70s Word Processing Part 1: The IBM Selectric

During the Seventies we all typed our school reports on typewriters, and, if we were lucky we got to do this on an IBM Selectric. The Selectric, a very heavy-duty office machine, was the product of Big Blue back when they had something of a monopoly on the market for high-end typewriters. It wasn't an "electronic" machine, like the ones Brother makes, but simply an "electric" model that used an interchangable collection of golfball sized elements, each with a different typeface, plus ribbons that came in a cartridge resembling a cassette.

The Selectric was noisy, and if you learned to type on a manual machine, it took some getting used to. Nevertheless, it was far easier to work with than your parents' old Smith Corona manual. For one, it had automatic carriage return at the end of a line, a host of type fonts available, and ribbons that didn't get ink all over your hands when you had to change them. Plus, hitting the shift key did not sometimes result in your getting half of a lower case charater and half the upper case.

Many colleges and libraries had selectrics that you could rent by the hour. I was lucky to have an old model at home.