
IBM Selectric Typewriter - CaptainZapp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric
======
hardtke
My father was a typewriter repairman, and his specialty was fixing the
Selectric. It was quite lucrative -- these things were expensive enough to be
worth repairing and were as important to companies as Internet is now. When I
was 10, however, we were watching the Super Bowl and the infamous Apple 1984
advertisement came on TV. My dad immediately realized he was doomed. He went
out and bought the Mac on the first day it was available. We brought it home.
I plugged it in, turned it on, and my faster saw WYSIWYG for the first time in
the text editor. The first words out of his mouth were "oh, shit." I went to
print the document and it didn't work -- the initial batch of printer cables
were incorrect. When we got the new printer cable from the store the next
week, my dad decided to change professions and focused on real estate.

~~~
leoc
What was the printer? It certainly wasn't producing letter-quality output.

~~~
leejoramo
As I recall, the original ImageWriter printer was much better than the other
dot matrix printers at the time largely due to the Mac software. The Mac
Screen was 72DPI and the ImageWriter was 72DPI. This was real WYSIWYG.

Additionally nearly all of the other dot matrix printing was done based on low
quality build in fonts. Send some text to output with control codes and you
got output. The Mac basically painted pixel on the printer, so what ever font
or image you had on the screen was accurately rendered.

Prior to the Mac/ImageWriter combination most of the letter quality (meaning
good enough for business correspondence) printing I had seen was done via
typewriters wired up to computers. Afterward, many businesses decided the
Mac/ImageWriter was good enough for many purposes.

Edit: oh, I forgot there were also Daisy Wheel printers
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_wheel_printer>

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charmcitygavin
A couple years ago, while working toward a creative writing/publishing MFA, I
found an IBM Selectric II on Craigslist. I'd done all my writing on computers
up to that point, but I loved the idea of using a typewriter for first drafts.
There was something romantic about the idea. It seemed like a more intimate
way to write.

Its owner was a retiree moving to Florida. He'd bought it in the late 60s to
write his dissertation but hadn't used it since. It had sat in a corner of his
office under its original dust cover for forty years, though he'd had it
serviced a few months earlier.

The first thing I noticed was the weight of the thing when I carried it out to
my car. It's a tank. The second thing I noticed was the sound it made when I
brought it home and switched it on. There was no mistake I was dealing with a
piece of machinery, humming, waiting for me to get to work. It looked great,
too.

As soon as I sat down to write, I worried that it would bother my neighbors.
My apartment walls were thin enough that I could hear anything louder than a
cough, so when I discovered that typing each letter was like firing a cannon,
it was clear that late-night writing sessions were out of the picture unless I
wanted to make enemies.

But I was right about using it for first drafts. On the computer, it's easy to
second-guess myself, go back, change things, and re-write too much before the
story is even finished. A first draft is supposed to be the shitty, rough,
inconsistent sketch of a thing, and my Selectric forces me to press onward.
It's awesome. Each key press is satisfying, each carriage return is a
mechanical thunk that lets me know I'm making progress. Watching pages stack
up on the desk next to it is a reward itself.

I still do my rewrites and edits on my computer, copying from the typed pages,
but I'm so happy that I have this monster machine to keep me honest and get
the first versions of stories down.

~~~
jseliger
_There was something romantic about the idea. It seemed like a more intimate
way to write._

I wonder if, a couple decades from now, we'll all be using some kind of neural
interface to interact with computers and someone will be writing (using only
the power of their mind)< "There was something romantic about the idea of
using a QUERTY keyboard and a machine with a 'monitor.' It seemed like a more
intimate way to write."

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nollidge
Just bought myself a Seletric II off of Ebay a couple weeks ago. The thing is
magnificent. The only electrical component is the motor running the
driveshaft, otherwise all of the operations are mechanical. For example,
pressing a key makes the type head pitch and yaw to the proper character, then
lifts and slams it against the paper, all within a few dozen milliseconds, and
that whole process is done with just levers and pulleys (clutching off the
driveshaft, too, I'm sure). There's even a buffer mechanism, so that if you
hit a key while the type mechanism is in the middle of printing the previous
character, it's actually "stored" in this buffer until the print head is done
with that cycle. AND, if the buffer is full (I believe it only stores one
character), then all the keys are locked to prevent any mishaps.

And the maintainability of the thing is pretty nifty - you can take the cover
off, and then lift and slide the guts up from the base[0] to stand upright
with the bottom facing you. All by-design, since of course such mechanical
objects require regular lubrication and other maintenance.

[0] See this video (I linked to 3:35, but the whole thing is cool):
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=uB3sM2cA6Wk#t=215s)

~~~
adestefan
The guts sliding out of the case was pretty common for typewriters. Most of
the cases where nothing more than decorative shells while the actual
mechanisms were built into a rectangular metal frame and pretty easy to get
around in. Most of these things were fully mechanically linked and
manufactured by hand.

