Now that I've been a manual typist for these last seven or so years, I've often been struck by the similarities between manual typewriters and other manual crafts like manual film photography.
In the case of writing with the intent of outputting to printed text, certainly the interface of computer, software and printer does a neater, quicker, more accurate job. But a manual, especially a portable, dispenses with the intermediaries of computer and software and instead mechanically couples the keyboard directly to a printer mechanism. This has the effect of being similar to other forms of mechanical letterpress, where the qualities of the paper and mechanical imprint all combine to form a typewritten aesthetic.
A photographic analogy would be shooting with direct positive paper, or instant film, with few intermediary steps between pressing the shutter and seeing a print.
In this post-typewriter age, the function of typewriters is no longer to serve as the office workhorse, and so a direct comparison between typing by computer versus typewriter are like comparing apples to oranges. I type letters to people for the same reason people like to receive handwritten letters. It's mechanical, but also handmade.
I do like Godfrey's idea of typewriters operating at a more "human" pace. You can indeed walk away from such a machine for a week, in mid-sentence, and return to take up where you left off.
I like taking portables on journeys, to the beach, the mountains or wherever. No electricity or batteries to bother with. This last winter I wrote a short typecast from atop Delicate Arch in Arches NP, Utah, with the Hermes Rocket, before a raging blizzard rolled in. Crazy, perhaps. But also loads of fun.
~Joe
Typecasting atop Delicate Arch by
Joe Van Cleave, on Flickr
"At Delicate Arch" by
Joe Van Cleave, on Flickr
