Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Dirt Nap City is the podcast about history's most interesting dead people. In each episode, Alex and Kelly dive into the life of a famous person that you have heard of, but probably don't know much about. Our stories are about actors, entrepreneurs, politicians, musicians, inventors, explorers and more! We also cover things that used to be popular but have fallen out of favor. Things like pet rocks, drive in theaters, Jolt Cola, and many other trends of yesterday make up our "dead ends". But whether we are talking about interesting historical figures or past trends, the show is funny, light-hearted, entertaining, informative and educational. You will definitely learn something new and probably have some laughs along the way. Everyone will eventually move to Dirt Nap City, so why not go ahead and meet the neighbors?
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Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Typewriters - From Mechanical Marvel to Outdated Oddity
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From early mechanical prototypes to the ubiquitous desktop fixtures of the 20th century, the typewriter changed how humanity captured the written word. In this episode, we trace the full arc of the typewriter's legacy: how iconic machines revolutionized journalism, literature, and the global workforce.
We explore the machine's golden era, examine why the modern QWERTY layout survived, and look into the rapid digital shift in the late 20th century that replaced ink ribbons with microchips. Finally, we discuss today's surprising subculture of writers, collectors, and enthusiasts who are keeping the tactile sound of mechanical typing alive in the screen age.
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Dirt Nap City is the podcast about the most interesting dead people in history.
Subscribe and listen to learn about people you've heard of, but don't know much about.
Someday we'll all live in Dirt Nap City, so you should probably go ahead and meet the neighbors!
Hey Alex, how you doing?
SPEAKER_02Hey Kelly, what's up, man?
SPEAKER_01Uh, I just, you know, I was preparing for this episode. Uh, we're gonna do a dead end today. And I want to talk about something that sort of is the precursor. I don't think we could even do this podcast if this hadn't been a thing back in the day. It's it's that important. But I want to ask you a quick question. What's what do you think the best advice your father ever gave you was? Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02This is hard because he listens too. I think the best advice might I don't it's it's not like a saying or a um you know a quip or a quote or anything like that, but just the idea of being prepared and being prepared for anything and Semperify sure. Um, but just always like being ready, you know, being ready for for stuff and not having for that question that I just asked, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01Ironic. Ironic. Well, I want to share with you um probably the best advice my dad ever gave me. It's not that deep, it's not that complicated. He said, Son, whatever you do in high school, take typing.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you know what? My dad gave me the same advice, actually. And I remember thinking at the time Wait, no, my mom wanted me to take typing, and my dad said, No. That's that's women's work. I took Spanish instead, so the compromise, we've probably said this before. The compromise I bought the software, I had the software video game where I had to type, and I actually learned to type pretty well from that video.
SPEAKER_01Was it somebody Mavis, like uh Marv Marva Mavis or something, the typing program? I don't think so.
SPEAKER_02It was like a Space Invaders, but you had to type in the word before the thing shut up.
SPEAKER_01You're saving the planet by typing. Um, well, listen, my my father told me in in uh 1987, it's our senior year of high school. Oh wow, we're pretty much done with uh everything. You know, we're I I took calculus that year too, which was stupid. But senioritis. My dad's like, uh, you should you should take typing. It's it'll be useful. I'm not dad, I'm not gonna be a writer. I'm not gonna get into I'm not gonna get into computers. Like I'm not gonna write software. Yeah, why should I take typing? Anyway, you know, flash forward now. And I'm a decent typist. How are you at typing?
SPEAKER_02I'm actually pretty good. I mean, I don't I still look down, you know.
SPEAKER_01I'm not I don't typist.
SPEAKER_02I'm not I don't stare forward, um, but I probably could, you know. I mean, I don't like hunt and peck or anything like that. I mean, I'm I'm pretty good. You don't have to be super fast, um, but I am. I think I'm pretty good typer. Typist. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Type in, yeah. You said typer, so that kind of eliminates your pretty well. It's not my occupation or anything. I'm not a typist. Well, but but nobody really is, right? Everybody uses it today. And the thing that we have to thank for that is is the typewriter. Right? Um, right? The typewriter. It's it's something that I think our kids will never experience. Certainly, our grandkids will never experience a typewriter unless they intentionally go out and try to find one. But the typewriter was a mechanical marvel, right? This was something that shaped modern language, it empowered a workforce, it it just became something that was synonymous with business for a long time. And journalism and you know, and writing everything, like books, everything. Oh, memos, business memos. I mean, it this was something that that came about that uh it had been explored for a long time. Now, a lot of people tried to invent something like this for a long time. I mean, there was uh Pellegrino Turi in 1808, there was William Austin Burt in 1829.
