Monday, July 03, 2023

Musical interlude of the week

 

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the funny thing is that I suspect few who were born in the last 30 years would have been familiar with old manual typewriters. 

Ironically, with computers, the old bell and having to stop to move to the next line was no longer needed, and spell check meant you could go back and fix the mistakes a lot easier than using whiteout to fix the spelling.

I leaned to type in high school, but since I was in precollege I had to come in a hour early to take the class as an elective. Because if you knew how to type, you could always find a job.

the irony? Back then, often girls, even those with BA degrees, could not find jobs: boys with a similar degree would enter into a low level executive job, so they could work their way up into the company, but girls stayed as secretaries.

But my classmates knew how to type. So when these companies started using computers, it was these intelligent secretaries who had learned about the business in a hands on fashion and also knew how to touch type and therefore could use the machines, and with women's equality, the companies realized the women could do the work better than many of the men.  Voila, women in business.

more here in the history of typewriters.

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