Typewriters, journalists, and authors

The first typewriters were in the main women, who were paid to operate the fiendish machine and act as some sort of amanuesis, as the great man dictated his thoughts.
This of course had all sorts of implications for society, allowing young women to earn a respectable income, and leading to the rise of the secretary as the prime late twentieth century female profession.
The interesting thing about the portable typrwriter and its adoption by journalists is that they themselves used it, hence predisposing them to better, lighter machines, and portable computers such as the Tandy 100, both as note takers and machines for creating copy.
Authors probably didn’t have that imperative and were consequently less likely to adopt wordprocessors unless they were fully featured rather than elaborate note takers …

About dgm

Former IT professional, previously a digital archiving and repository person, ex research psychologist, blogger, twitterer, and amateur classical medieval and nineteenth century historian ...
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