SPEAKER_02Well, the Gutenberg Bible was uh those were those were like um typesets tiles though, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. This is back to back back to what we were talking about with um with Milton Hershey. His his these were squares that they put onto a big sheet of paper that was you know plotted.
SPEAKER_02So the idea behind a typewriter is it'd be cool if that was like mobile and everybody had one of those, and you could just smaller, one person could do it, yes.
SPEAKER_01So a guy named Christopher Latham Scholes is credited with inventing the first commercially successful typewriter in 1867, along with he had two co-inventors, Samuel Sowell and Carlos Glidden. Now Shoul and Sol Shoal, Sol, and Glidden. Sounds like a 18 what? 67. That seems I would have guessed a hundred years before that. Okay, well, the reason I say that, I uh as I said before, uh Pellegrino Turi tried to do it in 1808, William Austin Burt tried to do it in 1829. The problem was these were still slower than doing it by hand. So the the the success was that you could actually type faster than you could write things down. And you know what the key was? The key. I'm using a little pun there, but what was the key to a great typewriter? It starts with a Q. QWERTY. You know what the QRD layout is.
SPEAKER_02But why? Why why is that so efficient? I know now because everybody learns on that, but why is that better than alphabetical order?
SPEAKER_01Because the reason the QWERTY keyboard worked is because the keys that you were typing, there's there's uh letters that are a lot more popular, you know, the E, the S, um, the M. Those are more popular than the X or the Z, the Z.
SPEAKER_02So the ones those are out in the in the wilderness. Did you say Z?
SPEAKER_01Z, the Z answer. Uh I am from A to Z.
SPEAKER_02So the ones that are least used are out in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_01Although nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. The reason, the reason that's not the reason of where they're placed. The reason is because the mechanical devices that would actually strike the paper, if they put it in alphabetical order, those would get jammed. And by doing the QWERTY layout, they sort of laid it out in such a way that the more popular keys, um, the the the strikers that would actually hit were closer, were further away from other popular strikers. So they separated the popular strikers that would hit the paper so that they didn't get jammed.
SPEAKER_02It's cool that like your phone has the QWERTY on it now, which you know they could do you remember though when when texting first started, a lot of those phones and like Blackberry, I don't know if Blackberry said this, but it was out credit order, right? Yeah, they were just data z and it was confusing. Oh yeah because you weren't used to typing that way, especially if you took typing, especially if you took typing.
SPEAKER_01So in 1873, um, so they had invented this guy, uh um Scholes, Christopher Scholes, main inventor. We'll just use his name for now. Um, he patented the rights and he sold it to Remington and Sons. Now you know what Remington and Sons made, right? Remington. Remington, yeah. What do you think of when you think of that name? They were gunsmiths. Guns, yeah, guns. Yeah, so so the Scholes and Glidden typewriter, which later became the Remington typewriter, was mass-produced by Remington. They were already mass-producing rifles, so they they switched over to Why was that easy? Because they had like metal they had the metal, they had well, they had the the manufacturing capabilities. Right, yeah. I mean, and and also fairly intricate steel steel, you know, fairly intricate parts and things, small parts that had to work well together. I mean, this was this wasn't something that was like a you know a giant stamping machine. This was a tiny little machine with a lot of very intricate parts.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's true. We think of it as later they were like more rugged, but back then they were probably pretty fragile. And is that the Glidden, the Glidden Paint guy, or different Glidden?
SPEAKER_01Scholes and Glidden. No, it was it was um it was a different it was the uh co-inventor Carlos Glidden that helped no nothing to do with Glidden Paint. Okay so the so so the typewriter was invented. Um it was it was uh invented in June of 1868, and then 10 years later, in 1878, there was a major revolution in the typewriter. A big, a big it was kind of like going from an iPhone 5 to an iPhone 15. Do you know what that was? Oh, let me see. One one thing, one key, one key that they brought in. The space bar? The shift key.
SPEAKER_02Oh, to make cash.
SPEAKER_01Yes, the shift key would allow you to go from a lowercase to an uppercase, or vice versa. That was a game changer.
SPEAKER_02That was at the one was at the top of the key and the other one was at the bottom of the key. Was that how it worked? It was the same same key or not.
SPEAKER_01It was um no, you would just hold down the shift, and then everything after that would be the capital, but the capital was still on the same strike bar. That's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_02So I'm calling the strike bar a key, but wasn't it one at the top and one at the bottom?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. It changed, it slightly changed the angle.
