Typewriters

In the last few decades, so-called ‘new’ media has enabled a proliferation of writing platforms from e-books, blogging to online self-publishing. In response to the established ‘norm’ of digital writing, numerous writers have returned to basic, ‘anachronistic’ writing tools such as the typewriter, while others have never even relinquished these tools. Nietzsche famously claimed that our writing instruments are changing the way we think, and there is the somewhat Romantic belief that more archaic writing methods are linked to greater creativity and intellect, as opposed to newer technologies which are said to undermine critical thinking.
Writers including Don DeLillo, Will Self, and Cormac McCarthy are among those that still use manual typewriters to create their work, with Self espousing the benefits of the enforced discipline of typewriters. In the contemporary digital climate, this is not only considered strange and anachronistic, but also pretentious. Widespread reactions to the continued use of typewriters illustrates the extent to which contemporary culture abides by quite a rigid form of technological determinism; newer technologies are deemed superior, while old technologies are dismissed as trivial and obsolete. 
In light of the continued use of typewriters in the digital age, this paper explores the highly-maintained value in ‘old’ methods of writing, discussing the supposed link between the machine and an author’s creative and intellectual output. In so doing, this paper investigates claims relating to the strength of literature in accordance with particular writing technologies, highlighting recent commentary on the virtues of ‘slower’ technologies in the digital age.

Saggio introduttivo alla traduzione (edita nello stesso numero di Kaiak) di un brano di Kittler, tratto da GFT. Il contributo vuole contestualizzare l'estratto kittleriano, chiarificando il quadro teorico dal quale proviene, commentandolo e suggerendone gli sviluppi.

The first full-length study of modern technologies in late-Victorian New Woman writing

This book examines late nineteenth-century feminism in relation to technologies of the time, marking the crucial role of technology in social and literary struggles for equality. The New Woman, the fin de siècle cultural archetype of early feminism, became the focal figure for key nineteenth-century debates concerning issues such as gender and sexuality, evolution and degeneration, science, empire and modernity. While the New Woman is located in the debates concerning the ‘crisis in gender’ or ‘sexual anarchy’ of the time, the period also saw an upsurge of new technologies of communication, transport and medicine. As this monograph demonstrates, literature of the time is inevitably caught up in this technological modernity: technologies such as the typewriter, the bicycle, and medical technologies, through literary texts come to work as freedom machines, as harbingers of female emancipation.

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017)

The history of the typewriter has been covered by writers and researchers. However, the interest shown in the origin of the machine has not revealed a further interest in one of the true reasons of its existence, the printed letters. The following pages try to shed some light on this part of the history of type design, typewriter typefaces. The research focused on a particular company, Olivetti, one of the most important typewriter manufacturers.
The first two sections describe the context for the main topic. These introductory pages explain briefly the history of the typewriter and highlight the particular facts that led Olivetti on its way to success. The next section, 'Typewriters and text composition', creates a link between the historical background and the machine. It shows the typewriter as a subsidiary cause of social changes and new habits in typography. The core contents of this research are included in the last two sections. They offer a description of the type design process in Olivetti, a comparison between typefaces, and some examples of the influence of the typewriter in digital type.
Due to the large number of typefaces included in this dissertation, there is no room for an exhaustive analysis of the lettershapes. Instead, this paper provides an overview of type design in the 20th century for a specific product, typewriters.

This article rethinks the history of Chinese script reforms and proposes a new genealogy for the Chinese Latin Alphabet (CLA), invented in 1931 by Chinese and Russian revolutionaries in the Soviet Union. Situating script reforms within a global information age that emerged out of the nineteenth-century communications revolution, the article historicizes the CLA within a technologically and ideologically contrived Sino-Soviet space. In particular, it shows the intimate links between the CLA and the Unified New Turkic Alphabet (UNTA), which grew out of a latinization movement based in Baku, Azerbaijan. The primary purpose of the UNTA was to latinize the Arabic script of the Turkic people living in Soviet Central Asia, but it was immediately exported to the non-Turkic world as well in an effort to latinize languages across Eurasia and ignite revolutionary internationalism. This article investigates the forgotten figures involved in carrying the Latin alphabet from Baku to Shanghai and offers a new framework to scrutinize the history of language, scripts, and knowledge production across Eurasia.

