Does anybody remember typing correction paper?

[HmmmCat]

Does anybody remember using typing correction paper? I think it may have been called snowpake paper. It was like chalky white carbon paper. If you made a mistake typing, you aligned the mistake back in the typing space, slipped a piece of correction paper behind the guide but in front of the mistake, and then hit the same wrong key. If you were lucky, the letters aligned perfectly and you overtyped the incorrect letter in white. Then you could overtype it again with the correct letter. Fiddly, but neater and quicker than painting Tippex a few years later.

The purple ones aren't gestetner. David Gestener invented the stencil copier which uses sticky black ink and makes black and white copies, and his firm made them for over 100 years, a rival company Roneo also made them.

The purple copies are produced by a Hectograph machine, in this country made by a company called Block and Anderson (BandA for short). The original is typed on a sheet which imprints a heavy dye onto a waxy backing paper, the dye, Aniline, is dissolved by methylated spirit. The master sheet is wrapped tightly around a drum, as a handle is turned plain paper is pulled under the drum first being brushed by a felt strip soaked in meths, this wets the paper just enough to transfer the image.

Yes, Tipp-ex strips. I used to use every last bit!

Wonderful stuff, Tipp-ex :)
I dont miss carbon paper though... it was a pain.

I used a telex machine in the late 70s.

Great machines, I still have one in the loft, a blue mk2, sadly few of them work properly any more, they have a huge amount of moving parts, many of which are rubber and have decayed, and few engineers are still able to keep them going.

Yes I do! I also did shorthand and used a fax machine frequently.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/1350696389

I wonder if I'm the only one who gets accused of typing too loudly? I learnt on a manual typewriter in 1980, you really had to thump the keys. I'm still quite loud, but fast too!

Me too! I learned on a manual, including to the March of the light brigade 😂. I too can touch type very fast but yes I pound those keys

I have complained to colleagues about them typing too loudly - however, I suspect I'm the only one who actually learnt to type on a proper steep, manual typewriter. You weren't allowed on an electric until you could do at least 30wpm with 95% accuracy.

Aww never really thought about it till now, sad at all those discarded golf ball machines. You really could go fast on them whereas if you were fast, some other “normal” electric typewriters could lag

I think us old typists were very accurate partly to avoid the hassle of correcting. When word processors came in, accuracy fell.

Most companies rented them from IBM, as they cost a fortune, and renting they were under a service plan so a man came and serviced them. IBM had a policy of destroying all old machines when they were returned.
The survivors were either privately owned or simply got forgotten when IBM stopped supplying typewriters in the 90's.

This is true, I'm only 46, but started my working life in 2000 in a Plymouth Brethren firm, computers were forbidden on religious grounds, the girls in the office used Nakajima daisy wheel electric typewriters and were so fast, and so, so accurate.

The secretary I used in the pool was fantastic, she'd scribble it all out in un-intelligable pitman squiggles and type at ferocious speed - she's younger than me!

I too learned to type on a manual, an Imperial typewriter. All these tears later I have the very painful arthritic thumbs as a legacy

I really wish I'd not thumped those keys so hard now.

Yes, I learned to type with a typewriter that had the separate reel of white tape.

Also carbon paper inserted between the sheets. The white reel didn't work for those, obv.

Anyone ever use a telex machine?

I really am old...

Yes I remember using them. Also carbon paper to make copies. I think I have a sheet or two somewhere.

I can type accurately in the dark. I found I could do that when I couldn't be bothered to get up and turn on the light 😂.

What about the telex, I used to have to run across town to another office to use one. Those were the days..........

I learnt Pitman shorthand and typing in 1978 and we all used manual typewriters but had one hour per week on electric. Sometimes you would have to draw tables using the underline key and inserting the paper twice to create the boxes. When I started work in 1979 in BHS head office I was trained to use an IBM word processor, it was the only one in a big office and only two of us could use it. It seems so ancient now …

Locking the tabs on a manual machine so you could do columns. 😱

Dad was a printer and did a lot of NCR invoice sets; each layer was printed separately and I earned pocket money collating thousands of them. Had to concentrate to make sure the numbering didn't go wrong.

I can still remember the strange feel of the paper with its coating.

I remember going for job interviews for a typist and some companies would give you a typing test to see how fast and accurately you could type.

I vaguely remember the names Roneo and Banda for copies. Maybe Gestetners were at university. We definitely had the purple ones cranked off the cylinder machine at school.

I remember typing rubbers!!! Usually lert a hole in the paper….