Devoted to technical writing and technical writers

While I do miss the art of fine writing, especially like the one developed by Mr Austin Palmer, the hustle and bustle of today's world demands that one make use of a superior instrument.  When I entered Grad School in 1971, the first Smith-Corona typewriters had already mad their mark and were a common sight in many campuses, albeit on a limited basis. (Imagine trying to lug around the old Underwood or Royal typewriters in those days!) The first Smith-Coronas were a cross between electric and manual typewriters, and served their masters well in those early days.

But the needs of the office demanded bigger and more durable typewriters. Thus, I was one of the lucky few able to swipe a unit made in Europe away from my dad's office, to be enthroned in my dorm room to the envy of many a classmate.  Furthermore, I was able to bring along one of the first electronic calculators available, a humonguous unit that could do nothing more than Add, Subtract, Divide, and Multiply. A very welcome feature was the Erase function, which allowed the user to correct mistakes made.

But as I learned the hard way later on, this Erase feature didn't serve me well when writing my thesis. Since the average thesis has to be made in several copies, a mistake on the cover page reflected all the way to the last copy. The Erase feature was never meant to solve this problem!  Thus, the new gen of writers, weaned on computers and Word, have it so easy these days.

Sourced by JMJF