The First Writing-Machines

Mark Twain. The First Writing-Machines

In this essay Twain discusses being one of the first people to own a typewriter. Twain tells the anecdote of being introduced to the machine for the first time. Twain was fascinated by the woman who could type 57 words per minute on the typewriter. He tells of the typist, she typed 57 words per minute and when that was not proof enough, she did it again, and again. The typist did her work on small slips of paper. When Twain got home with his newly purchased machine he was disappointed to learn that each slip of paper contained the same 57 words. Twain, having felt duped, began his own monotonous task of typing the same sentence over and over again. Twain gained a bit of respect for the woman when, after typing the same sentence so many times, he still only managed 12 words per minute. Twain hired a girl whom he dictated to, she typed faster than he. Twain claims to be, although with admittedly no proof, the first person to "APPLY THE TYPE-MACHINE TO LITERATURE". Written in capital letters of course because that is all the machine was capable of in the beginning. The adventures of Tom Sawyer is the book Twain recalls dictating to his typist. Soon after working on the book Twain decided to give the machine away. Giving the typewriter to a friend proved to be more difficult than he thought. Twain kept getting the machine back, finally getting rid of it by giving to a friend who then traded it in for something else.
Twain is adamant about expressing his unfamiliarity with the typewriter. Twain found it to be a burden. This of course makes sense considering how simple and difficult early typewriters must have been. I could not imagine typing on a typewriter now, especially one with no element of power. In the late 1800s a typewriters, although advanced for the time were very simple compared to what I am typing on now. Here is a picture of what a typewriter from that time looked like. I can't imagine what it weighed!
It is interesting, reading words of such a literary legend that seem so similar to our discussions today. The idea of a typewriter, a machine to do the work of a quill, seemed too difficult for many people, Twain could not give it away. People enjoyed writing, found the technology too much of a task. Today we think of the simple typewriter as obsolete, you could not pay me to write this much on one. Our attitudes toward technology are not new, but we should look to history to remind ourselves, someday we will be trying to imagine life without blogs!