Retrotech

Our niece has made a pretty heroic attempt to seriously cut down on her Internet time. Of course, she doesn’t want to live like Colonial Williamsburg either. She still wants to write books and listen to music.

She purchased a manual typewriter. I learned on a manual machine and owned several over the years. Back in the 70s I was in a typing class of 40 students. 38 were girls and only there were only 2 boys in the class. Typing was an unusual skill for men back then but I found it handy -especially since my handwriting wasn’t all that great. 

It wasn’t just learning how to type. A fair bit of the class concerned the mechanical ins and outs of the typewriter. Helping my niece sort out her typewriter has brought it all back to me. Good fun.

She’s also playing CDs and cassette tapes. Anyone else remember mixed tapes? Remember what a breakthrough it was to have a machine that could record directly from vinyl to cassette? There’s also DVDs instead of streaming services. Actually, considering the price increases for streaming services those old DVDs make more and more sense. 

-Sixbears