A Monday Memory....

Pica or Elite?

Knowing the answer to that question will give away your age, and bring back memories of...

Typing Class 101

The term "pica" or "elite" was the name given to the size of the type found on the IBM Selectric typewriters in our high school.  Pica typed ten characters per inch horizontally, while elite produced twelve. I believe pica was the preferred type size by most of us.

Remember the text book, shown above, which was bound at the top and 

flipped open to reveal each lesson?

At first, I used special typewriter erasers, which were in the shape of a wheel and had a brush attachment to try and fix my typewritten mistakes. Whenever frustration led to a heavy hand with the eraser, the result was often a most unwelcome and disastrous tear in the paper. Thankfully, liquid eraser fluid and lift off tabs were discovered by many of my fellow students and they became our tools of choice, frequently passed from desk to desk in the typing room. And we were simply overjoyed when someone invented erasable typing paper, complete with margins outlined in red.

It often felt like a form of torture to try and recall where the various keys were located and then try to reach them with my fingers.  My left pinky, in particular, seemed to fight my every attempt to reach "q."  Hope turned to despair as the weeks of classes went on and I fell further and further behind my classmates.

For our final exam, we had to type a "term paper" from the textbook.

Page 5 was my nemesis.  As I recall, it featured a large paragraph in the center which had to be both indented and single spaced.  Since any form of erasing was strictly forbidden for the test, every mistake meant you had to pull the paper out and start again.

I lost count of the number of lunchtimes I raced from the cafeteria back to the typing room to try yet again to type a perfect page.  I was absolutely flooded with relief when I finally finished it.

I'll be honest.  I never did master the top row on the keyboard - I still have to look down to type numbers.  And I think it took a couple of years before I typed by word, instead of by letter. 

But like anything else, the more I practiced the easier it all became.

If they had told me that one day I would be typing on a telephone, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, I would have thought they had been watching too many episodes of The Jetsons cartoon show.

Kids today....they have no idea what we suffered through!