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Never knew these existed, but then again there used to be A LOT of coin operated things in the past. I think that’s where Futurama got the inspiration for the coin operated suicide booth in the Pilot.
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$110 is a lot of money to rent a typewriter (in today’s money).
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A bit surprised libraries wouldn’t have some for free use, like they do with computers. Though maybe they would have been so popular with students, they had to charge a fee to limit use? (Though in that same vein, schools should have access to typewriters. I think my HS did. I know they did for the computers.)
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Typewriters were a bit too noisy for some librarians, I suspect. One person randomly tapping away might be very annoying. Several people all randomly clacking away at once would probably have resulted in some classic Luddite behaviour, if not murder among the bookshelves.
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Fair point, but you could seclude them into a typing room with some sound proofing.
I did always like to hear my dad click click on his.
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- Ray Bradbury: Underwood (no. 5?), 1947 Royal KMM #3756210 (formerly in Steve Soboroff’s collection), IBM Selectric, IBM Wheelwriter, Silver-Seiko ultraportable (likely branded as Royal)
https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/typers.html
some of them look non electric to my untrained eyes. The rental fees only amounted to a tenth of the cost of a new typewriter, of dubious quality, and less than that if a brandname was required.
From the New York Times, August 1950
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i looked in wikipedia and yikes
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I worked in a college library that had free typewriters for the students in special carrels. They were mostly soundproof but if you walked by you could hear tap-tap-tap. A few times I had to print a subscription form from a website, use one of the typewriters to type in the relevant information, then fax it to someone.
I’m going to go lie down now and try not to think about how old I am.
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Yeah, Bradbury turned into a gigantic turd toward the end of his life. He’s one of the very few authors I’m willing to overlook his wingnuttery because his books are so damn important. Granted, it’d be harder if he’d been accused of serious crimes – I know people who still agonize about how important “The Mists of Avalon” and Marion Zimmer Bradley were to them when they were young…
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My local library (which was part of the same Los Angeles County Library system Bradbury used) did have small soundproofed typewriter booths at one point, though I think they’d more or less phased them out by the early 80s when everyone switched to word processors.
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Must have made the idea of burning books even more abhorrent to him, knowing how much he had to spend even on a short story. At least if we consider what direction he inclined to according to what is posted above.
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