20Oct

On the Virtues of Typewriters and Pencils

• Saved in: Pencils, Technology & the Internet, Typewriters, Writing Tools
• by Chris Orcutt
• with 2 Comments

Here’s the thing with pen­cils and typewriters—they nev­er go out of date, they nev­er need updat­ed soft­ware, and they nev­er require virus pro­tec­tion.

Three years ago, I found I was spend­ing a lot of my writ­ing time mak­ing my com­put­er usable. I had an iMac, of course, which was great, but for a portable I had an IBM ThinkPad, which seemed to have been steeped in a stew of virus­es right from the fac­to­ry. I got tired of jerk­ing around with Win­dows, so I erased it and loaded on (per my friend Jason’s sug­ges­tion) SUSE Lin­ux. This worked well for a while, but then I dis­cov­ered I could­n’t net­work it to the iMac and was spend­ing a lot of time email­ing files to myself. There had to be an eas­i­er way.

There was. For com­put­ers, Alexas insist­ed (twist my arm, dear) that we scrap all the old ones and buy two brand-new Macs—an eMac and an iBook. So we did, and they’re work­ing fine. But as far as writ­ing drafts of work, I want­ed the speed of typ­ing with­out the BS of com­put­ers, so I got an IBM Selec­tric III. If you’ve nev­er typed on one of these babies, I urge you to seek one out and give it a try. A pro­found sense of solid­i­ty and com­pe­tence emanates from these machines, and each let­ter you type bangs onto the paper with a reas­sur­ing snap, much like a riv­et into a ship’s hull. But I digress.

The only rub with the Selec­tric was that it required pow­er, so I decid­ed to go even old­er-school and find me a man­u­al type­writer. One day I was help­ing Jason (a noto­ri­ous pack rat) clean out one of his 37 stor­age units, and we came upon an 80-year-old L.C. Smith & Coro­na. He gave it to me as “pay­ment” for help­ing him, and I added it to my bur­geon­ing col­lec­tion.

Then, recent­ly, the Smith & Coro­na began to fail (the peri­od key stopped work­ing), so I start­ed think­ing about anoth­er man­u­al to replace it. I’d always loved the ones Hem­ing­way used (Rem­ing­tons & Roy­als), and I must admit I liked the asso­ci­a­tion, so I bought a Roy­al Qui­et Deluxe from Mr. Type­writer. The one he sent me had the clas­sic “Lit­tle Old Lady” sto­ry: it had sat in a woman’s clos­et for over fifty years, tak­en out only three or four times to type a let­ter. It was made before WWII, so it has about 10 times more steel than it needs, but I’m not com­plain­ing.

The main point about writ­ing with type­writ­ers is that they’re an anti-tech­nol­o­gy tech­nol­o­gy. For one thing, it takes con­sid­er­able prac­tice to type well on a typewriter—especially a man­u­al, which you won’t be able to use if your fin­gers aren’t strong. This means that you need to write slow­er, and as a result you find your­self choos­ing your words more care­ful­ly. Also, since they’re only good for typ­ing, there’s no email, porn or video games to dis­tract you.

As for pen­cils, they may be slow­er (a lot slow­er, in fact), but they’re reli­able. I also like the process of sharp­en­ing them. (Think of Spe­cial Forces sol­diers sharp­en­ing their Bowie knives before a covert op.) If I’m work­ing in pen­cil that morn­ing, I’ll usu­al­ly pull out a dozen or so fresh ones and sharp­en them until the points could pen­e­trate the hide of a shark. When one becomes dull, I move it to the back of the line and rotate them until it’s time to sharp­en all of them again. For the record, like an expert wine taster, I’ve sam­pled just about every pen­cil out there, and if you’re search­ing for the per­fect pen­cil, let me save you some time. The fol­low­ing are the three best (not in order because each one is great for its own rea­sons):

* The Mira­do Black War­rior — Any­time they show a cup of pen­cils on a movie or TV show, these are the ones you see. Says Alexas, “They’re black, so they don’t stand out in a pic­ture.” Besides being pho­to­genic, the Black War­rior is round and won’t hurt your fin­gers dur­ing long writ­ing ses­sions (they were Steinbeck’s favorite for this rea­son). Also, the lead, while not hard­er than oth­er #2s, is more resilient, so you get few­er annoy­ing breaks.

* Sta­ples brand — Believe it or not, these are con­sis­tent­ly good pen­cils. What’s bet­ter, they’re cheap. A box of 72 might run you four bucks. Although they’re the old-school hexag­o­nal shape, the lead is nice and dark, and the erasers work well.

* Staedtler Noris ergosoft — Made in Ger­many, these are almost impos­si­ble to get in the U.S. When I first dis­cov­ered them four or five years ago, Sta­ples and oth­er places car­ried them. Then, for some rea­son (either they weren’t pop­u­lar enough or they were too pop­u­lar, out­selling the oth­er brands), they sud­den­ly dis­ap­peared. After going with­out them for a few months, I final­ly tracked down an obscure whole­saler out of Illi­nois that car­ried them and had to order a gross. But why do I like them?

First, they have a tri­an­gu­lar grip, so they’re ergonom­ic. Sec­ond, they have a rub­bery coat­ing that gives with pres­sure (soft), so your lit­tle fin­gies don’t get bruised. The lead is a rich black (although it breaks a lit­tle too often for my taste) and the coat­ing has an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing black & yel­low design. The only down­side to these pen­cils, besides their rar­i­ty, is that they don’t have erasers. If you nev­er make any mis­takes, you’ll be fine.

** As an adden­dum, fol­low­ing is a lit­tle video of me using some of my type­writ­ers. This video was filmed by my friend Jason Scott a few years after this blog entry orig­i­nal­ly appeared. It’s titled “Equip­ment Test” because he’s a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er and was test­ing out his new cam­era equip­ment.

 

• Share on: Twitter
• Pinterest
• Facebook
• Google+