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Y’know, sometimes, as I desperately look
for a topic to cover…

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relatively quickly after realizing the one I’ve been working
on needs to be delayed indefinitely

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thanks to a thing I just discovered and need to investigate
further,

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I find myself pursuing the bowels of my storage area.

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My hope is that between bouts of getting mad
at myself

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for letting it deteriorate into the state it’s become,

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I’ll find a thing which gets me out of this jam and hammering out a script.

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Fittingly, I glanced at my collection of typewriters
sitting on the bottom shelf

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(are you really surprised I have a collection of typewriters?)

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and I realized I think it’s time for a Technology…

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Correction!

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See, I’m just old enough for typewriters
to have been lingering on in my childhood.

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Even as personal computers, mature word processing,

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and consumer printers made them seemingly irrelevant,

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they were still handy for certain things.

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Like, for instance, addressing an envelope.

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Do you really want to faff with Word 95,

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figure out how to get your crappy inkjet printer to accept an envelope,

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probably experience a multitude of paper jams because you didn’t realize it’s gotta go sideways,

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only to finally have what looks like success at last...

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until you see that the text is sideways because you didn’t
do the page setup correctly, or…

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do you just stick the envelope in a typewriter and have at it?

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Lots of people would much rather just do it
the old fashioned way,

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especially for one-offs.

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Once you know your way around a typewriter,

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well you can see exactly where it’s about to slap a letter onto the envelope.

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It’s a much more manual process, sure, but also way more straightforward.

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Of course, eventually the whole “printing onto envelopes”
business would get better,

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and also people just don’t really need to
do that very often anymore.

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Plus, setting aside the decreasing need to mail stuff,

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uh handwriting is and was always an option.

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So the typewriter would eventually fade into obscurity.

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Although a few models are still being made,
believe it or not.

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Anyway, before they all got tucked away into
attics, typewriters gained a very forgiving feature.

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Take a look; make a mistake,
and just like that -

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the mistake is gone.

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Now I’m sure that to some of you watching,

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the idea of a young whippersnapper such as myself being astonished by the correcting feature of a typewriter is laughable.

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But see, it’s not that it can do it that I find interesting—

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it’s that I was completely wrong about how this works.

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You might think, as I did, that this is covering
up the ink with a white substance,

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like correction fluid also known as white-out.

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And, ok, some typewriters did do that.

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But this one works with colored paper, so
that’s obviously not what’s happening.

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What it’s actually doing is undoing what it just did.

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See, typewriters went through a change around the middle of the last century which fundamentally altered how they put letters on the page.

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And it was that change that made this possible.

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Compare the text written by a typewriter before and after this change.

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On the left we have an old-fashioned typewriter,

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and on the right a newfangled one.

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The newer typewriter has a much crisper and
more uniform appearance to the text it produces.

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As a matter of fact this looks like it could
have come from a modern laser printer.

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The other typewriter produced a much more… gritty text.

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It doesn’t have crisp edges, there’s a
vague texture in the solid parts,

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and in general this looks… old-fashioned.

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Nevermind the typeface, this looks like how
I imagine a typewritten document to look

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whereas the other text looks like, well, a printout
of a Word document done in courier.

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What changed between these two typewriters?

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The ribbon.

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OK, a great deal more than that changed

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but the difference in the ribbon is what’s responsible for the dramatically different text,

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and the ability to make it disappear.

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Before we get into that, though,
I should probably give you a brief overview of a typewriter.

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[THUNK]

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Here we have a basic portable, manual typewriter.

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This is what I always thought of when I thought
“typewriter,”

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which makes sense as this design was more or less the standard for half a century,

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with countless typewriters from many manufacturers
all functioning more or less identically to this one.

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Each one of the keys is connected to a metal
arm called the typebar

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which has on its end a small metal casting
with two reversed symbols protruding from its surface.

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Those symbols just so happen to match the ones on the keys.

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Collectively, these typebars are known as the basket.

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This weird thing with the hard rubber roller
bit back here is called the carriage

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and it holds the paper on which you intend to typewrite.

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With paper in place, as a key is depressed
the type bar leaves the basket and approaches the paper.

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As that happens, an ink-soaked ribbon is lifted
upward so that it comes between the typebar and the paper.

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With sufficient force, the protruding symbol
on the typebar presses through the ribbon and contacts the paper.

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That will transfer some of the ribbon’s ink to the paper
in the shape of the protruding symbol,

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and the end result is that symbol appears on the page.

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Pretty striking.

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After that happens, the ribbon moves out of
the way so you can see what you’ve just typed.