My grandfather had a weekly Italian music radio program and every week he went
through the same process. First he'd hand write his cues, then add in any
commentary, and finally type up the entire thing double spaced so he could
easily follow along. I have fond memories of helping him rip apart various
type writers to fix them on Friday afternoons during they type up the notes
phase.

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jamespitts
This device is worth a test run, just to know what it was like to type with
the best of the best equipment 30 years ago.

Comparing it to other typewriters, imagine firing a gatling gun when you've
been writing with revolvers. It feels like your words are typed ahead of when
you think of them.

I used a Selectric with a copy machine for class projects and messing around,
then my family got a mac ha ha.

~~~
kps
>It feels like your words are typed ahead of when you think of them.

Best key feel ever.

It starts with a very light millimetre drop to place your finger. Then the
tactile bump, and when that gives way, still near the top to the throw and
exactly when the switch activates, it's so fast that it's almost like the key
itself is pulling away from you. Then the resistance ramps up continuously,
with no hard landing.

IBM did make a good attempt at electronic switches with good feel with their
beam spring keyboards, but they were still not as good as the Selectric. Then
eurocrats killed those, and the Model F and Model M that followed were a poor
substitute, activating almost at the bottom of the throw and landing hard.

[typos corrected]

~~~
larrys
"Best keys feel ever."

Agreed. Noting also that the sound, if you were a good touch typist, was like
a background beat that somehow added to creativity. Or if you were simply
doing drone work seemed to lull you to be at peace with the process.

------
jhancock
I worked at IBM in 1987. My group's secretary was AMAZING! I remember walking
up to her one day. She could talk to me in English, chat to her girlfriend on
the phone in Spanish and type a hundred words a minute on the Selectric
through her dictation headphone simultaneously and not miss a beat. Simply
amazing!

------
davidroberts
I wrote my papers in college with one of these, then used them in my first job
in a newspaper newsroom. I'll never forget the noise of 100 typewriters
hammering away before the deadline. A modern newsroom seems like a tomb in
comparison.

Using a typewriter was like taking photos with a film camera. Each page
required such an investment that you worked really hard to get it right the
first time. Then on the second draft, since you had to retype everything
anyway, you were a lot more likely to completely recast a passage that needed
it, instead of just moving words around a bit. I think typewriters made me a
better writer.

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jseliger
I wonder if the designers of the Model M keyboard used the Selectric as an
inspiration.

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nemo1618
Seems like the "golfball" would make a pretty cool novelty shifter.

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steauengeglase
There is nothing like a Selectric's keyboard. Bought one in the early 2000s,
disconnected from the internet for a year, moved out into the woods and typed
on nothing but the Selectric. Never did get around to writing the great
American novel though.

Oh and this is pretty nifty. [http://hackaday.com/2012/06/13/turning-an-ibm-
selectric-into...](http://hackaday.com/2012/06/13/turning-an-ibm-selectric-
into-a-printer/)

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alexpopescu
I always wondered if back in the days of typewriters there was a similar
conversation going as there's today about keyboards.

Where there the IBM, Apple 2, Das keyboard fans?

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Adaptive
My favorite text editor font (Letter Gothic) was originally designed for the
Selectric.

[http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/downloads/monotype/letter_goth...](http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/downloads/monotype/letter_gothic_std_complete_pack_adobe/)
(that link isn't the monospaced variant, don't get it, but a good visual
representation)

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msisk6
I learned to type on a Selectric in high school a few years back (maybe more
than a few, actually).

The thing I remember about them, besides the hum, is the smell -- a warm
machine oil scent.

I should probably get one of these while they're still commonly available in
working condition.

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DennisP
We had one at home when I was in high school. Loved that thing. Abandoned it
when we got a PC, but we got a printer that worked the same way. It was a big
step up from dot matrix output, back before laser printers and inkjets.

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gregd
I learned how to type on one of these in high school. Ah, the good old days...

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georgeott
I always thought the way the golf ball moved, at speed, was pure magic.

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yaykyle
This is why I like my Das Keyboard so much. :)

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stox
The first computer I learned to program, an IBM 1130, had a Selectric as the
console.