Les textes sont des objets fragiles et compliqués. Cette notice veut attirer l'attention des lecteurs et des étudiants sur diverses composantes du « texte » dont il est préférable d'être conscient. Le premier point est que, contrairement à un vue glorieuse mais fausse, nous n'avons que certains textes, pas tous, et que c'est important ; qu'ensuite quand nous les avons, nous ne les voyons qu'après de nombreux filtres, dont ceux des éditeurs ; qu'ils sont entourés de commentaires, et d'un important matériel éditorial : division en chapitres, numéros de pages, etc. dont l'histoire et les présupposés sont essentiels ; que souvent ils sont traduits. Et que toutes ces contraintes, qui ont une histoire passionnante, pèsent aujourd'hui sur nous plus que jamais.

Any language computer can be useful if the above two requirements are met. But we can only accept such behavior as a modern writing system. In other words, in the past we used to write with palm leaves and pencils, then we used to write on paper, then we used typewriters and typewriters. Now we can write via computer. This is the best way to write and print. This requirement is available in almost all languages, this requirement has been met by the Odia language since the 180s, which means that this year we have been able to type the letters of the Odia language on the computer and print it on the printer. This is the first step in using a computer language. The second step in making a language useful to a computer is: understanding the computer. Computers understand a language through a variety of programs. This requires connecting the operating system to a new language. It is imperative that the language be integrated into the Unicode system. Unicode has provided a code for the scripts of the world's most computer-friendly languages. This code can be understood by the operating system. As a result, it is possible to Unicode the computer by naming that language, sorting it from scratch, searching for a file or folder named in that language, deleting any incorrect word koji, and so on. Fortunately, the Odia language scripts were included in the Unicode in 2006. Odia is the third largest Indian language in this regard.

Abstract—  Construction  of  a  low  cost  electronic  Braille  Note Taker prototype, for blind people, that could be manufactured by government or NGOs, to facilitate the acquisition by persons who need  it,  without  importing  this  product  due  to  the  international high costs with current change in Argentina.
Keywords:  Low-cost,  Portable,  Braille,  Note  Taker,  Voice
Synthesis.
Resumen— Se planteó la realización de un prototipo de anotador braille  electrónico,  de  bajo  costo  de  producción,  que  en  caso  de no  ser  gratuito  para  ciegos,  por  falta  de  financiación  de organizaciones  gubernamentales  o  similares,  sea  accesible su compra,  dado  que  su  adquisición  se  hace  prohibitiva  por  su  alto costo  en  el  mercado  internacional,  única  fuente  actual  para  los ciegos de Argentina.
Palabras  claves:  anotador,  braille,  portátil,  bajo  costo,  síntesisde voz.

This article on the typewriter in art is forthcoming in the catalogue for the recent Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt show at the Dresden Albertinum.

Wolf-Rehfelft is an artist from the former GDR who worked with typewriter and was active as a mail artist.