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The semi-soft surface of the rubber roller,

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which by the way is called the platen,

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helps the ink transfer happen more completely by
allowing the typebar to press into the paper ever-so-slightly.

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You may have noticed,

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possibly because I told you,

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that every typebar has not one, but two symbols on it.

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For the letters of the alphabet, those are
the lower- and uppercase version of each letter,

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and for the other keys… it’s whatever
two glyphs the manufacturer decided belong on that key.

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Selecting between them is accomplished with these;

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The shift keys.

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And pressing them shifts the location of the typebasket into the machine

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so that the top of each typebar is what will hit the ribbon and paper.

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This machine, like most, also features a shift lock
which is simply a latch

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which holds down the typebasket.

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You release it by pressing either of the shift keys until it’s released.

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Because this thing is entirely manual and
the typebasket is, y’know,

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metal and heavy… this is a pretty clunky experience.

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This is just not easy to use.

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Here’s a Technology Connection for you;

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ever wonder why the keys on a keyboard are so weirdly staggered?

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If you’ve never noticed it before, nearly
every keyboard out there

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doesn’t arrange the keys on a neat grid, and instead each
successive row is shifted over,

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and even more weirdly, it’s a different amount from row to row.

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See, the row below the numbers is shifted
over half the width of a key,

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with the second row’s keys centered below the gaps in the
first row.

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That kinda makes sense but the third row is only shifted over 
by half as much from the second.

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That is a relic of the typewriter that lives on!

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Since in a typewriter the keys are arranged in four rows,

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and every key acts upon a single typebar in a linear arrangement,

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every row of keys has to be shifted over a bit to keep the linkages between key and typebar from landing on top of one another.

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Typewriter manufacturers could have designed
the keys with different attachment points to the linkages to get around that

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but that almost never happened,
and the staggered-key arrangement became standardized.

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With so many people used to a keyboard with this staggering,

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it didn’t make sense to mix it up.

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And even once they had become
simple buttons on computer keyboards

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the staggering was retained to give typists an easier transition.

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And we’re still doing it because the only
thing better than perfect is standardized!

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In typewriters with a typebasket, the carriage
(and thus the paper) moves as you type.

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That's probably why it’s called the carriage.

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This allows a much more compact design

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since the machine only needs to be large enough to contain 
the typebasket and keyboard.

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And really it’s the only practical way to
go about it since the keyboard and typebasket are part of the same bulky mechanism.

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So, a line of text is started with the carriage
all the way...

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to the right, and each press of a key moves the carriage to the left one space
in preparation for the next keystroke.

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The space bar does the same thing but without actually
typing anything,

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allowing you to leave a gap between characters

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because that’s how words work.

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Some typewriters, particularly those that write in languages that used accent or other diacritic marks,

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have some so-called dead keys
which don’t move the carriage when you press them.

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That allows you to, say, type an accented e by first hitting the accent mark,

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which would slap it down but not move the carriage,

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and then hitting the e key.

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That could have been accomplished with a backspace
between two keystrokes,

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but when your language uses those marks a lot,
dead keys are much more convenient.

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Anyway, as you keep on typing and approach the end of a line,

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the carriage will ring a little bell

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[adorable ding] 
to inform you that you have only about ten characters left

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before you hit the right hand margin, so either finish this word
or get ready to hyphenate and start the next line.

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Starting the next line is accomplished by
using this chrome bar, called the carriage return,

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which returns the carriage to the starting point.

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And that’s customizable - these little tabs
back here can be moved,

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and they define the margins of the page.

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The left tab defines where the carriage stops when you return it—
really handy for addressing envelopes!

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And the right tab triggers the little bell ten characters ahead of where it sits, 
warning you you’re near the end,

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and then stops the carriage at that point and keeps you from typing.

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This key, labeled M-R, is the margin release key

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which allows you to override the end stop 
in case the word you’re working on is just one or two characters too long

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and you’re willing to break the margin for it.

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The margin-release key also allows you to
go beyond the starting point if you hold it down while returning the carriage.

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Now, before this turns into a typewriter trivia tangent,

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which I suppose…

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too late.

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Uh, let’s just get back to the meat and potatoes of the ink and the ribbon.

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This typewriter, like many others, uses a simple ink-soaked 
cloth ribbon for making letters happen.

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That’s why the text it produces has that
texture;

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you’re seeing the weave of the ribbon come through.

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And since this is ordinary ink on ordinary paper,
if you make a mistake you have few options.

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Special hard erasers for typewriters were available,
and they would really just sand off the top surface of the paper

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and thus the ink from that spot.

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And of course once correction fluid hit the mainstream, there was that option, too.