SPEAKER_02That must have been a game changer going being able to so be before that was everyone writing in all caps all the time? What was the default?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I think the the the the original keyboard, the original keys were only capital letters, and then they were able to screaming all the time, right? Right, and so so they were able to, yeah, exactly. But but that's that's a modern that's a modern thing, right? The screaming and all caps kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02They didn't take it that way back then. Why are you screaming at me?
SPEAKER_01So, so of course, you know, this is the late 1800s, and all of a sudden these bigger businesses are happening, offices are happening, secretarial jobs are happening, women are beginning to work more and more, and a lot of women are working in the office environment and taking secretarial jobs. They're starting to use these keyboards. Now, the first author to write a uh manuscript on a uh typewriter was somebody we talked about earlier.
SPEAKER_02Earlier today?
SPEAKER_01Yep. Mark Twain. Life on the Mississippi was written on a typewriter. That was the first? He was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript. Wow. What year was that? Uh oh, I don't know. I don't know. That would have been somewhere between 1874 and whenever he wrote that book. And now um so uh Hemingway, uh Agatha Christie, they all became big uh proponents of the typewriter. And you know, Hemingway was pretty associated with the typewriter. When you think of him, you think of a visual of him typing on a typewriter. Um now that was the mechanical typewriter. The mechanical typewriter had a ribbon that would raise up, the little strike plates would hit, they would hit the paper, and that was that. You know how you corrected those if you made a mistake?
SPEAKER_02Um you had to probably throw it out, start over.
SPEAKER_01Um, yeah, I think initially, but eventually they had um a couple of things. They had white out, like this little white that you could put on.
SPEAKER_02It wasn't invented until the 60s.
SPEAKER_01Um, and then they also they also had um the ability to on some of the later typewriters, these were electric typewriters, the ability to actually click and it would white out whatever mistake you made. But that came much later. Yeah, these were the IBM Selectrics. So the IBM Selectrics.
SPEAKER_02But what what about in the what was Mark Twain doing if he messed up? Oh, you're probably right, threw it out, through the page. You know, you know about whiteout, you know who invented whiteout, right? I do not. Oh, it was um invented by Michael Nesmith's mom. Michael Nesmith of the Monkey.
SPEAKER_01From the monkeys, okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, she invented it in the 50s.
SPEAKER_01Okay. 56 or something. He was a very wealthy uh individual before the monkeys.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well that whiteout money, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So so eventually these mechanical typewriters, which had these long um little bars that would go up with the letters on them and hit, they would physically hit, and you had to push kind of hard. Have you ever used a mechanical typewriter?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And I had to you have to push down hard, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like you're saying. Yeah, yeah, you have you really have to kind of like push up heavy and they're heavy, they have a lot of hef, they have a lot of metal in them. Um, do you know about the IBM Selectric? Yes, yes, and and fact you know that device was called the track ball. The golf ball. Yeah, yeah, it was a golf ball, and it would rotate, but there was no computerization, no software. All this was mechanical that would make it turn around.
SPEAKER_02I used the one with the ball. I used that in college. That's how old we are.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, that's what I learned on at Clements High School, um, my senior year was IBM Selectrics, and it had that little golf ball in it. And that's when you could use whiteout, or I think there was a key on it that would actually correct for you. Like you, if you made a mistake, you could go back one.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Yeah. So I think that machine though got us prepared for word processors. Because if you could do things kind of so facile, you know, you could you could correct things and make mistakes you know, make mistakes and backspace and all that. It was getting us prepared for that next for you know, word perfect, which was the next step, right? Or whatever.
SPEAKER_01It was it was definitely the the precursor to word processing, and that's really that was the downfall of it. In the 1970s and the 80s, um, there was Wang, there was IBM, there was which actually cannibalized itself, there was Apple. Um, all of these companies started making these uh Texas instruments, started making these computers with word processors. And the big thing with the word processor was you could immediately correct any mistakes, you could make revisions to it, and the biggest thing, you could save it, you could save the document for later.
SPEAKER_02Sounds so dumb now that like that's a big deal, but how revolutionary was that? I mean, what talk about a problem that needed to be solved. That yeah, you know, the end of carbon paper and white out and um all that nonsense, you know.
SPEAKER_01Just think about those initial printers were pretty bad, right? Those initial printers, yeah, they were they were pretty awful. They were loud, they were slow. Um I don't miss that noise. No, no, but no, but but that was a big thing. Word word processors took over. Um, I think the big thing with typewriters too, though, is a typing pool was a status symbol for a lot of companies. Um, it was the the symbol of journalism, like you said before. You know, a journalists were considered to be oh yeah, newsroom. That's what the sound, that's the soundtrack of a newsroom, right? Yep, yep. It was it was people typing that click, click, clack, and people um when you worked at KXAN, were they still using typewriters? Um KXAN, you know, I didn't have a job that required any sort of uh typing or anything like that.