İçinde bulunduğumuz kapitalist yapı ve tüketim dünyasında; insanlığa, tüketim alışkanlıklarına, üretime,
yaratıcılığa hem alışılmışın dışında hem de nostaljik-romantik bir bakışla yeni bir pencereden bakmak ve bu
noktada var olan sisteme bir noktasından müdahale edebilmek için tasarlanan bu metin temel olarak daktilo ve
insan duyuları etrafında şekillenmiş bir düşünce örüntüsü içermektedir. Bu örüntü birbirine uzak gibi gözüken
farklı an ve eylemlerin ortaklıklarını aynı potada eriterek ihtiyaç duyulduğu düşünülen yapıya bir basamak olma
gayesi sunar. İnsanlığı; algısal ve fiziksel olarak en çok heyecanlandıran, istek uyandıran ve kendi öz varlığı
dâhilinde arzu ile harekete geçiren eylemlerin karşısında oluşturduğumuz tepkiler ile tasarlanan metaların,
tasarım paradigmalarına farklı bir bakış sunmak amacı güden bu çalışma farklı alanlardan beslenen çok disiplinli
bir yapıdadır. Fenomenolojik yöntem ile bilgi üretilen araştırma da gözlemlere ve bireysel deneyimlerden
edinilmiş bilgilere de rastlanmaktadır. Araştırma evreni birçok alandan birçok farklı örneklem içeriyor olsa da
hepsinin ortak noktasında duyumsamalar ile şekillenen tasarım algısı ve bu algını kapitalist etkisi yatmaktadır.
Nörobiyoloji, biyoloji, müzik, edebiyat, sinema, üretim vb. gibi birçok alandan açılımları tasarımsal bağlamlar
dahilinde değerlendirip, günümüz gerçekliği dahilinde tasarımcı ve üretici için bir davranış biçimi, bir tutum
önerisi üretmeyi amaçlar. Hızlı tüketim öğelerinin tasarımını noktasında görülen niteliksiz olma halinin
çözümünün keşfedilmesinde farklı bir düşünce ile hesaplaşılırken bu hesaplaşmanın yeni teknolojilerden uzakta,
tradisyonel olanda keşfedilmesi durumu söz konusudur. Araştırma, amacı doğrultusunda kapitalizmin çarkları
içinde var olan sıkışmışlıkları yok etmek için geçmişle bir köprü kurmayı, geçmişin referansı ile geleceğe uzanmayı
tartışır. Tasarım ve üretim sürecinin 5 temel duyu ile(alışkın olunandan başka bir) ilgisinin kurulması, bu ilginin
tasarım paradigmaları dahilinde etkilerinin incelenmesi ve bu etkilerin meta üzerinden tartışılması araştırmanın
temel strüktürünü oluşturmaktadır. Bu bağlamda duyu aktivasyonlarının etkisinde ki tasarımsal-oluşsal sürecin;
kapitalizm, metalaşma ve duygusal bağlamla ortak noktaları incelenecek, tüketim toplumuna hizmet eden
üretim mantığına içsel bir eleştiri sunulacaktır.
Bu noktada daktilo öznesi etrafında geliştirilen bu eleştirel tavır insani bir hassasiyet ve nostaljiye duyulan bir
eğilim çerçevesinde şekillenirken, yaratıcı sürecin oluşmasında etkili gerekliliklerin öznel bir öğretisine vurgu
yapmaktadır.