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But with a change in the typewriter’s ribbon,
we would get not only crisper, darker text,

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but we’d get the ability to undo our mistakes
without leaving a trace.

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This monster of a thing is an IBM Selectric III.

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That’s right, III.

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The Selectric series of typewriters is as iconic as it is fascinating.

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Instead of a basket of typebars,
these typewriters use an interchangeable typing element,

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known informally as the typeball

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and even more informally as the golf ball.

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The typeball sits inside of a moving type head.

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In this typewriter the paper is stationary

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and the typeball moves along the paper’s length as you type.

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The entire mechanism is powered by an electric
motor, and pressing a key causes an amazingly quick

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and yet somehow still precise

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Rotate, Pitch, Wham maneuver,

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with the exact character you selected slamming into the ribbon 
and making a mark upon your paper.

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It will forever be astounding to me that this machine manages to make all that happen in the blink of an eye,

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and with absolutely no perceptible variation between character landings.

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I mean, the text from the manual typewriter,
which isn’t doing anything near as complex as this,

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is not consistent at all,

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but this whacky ball thing manages to rotate and tilt into place with such consistency

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that fancy script fonts like this one work perfectly!

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Did I mention you could get different fonts for this thing?

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And it can do either 10 or 12 characters per inch!

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Now this video isn’t about this typewriter.

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If you would like a better understanding of how this works,

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you should check out The Engineer Guy’s amazing and also way more concise than I could ever manage video on the subject.

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I’ll put links in all the places.

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What I want you to notice is the ribbon.

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The typewriter has one, of course, but it’s
nothing like the fabric ribbon we’ve been looking at.

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If I remove it...

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you can see (after I almost tore it) that it’s very very thin,

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and we can also see the letters that have been typed.

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Not great for sensitive locations; 
destroying these ribbon cartridges was often a matter of national security.

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Anyway, these polymer ribbons are what make the text so crisp 
compared to the cloth ribbons of ye olden times.

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But, yeah, they’re also not what allows
the correcting feature.

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IBM introduced carbon ribbons in 1949.

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Or maybe 1937.

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Yeah it's not clear.

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Also I can’t even tell for sure if those
are polymer ribbons.

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Anyway, it’s not important, polymer film ribbons allowed for 
complete transfer of their pigment material to the paper.

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There’s undoubtedly some fascinating materials
science that went into making the carbon stick to the paper

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which I am not even going to try to explain,

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but the end result was very dark, very crisp text on the page.

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The biggest disadvantage to this was that
the ribbons were single-use,

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though being quite thin they lasted a long time.

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Oh also you can see everything that was written
with that ribbon, which as I mentioned may not be desirable.

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This particular ribbon, though, is different.

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It works just the same as any polymer ribbon,

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but some even more fascinating materials science was done to it
to make the pigment not quite so sticky.

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This is a correctable film ribbon,

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which first made an appearance in the Correcting Selectric II in 1973.

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It does a decently fine job sticking to paper,

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but its adhesion is just weak enough that with a bit of adhesive tape

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it can be lifted off.

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This white tape sitting near the ribbon is
really just sticky tape,

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and when you press this key below the keyboard, the type head
moves back one space and when you next press a key,

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it will lift the sticky tape into position instead of the ribbon.

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By smashing the same letter at the paper through
the sticky tape,

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a very strong bond between the tape and the pigment is made.

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So, the pigment gets yanked right off the paper
like nothing ever happened.

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At least… mostly.

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It usually takes a few hits to completely remove a letter.

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Since this typewriter is purely mechanical,
the correcting feature is fully manual.

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To undo a mistake, it’s best to hold down
the correcting key

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and then hit the erroneous letter’s key a few times.

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Usually after the third strike,

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we have lift-off.

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The typewriter I showed you in the very beginning

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is a much newer, fully electronic typewriter.

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It uses a daisy wheel for its typing elements,

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a mechanically simpler arrangement than the IBM golf ball

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but which requires electronics to monitor its position as it spins and fire the striking solenoid at precisely the right time.

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Since it has those brains

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(and it uses them for other stuff, too, like spell-checking and line-by-line previewing
if that’s your jam)

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it knows the last letter it punched out,

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and so simply hitting the correct button performs
an automatic backspace and three whacks with the correcting tape.

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In fact if you want you can have it correct an entire word.

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Now you might think that the ability to lift
the words right off the page

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means the documents produced with these typewriters must have poor resiliency.

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But they’re actually quite durable.

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If I use the back of a pen, I can’t rub these markings off.

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They’re really on there.

