Page 4 February 22, 2018 TORRANCE TRIBUNE
TerriAnn in Torrance
Typewriter Exhibit at the Torrance Historical Museum Brings Back Key Period in Time
By TerriAnn Ferren
On a beautiful “summer in winter” Sunday
afternoon, I headed to the Torrance Historical
Museum for a unique Typewriter Event and
Display. Yes, you heard me right. Typewriters
are cool and popular again. On display
were over a dozen or so manual typewriters
including a 1912 Corona folding typewriter,
Tate Landgon, age 9.
a 1920s Remington Standard #12 (red keys),
early 1900s Ideal S&N (made in Germany),
1930s maroon Corona portable, and a 1950s
Remington “Quiet Riter” with portable with
green keys, among others. What was great
about this exhibit was that you could actually
sit down at the table and type on these
pieces of history. They work!
When I entered the museum, I immediately
noticed a young man, Tate Landgon, age 9,
who was typing for the very first time on
one of the manual typewriters. “It feels like
a computer, but the difference is you really
have to move your fingers up toward and
really push it down hard when you type,”
he said. I asked him how it would be typing
a paper for school on a manual typewriter
and he said, “Hard!” He said typing on a
computer keyboard is much easier. Well, I
can’t disagree with that. Tate’s father Jim
Wimberg told me, “He [Tate] is doing a
project for third grade, ‘Touring Torrance.’
So he has to pick at least four things that
he wants to write about. He wanted to write
about the Torrance Historical Society, the
Western Museum of Flight, the Red Car…
Torrance is an interesting town. We have lived
in Torrance 17 years. When I was in junior
high, I learned to type and I had a typing
teacher and she was a drill sergeant.” Jim
told me when he was learning to type, he
didn’t think typing would be of much use,
but admittedly it comes in extremely handy
now with the computer. “It is a lot easier on
the computer, I can type a lot faster ‘cuz the
keyboard is so low-profile and the keys are
so sensitive,” he added. After a few minutes,
I noticed Tate was typing faster and faster.
As he practiced, he seemed to get the hang
of it quite well.
On the other end of the exhibit, I met 50-
year resident Maxine Trevethen, who was
typing on another old machine. She told me
she used to type 75 words a minute in her
heyday in the ‘60s and ‘70s after learning
how to type in high school – in the ‘40s on
manual typewriters. “When I started teaching
– I started teaching in Long Beach and that
was 1954 – we had manual typewriters. Then
I went to El Camino College and I taught
typing for 25 years. At first, that’s all we
had was manuals. Then we got electrics. The
touch was completely different. It is kind of
like what we have on computers now. It’s a
pushing movement, whereas when I taught,
we had to teach stroking and you had to teach
the girls they couldn’t have long fingernails.
They had to have short fingernails ’cuz you
stroked the key going out and clicking in.
You really had to hit the keys – you couldn’t
just touch them.” She told me when they
changed to electric typewriters that they were
so sensitive, it took some time getting used
to them in class.
Over toward the end of the exhibit row, I
noticed a cute, compact typewriter. Former
Councilwoman and School Board member
Maureen O’Donnell told me an interesting
story that happened in the early ‘50s relating
to that portable, compact typewriter she
sat beside. “It [the typewriter] belonged to
my father, Thomas O’Donnell, who was an
attorney, who for some years had been an
attorney for the Northwestern Railroad and
traveled all around the country because they
[the railroad] were under federal law and tried
cases around the country.” Maureen told me
that the typewriter she brought to the display
was a correspondence typewriter, made by
Hermes, which is a Swiss company -- the kind
that journalists used. “My father carried that
with him all the time and at one point in the
early ‘50s, he was on a train that was snowed
in at Donner Pass for something like a week.
So there he was with his faithful journalist
typewriter typing up passengers’ statements
for the railroad. They ran out of food, they
ran out of heat and it was quite something.
