You've Come a Long Way, Baby!
My friend MJ was reminiscing about typewriters and word processors. While I was typing a response I figured it was long enough for my own post....
I learned to type on a manual and an IBM Selectric II. We had to take turns using the electric typewriters then since there were only two or three in the room. I remember finding it so hard to push down those manual keys. My chair was in a corner and I was surrounded by three football players who loved to torture me, the class geek. The Vietnamese typing teacher would shout, "MEEESTOR STEEEEVE TAAAHMIS, WOULD JU PLEEASE CALM DOWN!) Maybe that's why I am such a fast typist now (so I could get my work done quickly and get out of there.) My elementary students think it amazing. "Mrs. Victory, how do you type without looking at the keys?" LOL. If they only knew.
Note: I still remember those boys and run into them occasionally around town. All three graduated to become police officers. I actually dated one. Imagine that.
In college I used my first computer, but it was only to input numbers for a number crunching program in a statistics class. (Hated that class.)
My parents bought me a very nice Brother electric typewriter that would erase the mistakes you made on the page just by hitting the backspace button. It just lifted the ink off the page! I went through a lot of correction tape. My brother got the one that would show you what you typed before you hit return. Spoiled kid! :-)
Upon graduation my first real job involved data input, but I still couldn't type. But I got really good at pushing that F10 button to save my work.
During graduate school, I worked in a library where was I exposed to my first real computer. I got to learn WordPerfect. F10 and I became reacquainted. From that point on I became the typing whiz I am today.
MJ also was talking about research. At the library, that was my main job. I worked in the Periodicals Department. Students would come in having no clue where to start their research and would have to look up magazines in a book called the Periodical Index. The only person that was allowed to look things up on the computer was our librarian. This was before the real world wide web, a la Al Gore. She would have to log into different databases and it cost money to do it, so people had to pay her to do their research.
I laugh now at how far technology has come and wonder where the future of technology will take us. I look back at my high school self who would have never walked into a computer class. That was too high tech for me. Yet, here I sit at my computer in my jammies posting a blog just because I can.
Will we really get those flying cars? I hope not. I have a hard enough time driving as it is.
I learned to type on a manual and an IBM Selectric II. We had to take turns using the electric typewriters then since there were only two or three in the room. I remember finding it so hard to push down those manual keys. My chair was in a corner and I was surrounded by three football players who loved to torture me, the class geek. The Vietnamese typing teacher would shout, "MEEESTOR STEEEEVE TAAAHMIS, WOULD JU PLEEASE CALM DOWN!) Maybe that's why I am such a fast typist now (so I could get my work done quickly and get out of there.) My elementary students think it amazing. "Mrs. Victory, how do you type without looking at the keys?" LOL. If they only knew.
Note: I still remember those boys and run into them occasionally around town. All three graduated to become police officers. I actually dated one. Imagine that.
In college I used my first computer, but it was only to input numbers for a number crunching program in a statistics class. (Hated that class.)
My parents bought me a very nice Brother electric typewriter that would erase the mistakes you made on the page just by hitting the backspace button. It just lifted the ink off the page! I went through a lot of correction tape. My brother got the one that would show you what you typed before you hit return. Spoiled kid! :-)
Upon graduation my first real job involved data input, but I still couldn't type. But I got really good at pushing that F10 button to save my work.
During graduate school, I worked in a library where was I exposed to my first real computer. I got to learn WordPerfect. F10 and I became reacquainted. From that point on I became the typing whiz I am today.
MJ also was talking about research. At the library, that was my main job. I worked in the Periodicals Department. Students would come in having no clue where to start their research and would have to look up magazines in a book called the Periodical Index. The only person that was allowed to look things up on the computer was our librarian. This was before the real world wide web, a la Al Gore. She would have to log into different databases and it cost money to do it, so people had to pay her to do their research.
I laugh now at how far technology has come and wonder where the future of technology will take us. I look back at my high school self who would have never walked into a computer class. That was too high tech for me. Yet, here I sit at my computer in my jammies posting a blog just because I can.
Will we really get those flying cars? I hope not. I have a hard enough time driving as it is.
Comments
Just finished watching a program on TV called "Visions of the Future" narrated by the American theoretical physicist Michio Kaku.
According to him you had better hold onto your hat because flying cars are part of the future!
Peg xxxxxx
I remember those high school typing classes, too, and credit them with my fast typing skills today. My students are amazed to see me type and make eye contact with them at the same time.
I had an old Remington at home during my middle school years. That's what I used to type my very juvenile stories that I in turn submitted to my sister's magazines, Cosmopolitan and Glamour. Needless to say, they never accepted any of my submissions!
Thanks for sending me down memory lane for a moment!
gotta love the internet, now it's ok to be a techie geek ;-)
I love the internet, so much to see and find.Don't know what high tech brings us....it is going so quick!