Thursday, May 15, 2008

Qwerty 1

My mother & my 5th form mistress (a formidable WWI spinster with degrees from Oxford & the Sorbonne) both told me: Do NOT learn to type. If you can type then, whatever job you do, all the men around will expect you to act as their secretary & do their typing for them

They meant touch typing. We had a family typewriter, an ancient metal sit up & beg Imperial which my father acquired somewhere & set into working order. I typed The quick brown fox … over & over to learn QWERTY

In later years I made half hearted attempts to learn properly, but it seemed too much trouble to make my little fingers do any work when hard 2-fingered bashing would do all I needed. By the time it would have been really helpful to be able to watch what was happening on the teleprinter terminal while I typed I felt it was too late to learn

Isnt it odd how men elbowed women aside in the rush to the keyboard