ΖΙΓΚΦΡΙΝΤ ΚΡΑΚΑΟΥΕΡ, «Η γραφομηχανούλα»
NIETZSCHE EX MACHINA. «Έξι επιστολές και ένα ποίημα του Φρίντριχ Νίτσε για τη ''γραφόσφαιρα''»
Εισαγωγή, μετάφραση: ΝΙΚΗΤΑΣ ΣΙΝΙΟΣΟΓΛΟΥ
ΣΕΙΡΑ: ΤΑ ΑΣΤΕΓΑ
Σελ. 88 • Σχήμα: 11,3 x 16,5 cm • ISBN: 978-618-5004-60-6
ΣTH ΓΡΑΦΟΜΗΧΑΝΟΥΛΑ του Ζίγκφριντ Κρακάουερ (1889-1966) ο αφηγητής ερωτεύεται τη γραφομηχανή του. Η παράδοξη σχέση τους διανύει όλα τα στάδια μιας τυπικής ερωτικής συνύπαρξης: μια τυχαία συνάντηση, ενθουσιασμός και ερωτική μανία, απομάγευση και χωρισμός. Ό,τι περιγράφει ο Κρακάουερ προσομοιάζει με την εμπειρία του Φρίντριχ Νίτσε γύρω στα 1882, όταν, έχοντας χάσει την όρασή του, έγινε για λίγο ενθουσιώδης κάτοχος μιας από τις πρώτες γραφομηχανές. Σε αυτήν «χτύπησε» ποιήματα και επιστολές, όπου φανερώνεται πότε πότε ο ψυχικός εκτροχιασμός, όπως και στο αφήγημα του Κρακάουερ. Ο Νίτσε υπήρξε ο πρώτος στοχαστής που επισήμανε τη γοητεία μιας ενδεχόμενης ώσμωσης διανοητή και μέσου. Οι συμπτώσεις ανάμεσα στα δύο κείμενα είναι τέτοιες, ώστε συνιστάται η παράλληλη ανάγνωσή τους εν είδει λογοτεχνικού παιχνιδιού.
«Για μεγάλο διάστημα δεν τολμούσα να χρησιμοποιήσω τη μηχανή. Τέλεια καθώς ήταν, μου φαινόταν πλάσμα ανώτερο, που θα ήταν ανεπίτρεπτο να υποστεί την παραμικρή ζημιά από τυχόν κακομεταχείριση. Αμήχανος, μονάχα χάιδευα –τότε, στην αρχή της σχέσης μας– τα δροσερά της μέλη. Το απαλό άγγιγμα αρκούσε για να με κάνει ευτυχισμένο. Άλλοτε άφηνα τον κύλινδρο να περιστρέφεται και πείραζα τα καρούλια με τις μελανοταινίες κρατώντας ολίγη αντίσταση με τα δάχτυλα. Όποτε αμελούσαν οι επισκέπτες μου να εκφράζουν τον θαυμασμό τους για τη μηχανούλα, τους μισούσα.»
Ζίγκφριντ Κρακάουερ, «Η γραφομηχανούλα»

Artikel ini mengenai standar keyboard QWERTY dan perkembangannya dari mesin ketik (typewriter) hingga ke keyboard computer dan layar sentuh (touch screen). Juga mendeskripsikan sekilas tentang sejarah QWERTY dan fakta tentang rahasia perancangan standar QWERTY yang sebenarnya, yang membantah mitos bahwa QWERTY diciptakan untuk memperlambat pengetikan atau menghindari kesalahan ketik dalam bahasa inggris.

We live in a time where hardware and software become obsolete before most of the users have learned how to use them, or they disappear into the obedience to standards that made us passive observers and consumers. Keys of Fury is brutalist storytelling about technology and keystrokes, and an artistic statement based on the concept, research and practice of KYBDslöjd, which I define as “drawing and crafting by type in”. It is based on the text-mode, where the grid is the framework and the character set is the instructions, using the Commodore 64 computer, teletext system, typewriter, mosaic and cross-stitch as media. I claim that old technologies are an unravelling force, a critique of the parasitic abuse of technology by postmodernity and capitalism, instead of a case for nostalgia. A new understanding, a message in an unknown language that we are still learning. Keys of Fury (Les Clefs de la Fureur) is also the name of the ‘Artist in Residency Le Shadok & Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival’ exhibition, curated by Esté-elle Dalleu and Arnaud Reeb in September 2016.

