Thanks to the clamor over the forged Hitler diaries, one almost overlooked entirely the news from Rumania. There, on April 28, a government decree took effect requiring all citizens to register their typewriters with the police. The stated purpose of this decision was to prohibit Rumanian troublemakers from typing anti-Communist leaflets, but anyone concerned with the fate of the typewriter will recognize a trend. It is going, this wonderful machine. It is on its way out of the world. Whether at the urgings of the Communists or the word processors, the device that has come to be called the old-fashioned manual will soon lie dusty in fraudulent antique shops between the duck decoys and the miniature spoons. "What's that funny-looking box, Daddy?" "Why, that's an Underwood, darling [gulping imperceptibly]."
But who cares, really, if the manual typewriter goes the way of the manual orange-juice squeezer or the crank phone? Progress is progress. It isn't as if the invention itself is dropping from existence; there are new electronic microchip jobs that automatically produce a thousand individually addressed love letters while the author snorkels in Cancún. Nor is there a great heaving nostalgia attached to the old machine. The history of its growth reads as excitingly as politics in Ottawa. Besides, people these days show far too much reflex yearning for the snows of yesteryear. Let the thing go. Indeed, one can briefly sum up the reasons for looking back with moderate affection on the manual typewriter and still not feel that the world is about to lose a piece of its heart.
Famous Literary Typewriters. Hitler evidently did not use a typewriter, being a dictator, but other writers have found it indispensable. J.M. Synge and Henry James, to name two. Mark Twain, who typed the manuscript of either Tom Sawyer or Life on the Mississippi (the matter is murky), became the first author to hand in a typewritten book to his publisher. Of his Remington, Twain wrote: "It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around." Twain also began the practice of double-spacing manuscripts, thus providing room for editors ever since to fill the margins with the words "awkward" and "Don't get this."
Famous Criminal Typewriters. In America, the most notorious was the Woodstock No. N230099, which was used as evidence in the Alger Hiss trials, although no one seems to have been able to prove whether or not the Woodstock No. N230099 was in fact involved, and if so, or not, what it did, or did not do. In "A Case of Identity," Sherlock Holmes exposed the culprit by examining the faulty letters on typewritten notes. Holmes explained: "A typewriter has really quite as much individuality as a man's handwriting." The word processor's criminal potential is probably infinite.
Memorable Sentences Associated with the Typewriter, a) Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party; b) qwerty yuiop; c) Miss Hunkle, please come in, shut the door and take a letter.