Typewriter manufacturers weren’t ignorant of the fact that someone was going to be using their machines for long periods of time, either, at least judging by the features they added over the years, like the touch control you mentioned (marginally tightens or loosens the typing action) and features like placing springs under keytops to cushion the blow, or even shaping the keys specially as not to destroy the manicure of the typists. (Yes, really.)  And machines meant for offices are far easier to type on than their portable counterparts. When manufactures weren’t forced to make tradeoffs for portability, you really saw them at their best. Portables were meant for home and student use, to peck out a letter or a paper. For day-after-day production — typing pool production — a typist would use an office model.

From my own personal experience, I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo — the month-long novel-writing challenge — for a few years now, typing out the entire draft on manual machines. I have found that my hands don’t tire as much as I expect, and especially after a week or two of daily typing. My fingers have gotten stronger, and now I tend to punish the keyboards on my electronic devices. No carpal tunnel to speak of in either camp, though.

If I’m doing any sort of serious writing work, I’ll use my computer – the Typewriter is simply for small scale or personal stuff. And I enjoy using it and maintaining it.

To indulge in a little bit of florid, fanciful thought on it, it kinda helps me to write when I have a bit of writers block going on – the clacking and clattering kinda re-enforces the idea that words are like bullets, and with a well aimed shot, you can blow a kneecap off the world – to paraphrase Warren Ellis. All the more incentive to pick the right rounds and put them on the right targets.

;-) #accessibility!

A truly masterful piece of Industrial Design. I see the Olivetti and I grasp how Italy managed to resurface as an industrialized nation so quickly after WWII.

But I don’t miss using it.

Not.
One.
Bit.

I later found out that a 1946 Royal Arrow in this condition is worth ten times what I paid for it. Which doesn’t matter: it’s one of my most favorite objects, and I’d never sell it. That said, using it for bloggery–which I considered for awhile–is an invitation to carpal tunnel. I don’t understand how people used these things without crippling themselves.

-KB2GBV

Even though I make my living today as a writer (technical documents and training materials), I haven’t written passable fiction or poetry since I switched to computers in the late 80s. (One of my cherished memories is the three days I spent on that Royal cranking out a Kerouac-inspired stream-of-consciousness memoir of a single weekend spent in Kalamazoo.)

Maybe someone could come up with a typewriter equivalent to MIDI, so I could bang away clickety-clickety-clickety on a manual typewriter and have my analog output digitized in real time.

get to some real old school blacksmithing shit you pussies!