Adam@Home by Rob Harrell for June 18, 2009

Scary, ain’t it??

It sure is JFri.

What’s scarier is I asked a student in our Church’s Study Buddy Program (age 14) if she knew what an encyclopedia was. She did not.

I’ll bet that typewriter is worth some money! What city is the next Antique Roadshow coming too?

My son keep my Grandmothers old typewriter because he thought it was cool. But he has no idea how to use it.

Actually, my first dot matrix printer’s main selling point was that you could use Underwood typewriter ribbons for the printer, so you had a plentiful, cheap supply. That was before printer manufacturers figured out to shaft you on inks.

Thanks to our family’s packrat tendencies, my teens actually have a manual typewriter, and have handled playing records (33’s & 45’s), 5.25 floppies, and IBM punchcard, and many other obsolete technologies. Kinda like having our own hands-on museum.

who knows , maybe adam could list some of his [?] collectibles on an internet auction site which will remain nameless

I learned to type on an old black Underwood. Boy, talk about a world of difference between that and my Mac. gocomics has reawakened my typing skills.

There are four times as many worthless, obsolete computers in attics with mice living in them than typewriters. Most people replace their computer every 3 years.

I am only 17 and i know what a typewriter is, as a matter of fact I’ve fixed a couple for some friends.

I still use my typewriter occasionally.

My dad and my grandmother both have typewriters. Oddly, my grandma’s types in Times New Roman, while my dad’s types in Courier New. Both, however, are electric. Weird, huh?

I love my typewriter. I still use it to type my envelopes at home because I really don’t want to invest in a printer right now. I love technology but sometimes the old things are just as better! I didn’t get it until the later part of the 90’s when I was about to graduate high school, so it makes me feel great to still have one.

I have an old portable manual (not electric) typewriter which I can’t bear to dispose of. One day I tried to use it, and I discovered that the muscles in my fingers were too weak! Compared to the typewriter, the computer keyboard takes almost no strength to use. I am not a speedy typist by any means, but my fingers can just fly over the keyboard. So I got out of the habit of pressing down hard on the keys.

I wonder if that would be true for an electric typewriter?

I learned to type on an old Underwood manual, when I switched to an electric in High School, the effort was much less. Had a very hard time going back to the manual. Finally gave up and bought an electric for school papers and such. Got a computer after college (really dating myself here). But I don’t think there’s a lot of difference in effort from keyboard to electric, some but not tremendous.

I used to use a typewriter, even when computers were gaining popularity, just because I thought that it was kind of fun.

Flauta, I used to use a sliderule when everyone else had calculators. FTW

As long as we’re on the subject, I still have my old Brother Electric - it was quite a deal when it first came out; even had a one-line memory to correct a mistake before you printed the line. What wonders! Of course, you can’t get typewriter ribbon for it anymore, and my computer and IBM Laserjet are just a tad more useful. I also still have MY old physics sliderule, and a collection of 78s, 45s, and 33s, along with the machines of antiquity called “record players”. I also have a 16 YO son who can’t conceive of a world without computers, cell phones and mp3 players.

I too used to use a typewriter a lot for work & play. Then one day I discovered that the cassette tape & correction tape weren’t being sold anymore. You can tap the keyboard all you want, but with no ribbon to print with the paper stays blank. Take away the peripheral supplies & people are forced to change.

I remember when the IBM Selectric was the greatest thing since sliced bread. In the days when I was going to school at night, rather than doing book reports on the old manual body builder model at home, I took them in to the office and typed on one of these new electric easy-type machines. By comparison, the marvel of its time designed of course to improve productivity.

Now we’re inventing a whole new language for text messaging. How we’ve devolved.

i just got this current computer last august, after owning an Amiga 500 for 23 years (to play old games that weren’t old when i bought them), and only got on line in March. anyone who thinks they’re a Luddite for keeping around old technology is right up my alley. (i have around 1000 LP records in my collection along with a bunch of cassette tapes, and only started buying CD’s in 2005 when the car i bought no longer had tape decks available - even as an option)