a computer to type out an initial draft of a work is the easy way out, the ordering of a moving crew to unload the truck at the new house because the owner is too damn lazy to gather up some people and coerce them with beer in order to get them to help move a couch and a few boxes. It may take some more time and cause a bit more strain and sweat but in the end can lead to a much more satisfying experience for the parties involved. The typewriter itself feels like a tool, something that is hung from a nub on the wall until it is needed for a specific job that has popped up; a hammer and a nail in which to hang a piece of work on and one that can be straightened carefully if the wish is for it to be seen by other people. A typewriter is there for writing and writing only. A computer includes a word processor surrounded by a hell of a lot of distractions.

In regards to the pure enjoyment of the loud click clack of the typewriter, it has been somewhat brought back into the mainstream now by the increasing demand for the mechanical computer keyboard, with the loud key presses but then with these come wondrous but usually obnoxious light up keys as well nowadays. One could date the first mechanical keyboards back to the first typewriters, but we won't be doing that here. The mechanical key switch that is the main drive of these keyboards was called the Cherry MX and was patented in 1973. It continued to be improved on through the 1970's but was finished and refined into what we use today as a basic keyboard layout by IBM when the company created the Model M keyboard in 1986. From there on out, mechanical keyboards continued to flourish but also started to become more quiet, more acceptable to be used in the family room by a single person while the family was watching that night's episode of Jeopardy. As PC gaming has had a renaissance throughout the 2000's and 2010's, the demand for the old click clack of the loud 80's and 90's keyboards has grown. Some people even want louder and louder key presses which I cannot understand myself. As I am typing this out on my Windows PC, I am using one of these keyboards, not for the loud and the click clack that I would get from my typewriter next to me but rather because it was the cheapest option and seemed like a good deal at the time. But there is a comfort to these words I lay down as the sound does give me a fraction of the warmth that I get from the use of one of my typewriters. There is something to be said about that.