Periodically the History Channel will show
a documentary of the train being snowed
in at the Donner Pass.” I learned Thomas
O’Donnell later became head council for
Allstate Insurance, but the Western Railroad
for which he worked for 10 years had also
been the railroad for which attorneys Lincoln
and William Jennings Bryant also worked.
“And during the time my father worked for
the Western Railroad, we traveled around the
country – everything first class – that was in
the 1940s, early ‘50s,” added Maureen. Can
you imagine traveling by train around our
beautiful country back then in first class?
Wow. Maureen told me she knew her father
would be delighted to know his typewriter
was at this very special exhibit.
Next, I met with 1st Vice President of the
Torrance Historical Society Debbie Hays
and asked her about how the exhibit came
to be and she told me, “Well, typewriters are
Ernest Hemingway’s typewriter he used in Cuba (photo courtesy
of Dr. Terence Hammer).
Councilman Milton S. Herring I stopped by to try his hand at the old typewriters
what’s trending now and we found out that
Julie Randall from the Torrance Street Faire
Antiques had a big collection come in and
she was refurbishing some of them so that
she could sell them. So Janet [Payne] asked
if we could borrow them and have a display
and then we found out one of our members
used to be a typing teacher/business teacher
and we put the whole program together so
everyone could come get a glimpse of the
past and hear the past as they click-clack on
the typewriter keys.”
Author Ron Kovic stopped in the exhibit
and was busily typing away and I could
hear the clicking and clacking, as Debbie
said. I asked Ron how it felt typing on a
manual typewriter and he told me, “You
know, I wrote Born on the Fourth of July
on a manual typewriter in about a month
and a half. A Brother typewriter – a blue
plastic model. I haven’t typed on a manual
for years and hitting these keys, I got a chill
down my back. It is just a wonderful feeling
and reminded me there is an intimacy
missing with my laptop. Only by typing
on this manual typewriter today at the Historical
Society did I realize what had been
missing between the old typewriter and the
laptop. There is a certain intimacy with the
word and literature when you write. I feel
more connected… and also may I say this,
I don’t feel as anybody is going to hack my
writing. I don’t feel like anyone is spying
on me and I can’t help when I work on the
computer these days, especially post 9/11,
that anything I write could be surveilled and
probably millions of us who write are being
watched and monitored. On this typewriter
it is only me and my mind -- and no one
else knows what I am writing.” Well, there
is something to that, I suppose. Ron told
me he learned to type at the Marine Corps
Barracks when he was sent to Morse Code
School in Norfolk, Virginia.
Finally, I sat down to try my hand at a
manual typewriter. I learned to type one
summer at Torrance High School and can
still vividly remember the sound of that noisy
classroom. We had to do exercises and work
on memorizing the keys. My teacher did tell
us that someone had done a study and found
out that there was an alternative way the
letters could be arranged on the keyboard to
allow the typist to type faster, but it would
be a mess for everyone having to learn all
over again where the letters were. Don’t ask
me why I remember that bit of trivia. Maybe
I was happy we didn’t have to re-learn the
key placement. After the class, I remember I
learned how to type, but I wasn’t great at it.
It wasn’t until I began typing on a computer
keyboard that I became a pretty good typist.
Now, it is second nature. What is that saying?
Practice makes perfect. Ah, yes.
My afternoon around these albeit outdated
typewriters was fun as they had their “day
in the sun,” so to speak. After all, the actor
Tom Hanks now collects them and there is
a documentary called California Typewriter
that is popular. What is it about a typewriter
that still fascinates us? Perhaps it is the
security, the feel of the keys, or the distinct
sound each typewriter makes – like a song.
My two manual typewriters in the garage
probably won’t replace my lovely keyboard,
but they comfort me. I know how many college
papers I wrote on those typewriters. Call
me sentimental, but the manual typewriter
is fun. Try it again when you get a chance.
Happy typing! •
Former Councilwoman and recipient of the Jared Sidney Torrance Award Maureen O’Donnell.