Asemic writing and visual poetry are inherently connected, and the relationship is symbiotic. Thus it is not at all surprising that typewriter-generated concrete poetry (ironically considered by some to be obsolete) is re-emerging in new forms and with considerable vitality in the asemic writing movement.
Federico Federici is one of the master practitioners of this interesting sub-genre. (He is also contributing to my long-held theory of Neo-Concretism.) That contemporary asemic writers and artists should benefit from the triumphs of the “Golden Age” of concrete poetry is, after all, an indication of healthy cultural evolution: a balance of tradition and the iconoclastic.
Working in the context of concrete poetry, Federico Federici uses type-overs (as well as some calligraphy) to generate asemic symbols and structures. I believe this is one of the most promising possibilities for the use of concrete poetry in the asemic realm: The generation of symbols and structures.
Federici also interjects words – mostly nouns – to allow for some degree of “reading” and association. A nature theme emerges: “TREE,” “weed,” “wood,” “leaf,” “deer,” “stone,” etc. The work can be read, but not strictly in a conventional sense. For instance, traditional syntax is lacking yet the sign-system is intact for individual words. Poetically, the work presents a severely fractured pastoral lyric that is neither highly Romanticized nor parodied.
The typewritten structure suggests linearity; however, I believe the piece requires a “depth-of-field” reading. (Both asemics and vispo require new kinds of reading.) One is directed to look into and through the dense layering (not across).
Federici’s asemic-concrete composition implies, I believe, that a “text” is a dense field of accumulated meanings. Meanings can be distorted, obscured or disrupted by others. Emotional response competes with rationality. Linear (conventional) reading is misreading and misleading. True understanding of the text involves seeing into its depth and layers of possibility. The play of these layers of meaning, in turn, creates new meanings.
Federici’s work, indeed, uses a randomness principle. The precise geometry of concrete poetry obscures the randomness and creates a deconstructive tension in the work.
The asemic text demands a new kind of “reading” and finding meaning. Federico Federici’s work helps open new possibilities. - De Villo Sloan

The typewriter has been taken for granted and, in spite of Catherine Viollet’s pioneering work, it remains a blind spot in the history of writing practices. My article briefly surveys the metaphors (military, musical, etc.) with which writers responded to the machine, and I place its arrival firmly within the culture of modernity and the jazz age. I identify two common and contradictory responses to the typewriter from authors canonical and otherwise. Firstly, the typewriter alienated the author from his or her own text, which encouraged more deliberate and precise composition (example – Henry James). On the other hand, the ‘romantic typewriter’ offered opportunities for spontaneous and intuitive writing (example – Jack Kerouac). I lastly draw attention to the return of orality to writing practices, signaled by McLuhan. My source material consists of writers’ memoirs and published interviews, principally from English-language countries, as my title suggests.

This article brings Friedrich Kittler’s media determinism to bear on a selection of works from Brian O’Nolan’s oeuvre. It briefly examines Myles na gCopaleen’s play with posthuman hybrids in Cruiskeen Lawn, seeing his vignettes as extravagant, humorous depictions of the ways our bodies and symbolic order are determined by the mechanical. It then maps the movement between
typed and handwritten texts in At Swim-Two-Birds, considering the progression between modes of inscription as a commentary on modernity, meaning, and presence. Despite At Swim-Two-Birds’s overt commitment to the typewriter’s mode of impersonal, mechanical assemblage, we find, at the novel’s core, inscriptions that are invested in the personal and immediate, and which are driven by intention. The novel’s modernist detachment and technological investments are underpinned by nostalgic desires, ironically and earnestly presented, for the immediacy and presence of more traditional relations with language and the text. By tracing the implications of the writing implements used by the various authors in At Swim-Two-Birds, we uncover a new aspect of the novel’s mediation between modernity and tradition.

This thesis works to develop a heuristic technique – the Imbrication Model – for
understanding technologies relations to other objects. These relations include objects which contribute to the actualization of a technology and objects which are influenced by the technology. The model draws upon four fields of existing scholarship: Graham Harman’s object- oriented ontology (OOO); Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory (ANT), social construction of technology (SCOT), and media ecology. The Imbrication Model is developed by proposing a novel re-reading of the implications of SCOT and media ecology through the philosophies of objects and non-human actors in OOO and ANT. Particularly, this occurs by stating that technologies relate to objects in one of four ways: if an object relates to a technology, it must be either a performative motive, an ostensive motive, a performative consequence, or an ostensive consequence. These four concepts make up the four quadrants of the Imbrication Model.
The model is demonstrated by applying it to the object of the QWERTY keyboard. Finally, the temporal implications of motive and consequence are considered in relation to technological changes over time. This principle is explored via the Imbrication Model through tessellations, where the four quadrants of one technology are diagrammatically compared to the four quadrants of another technology.
Ultimately, the unique emphasis of objects as the centerpiece of this thesis enables it to provoke non-obvious questions and facilitate thought along lines which are helpful in emphasizing the importance of indirect relations in media studies.