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Using an X-acto knife blade I can scratch them off,

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but it’s not any easier than scratching the toner 
off of a modern laser-printed document.

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The typewriter can take its words back so effectively 
because it’s not just the adhesion of the correction tape that does the job,

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it’s the fact that in the typewriter the same typing element that left the mark in
the first place also applies the correction tape to the paper.

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That means it’s being pressed *hard* into
the offending letter and, crucially, nowhere else on the paper.

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Only the pigment is getting touched by the correction tape.

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Yes, if you put a piece of Scotch tape,
use something to apply pressure, and lift it off

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you’ll end up with some of the text on the tape.

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But even then you don’t get it all and you’re likely to take some of the paper with you.

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I know I can get fascinated easily,
but I think this is remarkable.

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I never imagined that a typewriter could play
textual take backsies.

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That just seemed well outside of the realm of possibility!

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I didn’t know that these letters aren't made with ink,

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so I thought the only possible cover-up was…

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a cover-up.

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Now, as I said earlier there were correcting typewriters
that typed in ink and did put a white powder atop mistakes.

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As a matter of fact, the Correcting Selectric
typewriter could be used with a standard inked ribbon,

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and a non-adhesive, white correction
tape would simply hide your mistakes.

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But of course that only worked with white paper,

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and I can’t imagine that worked nearly as well as lifting the text off.

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Even if it did a fantastic job, you could
always shine light through the paper and see that mistakes were made.

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Of course, if you were making carbon copies,
well this wouldn’t work.

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I mean, it would for the top one, but all the copies below would be royally…

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messed up.

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Then again by the time this feature hit the market,

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photocopiers were common in the office 
so carbon copies weren’t too much of a thing anymore.

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And actually photocopiers were a way to get
around noticeable error correction using white-out.

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Yeah you could see the blob of white goo on the original,
but copies will hide that swimmingly.

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Anyway, I think that’s it for now.

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It may not surprise you to learn that I wrote…

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quite a lot more about typewriters before trimming this down.

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Like, for instance, how it’s actually kind
of strange that this manual typewriter

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has a 1 and exclamation mark key.

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00:18:53,090 --> 00:18:55,983
It was common practice for that key to just…

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not exist!

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And a lowercase L would be typed for the numeral one,

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and an exclamation mark was better known as
"period backspace apostrophe."

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I was going into a really deep dive on this
machine and others

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before realizing maybe I should cut to the chase.

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This was supposed to be quick after all.

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At least as quick as I can manage.

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00:19:19,167 --> 00:19:23,794
But hey, if you all like this video, maybe I’ll revisit the topic later on.

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It’s genuinely surprising just how many of our modern word
processing conventions can be found right here in mechanical form.

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♫ typographically smooth jazz ♫

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…typewriters sitting on the bottom shelf.

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00:19:39,588 --> 00:19:41,048
Are you really surprised…

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00:19:41,048 --> 00:19:42,319
*sigh*

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Oh, that’s a live spider!

292
00:19:46,550 --> 00:19:49,253
I saw that this web was here… ooh.

293
00:19:49,253 --> 00:19:52,340
Or, doyou just stick it in the env…

294
00:19:55,064 --> 00:19:55,564
BBPPBP

295
00:19:55,564 --> 00:19:58,243
Don’t really need to do that much ah haaaa

296
00:19:58,243 --> 00:20:00,000
That’s obviously not what’s doing.

297
00:20:02,078 --> 00:20:03,984
This looks like this could’ve been come

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00:20:04,333 --> 00:20:05,488
[flailing]

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00:20:06,210 --> 00:20:09,662
In typewriters with a typebasket, the carriage and thus the…

300
00:20:09,662 --> 00:20:10,442
ahh!

301
00:20:10,954 --> 00:20:15,859
Oh.. Yeah, no thatshoulbe.  Some typewriters...

302
00:20:15,859 --> 00:20:19,507
But its adhesion is just weak enough [hits typewriter with hand] that….

303
00:20:19,507 --> 00:20:21,795
Well that didn’t work, did it?

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00:20:23,285 --> 00:20:26,019
If you've never used a fully manual typewriter before, gosh is it not fun.

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00:20:26,019 --> 00:20:28,990
The key travel is something like an entire inch - your fingers are powering the whacking, after all -

306
00:20:28,990 --> 00:20:31,365
so I cannot touch type with that thing at all.

307
00:20:31,365 --> 00:20:34,271
You didn't get to see an electric version of the same design - a motor does the whacking for you!

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00:20:34,271 --> 00:20:36,453
If we cover this again I'll show you that fella.

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Much, MUCH easier to use.

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'kay bye