Slate pencils, anyone?
When I first went to school, everyone learned to write using a slate and
a slate pencil. The square of slate was set in a wooden frame, and the
slate pencil produced a crisp, clear line that could be cleaned off with
a piece of damp rag. (I've long wondered what the material of the slate
pencil might have been - does anyone know?)
Later, we moved on to 'sugar paper' and ordinary pencils. The teacher
had a pencil sharpener clamped to her desk, which worked by turning a
handle: fascinating. Once, I remember I had been given a special
pencil as a birthday present. It smelled of cedarwood when it was
sharpened. Much later, there was an aftershave with the same aroma:
every time I smelled it, it took me straight back to the thrill of that
special gift.
Yes, I too learned first to use a dip-pen, a steel nib in a thick wooden
handle, which was painted a bright colour. Mine was blue, a colour I've
always loved, and the ink was royal blue and we had our own ceramic
inkwells set in a hole in the corner of our wooden desks. ('Desks'
plural - they were built in pairs.) Unfortunately, little boys had a
habit of putting balls of our pink blotting paper into the ink wells.
This was alright until the ink was nearly used up, then you would get a
bit of fibre stuck in your pen nib, and if you didn't notice it in time
it made blots all over your page. And blots lost you marks. Grrr!
When I went on to secondary education, my parents gave me a real
fountain pen. I carried it to school and back everyday, along with my
own blotting paper, and my own bottle of ink. Thinking back, it's a
miracle those bottles weren't broken, but I don't ever remember it
happening. Biros were forbidden in exercise books - and examinations,
but allowed in our 'rough notebooks'. They are quicker in use, but
certainly change your way of writing. When I learned Greek, I had a
terrible struggle forming the letters, until I tried using a fountain
pen, which suddenly made it all come together. (But it wasn't until I
tried a pottery class once that I realised how the letters were perfect
for cutting into clay, a lot better than english letter.)
Another present, for my 16th birthday, was a typewriter. We didn't
learn typing at school, but a family friend warned me to learn to touch
type from the start, and gave me a book and a chart. I've always been
very grateful for that advice; it has been so useful ever since - and my
typing speed is quite respectable, now that I can do it on a computer
keyboard. My first typewriter was a beautiful modern portable, but when
I went to my first job I was the most junior person in the company, so I
inherited the oldest typewriter. It was a terribly heavy old monster; I
believe it contributed to the wrist problems I've had for so many years.
Later there came the IBM golfball: not only much quicker and lighter,
(being electric), but also - joy of joys - it had a correction ribbon.
This was a second ribbon, covered in white gunge, with which you could
blank out any letter typed by mistake. Of course, this was no help if
you were using the machine without any ribbon, so as to cut a stencil
for the Gestetner machine, or cut a ribbon of paper tape so as to send a
Telex message.
Oh the delights of the photocopier, the various word processing programs
e-mail, u-tube . . . Did I mention that my first computer was a ZX-81,
won in a crossword competition?
All this may make it seem that I was born during the reign of Queen
Victoria, but all it really shows is that I grew up in a relatively poor
and very rural area, and worked in small companies that didn't have much
spare money to invest in new office equipment. Yes, I remember many of
the things mentioned in the first message of this thread, but I beg to
point out that the list doesn't relate directly to my age. Oh yes -
and, please, what's a Studebaker?
Linda Walton,
in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, U.K.,
where making Bucks Point Lace doesn't mean you were born in the
eighteenth century!
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