Just His Type: A Love Letter to a Typewriter

The Olivetti Valentine typewriter, offered in passion red and featuring seductively modern stylings, is considered by many as the most sensual typewriter ever made.

Admittedly, that recognition is as noteworthy as being the tallest Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz. Truth is, typewriters will never be known for their sex appeal. Even so, the Valentine is a looker.

The Olivetti Valentine typewriter is a favorite among collectors.

Courtesy Wright Auctions

Designed by Italian Ettore Sottsass and launched in 1969, the Olivetti Valentine, is a hit with collectors. Its avant-garde appearance, coupled with a brilliant marketing campaign, was irresistible. Magazine ads called the Valentine “The Brightwriter” and an “anti-establishment portable.” In an era of unrest, even a hint of subversive was enough to seduce young buyers.

Sottsass suggested his creation was perfect to use “in any place except in an office, so as not to remind anyone of the monotonous working hours, but rather to keep amateur poets company on quiet Sundays.”

All very romantic sounding, of course, but if I were to write a love letter to a typewriter it wouldn’t be to the Valentine, which, even with its undeniable magnetism, was a commercial flop. No, my heart belongs to my first keyboard love, an affair that started innocently enough, many years ago …

There are 12 of us. All sitting bewildered in front of IBM Selectric typewriters, the most technologically advanced typewriter in the world, what with its 2,800 parts, revolutionary ball-shaped type element and space-age design.

With a responsive touch and a typing speed of 15 characters per second, the IBM Selectric was faster than any human could type.

Courtesy Anthony Casillo

It is the summer after my freshman year in high school. The first day of typing class, an actual thing in the prehistoric days of my youth. Imagine this: Kids, voluntarily, signing up for a week-long class to learn how to type. IN THE SUMMER!

Mr. Teitgen, our bearded and bespectacled business studies teacher, is talking breathlessly about the magical IBM Selectric and the lifelong journey we are about to embark upon. The electric wonders before us are incredibly responsive to the touch, he tells us, capable of a typing speed of 15 characters per second, making the machine faster than any human can type. This news does not bolster my confidence.

I look at the keyboard to find a jumbled mess of letters. The ABCDEFG Alphabet Org Chart I had grown up with had been replaced with a mishmash of misplaced letters. It was as if a design engineer at IBM had taken all the letters of the alphabet, placed them in a box, gave them a good shake or two, and dumped them in front of me, chuckling “Good luck, kid!”

The QWERTY keyboard was defined by the first six letters of the second row of letters.

Mr. Teitgen explains, patiently, that the foreign keyboard organization is, in fact, universally accepted in all standard English-language typewriters. The keyboard is known as “QWERTY” because, Mr. Teitgen says with a straight face, the first six letters of the second row are, from left to right, Q, W, E, R, T, and Y.

It is at this moment, as the room fills with the low hum of these modern marvels, that I realize I have made a terrible mistake. QWERTY? My summer school typing teacher is now making up words, and I have no way of proving him wrong.

With fingers in proper typing position I begin with a flurry … of misspelled words. I can’t even spell my own name because someone has hidden the letter P.

By the end of class, I stumble my way to precisely 16 correctly spelled words a minute while typing “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country,” a phrase first proposed as a typing drill by instructor Charles E. Weller in the early 1900s and one used vigorously by Mr. Teitgen. My efforts, much like those of Mr. Weller’s hunt-and-peck students of long ago, are embarrassingly slow on a machine that can handle 186 words a minute.

Introduced in 1961, the IBM Selectric became the most successful typewriter in history, selling some 13 million units before being retired in 1986 with the advent of personal computers.

In 1978, IBM held 94% of the market for electric typewriters thanks to the Selectric, which for more than 25 years was the typewriter found on most office desks.

I did not know this then, during the dread of my summer school typing class, but the superpower of youth is, no surprise, youth. As a teenager, I had an abundance of what everyone wants more of: time. With time and practice you can learn just about anything, even typing.

So, that’s what I did. I learned to type. And decades later, having spent my entire professional life in publishing, typing is what I still do, with fingers that now dance like Fred Astaire about the keyboard, thanks to Mr. Teitgen, a summer class and the IBM Selectric, a most un-sexy typewriter that seduced a young man by getting QWERTY with him.