![]() ![]() Empowered by a nation in the throes of rapid industrialization and armed with typing lessons from local YMCAs and YWCAs, these women, Wershler said, were key to filling the business world’s increasing demand for speed. Suddenly, women were operating typewriters and recording men’s dictation, irreversibly altering workplace gender dynamics. When the typewriter was introduced in the second half of the century, that relationship began to change. But in the early-to-mid 19th century, writers-who were usually men-would dictate their thoughts to a secretary-who was also typically male, Wershler said. ![]() Thanks to the increasing ubiquity of the laptop, it is today more common for people to write by themselves, with just the companionship of their computer’s glare. These histories, Darren Wershler, the author of The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting, said, are inseparable from the history of writing itself. Today, that age may be reaching its lowest limit, as standardized tests and metrics emphasize the need for exceedingly young learners to successfully navigate a computer. Over time, typing education has evolved in tandem with both the progression of computer technology and the decreasing age at which students are exposed to that technology. I attribute my ability to touch type-to use a keyboard without actually watching my fingers move-almost entirely to this computer game, which is a far cry from the typing courses high-school students took in previous decades and the typewriters they used. Like the characters in Oregon Trail, Freddy the Fish, and other popular games of the early aughts, the time-traveling typing guru of Type to Learn was an inescapable fixture of my elementary-school computer classes. His long, white beard rippled as he traveled in a pink convertible through both time and space. He wore thick, purple sunglasses that completely hid his eyes at all times. The man who taught me to type was at least 100 years old at the time of my instruction. The title is: “The Gendered Past of Typing Education: A Quirky QWERTY History.” Hayley Glatter is a former editorial fellow at The Atlantic. This article appeared in The Atlantic, October, 2016. ![]()
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