Anhand der Akten und Protokolle über den »Ausfertigungsmodus der Reinschrift des Regierungsratsprotokolls« geht es im Folgenden um die Mechanisierung der Sekretärstätigkeit zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Da­bei wird zunächst die Verwaltungspraxis des mechanisierten Schreibens in Augenschein genommen und auf ihre administrativen und gouvernemen­talen Implikationen und Leitvorstellungen hin befragt. Anschließend wer­den die beiden grundlegenden administrativen Schreibroutinen, Konzept (Entwurf) und Mundum (Reinschrift), auf ihre Schreibmaschinentaug­lichkeit geprüft. In einem dritten Schritt werden Akten zu den Verfahren ihrer Aufzeichnung in Beziehung gesetzt, und danach gefragt, wie sich die Verfahren und die Instrumente der Aufzeichnung in Verwaltungsakte einfügen und sie präparieren. Abschließend soll die Frage geklärt werden, in welchem Zusammenhang Schreibmaschine und Bürokratie, Mechani­sierung des Schreibens und Herrschaft des Büros stehen.

This article brings Friedrich Kittler’s media determinism to bear on a selection of works from Brian O’Nolan’s œuvre. It briefly examines Myles na gCopaleen’s play with posthuman hybrids in Cruiskeen Lawn, seeing his vignettes as extravagant, humorous depictions of the ways our bodies and symbolic order are determined by the mechanical. It then maps the movement between typed and handwritten texts in At Swim-Two-Birds, considering the progression between modes of inscription as a commentary on modernity, meaning, and presence. Despite At Swim-Two-Birds’s overt commitment to the typewriter’s mode of impersonal, mechanical assemblage, we find, at the novel’s core, inscriptions that are invested in the personal and immediate, and which are driven by intention. The novel’s modernist detachment and technological investments are underpinned by nostalgic desires, ironically and earnestly presented, for the immediacy and presence of more traditional relations with language and the text. By ...

This book captures the intensity of the relationship between writers and their typewriters from the 1880s, when the machine was first commercialized, to the 1980s, when word-processing superseded it. Drawing on examples from the United States, Britain, Europe, and Australia, The Typewriter Century focuses on "celebrity writers," including Henry James, Jack Kerouac, Agatha Christie, Enid Blyton, Georges Simenon, and Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote prolifically and mechanically, developing routines in which typing, handwriting, and dictation were each allotted important functions.

The typewriter de-personalized the text; the office typewriter bureaucratized it. At the same time, some authors found a new and disturbing distance between themselves and their compositions while others believed the typewriter facilitated spontaneous and automatic typing. The Typewriter Century provides a cultural history of the typewriter, outlining the ways in which it can be considered an agent of change as well as demonstrating how it influenced all writers, canonical and otherwise.

The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion for the 21st Century. Woodstock, VT: Countryman Press, 2015. (Introduction)

https://books.google.com/books?id=uhXSBgAAQBAJ

What do thousands of writers, makers, kids, poets, artists, steampunks, and hipsters have in common?  They love typewriters—the magical, mechanical contraptions that are enjoying a surprising second life in the 21st century.  The Typewriter Revolution documents the movement and provides practical advice on how to choose a typewriter, use it, and care for it—from National Novel Writing Month to letter-writing socials, from type-ins to customized typewriters.

“I am just on the grisly job of typing out my novel. I can’t type much because it tires me too much to sit up at table, and I asked Roger Senhouse to try and send me a stenog. for a fortnight, but of course it’s not so easy to get people for short periods like that.”  (Letter written at Barnhill on Jura to Anthony Powell, 15 Nov. 1948)