SPEAKER_02Not you, but like the people like writing stories. Was it like a new story?
SPEAKER_01No, it was it it was a computer, and the reason I know that is because um I would rip the scripts in the morning, which meant I would take the scripts and I would put them onto the teleprompter, and they were physical pieces of paper with with they still had carbon paper in the middle of them at that time. But yeah, it was it was uh it was a big change, and typewriters today there is something very tactile and very satisfying, especially an electric typewriter when you hit it and you just hear that thwack, you know, that that kind of solid sound. Don't don't you think? Don't you remember that kind of feeling?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely. Do you know about Tom Hanks' typewriter collection? No, he's got like this, he's a known like typewriter collector. Um he has one of the best typewriter collections around. I think he has like 300. I'm looking it up now. He has 300 different portable typewriters spanning the full history of typewriters. Uh wow. And he even had like an exhibit um uh uh where he've handpicked a bunch of typewriters, and like but he's a big typewriter.
SPEAKER_01Imagine imagine telling your date you're going to a typewriter exhibit. But that's a cool thing to collect, don't you think?
SPEAKER_02I mean, it probably takes a lot of room.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. If you have a lot of space, um yeah, why not? I mean, it's collective history. Yeah, I think we talk about it, so why not collect it? Well, what's funny is much like vinyl and even DVDs are are are having a bit of a moment, like a comeback today, you know. Vinyl records, uh physical media is starting to have a comeback. And in that same way, a lot of Gen Z are returning to typewriters. Oh, now the the reason is kind of what we just talked about, that satisfying tactile sound and feeling when you actually punch a typewriter key. But the other thing is, well, the other reason that is not so silly, and I'll say this as you know, even preparing for this episode, distractions. A typewriter has no distractions built in. Your computer immediately with pop-ups and email and websites and everything else that's popping up, you you you have a million distractions. Whereas with a typewriter, you just kind of focus, you get in the zone, you lock in, and you go.
SPEAKER_02But if you really need to get something out, like it's like churning your own butter. You know, it's the least efficient way to do something.
SPEAKER_01Sure, sure. Well, you know, I mean, Gen Z, right? Let's let's give them a break.
SPEAKER_02Who knows? So it's interesting that you think that that was good advice from your dad because a person could read it both ways. You could say, it turns out that I didn't really need to learn how to type that fast because word processing came in and I didn't really need to be that you know great with it. But I love that you look at it the other way.
SPEAKER_01I think for I think for instant messaging, for chat, for for typing ideas, for word processing, typing fast is a good taking notes, all of those things, typing fast, just being able to do it without looking, you know, knowing the ASDF, JKL SEM and the QRI keyboard, I think is a huge superpower that is gonna be relevant today, continue to be relevant, but where it's gonna change is when voice dictation gets good enough that you don't need to type anymore.
SPEAKER_02Little did you know in 1987 that you would be doing most of your typing with your thumbs.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. Uh and and and being told I'm slow at that by my kids. They certainly don't think I'm very good at it. Well, that's that's typewriters. Uh, if you have a thought about it, check us out. Check out other dead ends and leave us a comment. And I certainly hope if you aren't already downloading every episode of Dirtnap City, you're doing so now because we cover these amazing topics that you would never know much about otherwise.
SPEAKER_00I found an old typewriter underneath the stairs with a ribbon like a necktie and dust in all its hairs. I fed it one clean sheet to give it something grand. Then three keys met in traffic and refused to leave the jam. The little carriage cried. I hit the letter E and all the letters piled. The bell went ding ding ding. He quit his day job and blinged it on the string. Oh, typewriter, typewriter, stubborn little fan. You turn a simple sentence into modern art by hand. Then the ribbon starts to fight. I meant to write, dear grandma. But it printed Good night. The computer came along with a glowing little screen. Word processors promised to edit neat and clean. No jammed up alphabet, no ink up on my sleeve. Just bastard paste, copy, paste, how rudimentally leave. They took the office kingdom every desk and every chair. The typewriter kept a crown and pretended not to care. And muttered, I was faster as the printer joined the freight, then jammed itself dramatically and took the rest of the day. Oh, typewriter, type fighter, stop for the little band. You turn a simple sentence into a modern art by hand. Then the ribbon starts to fight. I'm meant to write your grandma, but it printed. Good night, good. One hand holds the coffee. One hand stands a heart. Auto correct, right? What I was trying to write is that we're going to be able to do it.
