Monday 16 September 2019

My First Electric Typewriter


My mother moved a week ago from her farm where she lived for over 35 years. After we moved her, the items which were left were put into an auction. Among the items, my sister found my old electric typewriter.

Electric typewriter!

Yes, an item which obviously shows my age. When I finally could afford my first computer I gave this to my mother who loved writing letters to her MP, MPP, town councillor and the editorial pages of the newspaper. yes, she had quite a few published.

Now this typewriter was the next evolution in electronic typewriters. On the bottom row is not only a delete letter key, but a key which would take out an entire line!. For a writer at the time this was an incredible feature.


Whenever I used to buy electronic devices, I always taped the bill to the back or bottom for the warranty. Here is the bill for this one.

You can see I purchased it in 1989 from Simpsons, a huge department store chain which since went out of business. It was expensive at $269.99. Yes, I saved up and paid cash.


It was cool to find this blast from my past. On it I attempted to write a novel titled When Oak Trees Fall. It was really bad but I learned a lot about story development and most importantly, keeping track of characters.

Writing on a computer or laptop is heaven compared to the old electric days. Always needed paper on hand, had to set it in the roller properly, needed to have an extra ink ribbon available.

Of course, the electric was a step up from this, which was my first typewriter. (I had to do a Google search to find a picture)


Okay, enough of spending time in the past. Time to get writing. Oh, I love my laptop!

No comments: