The quest to have a machine produce type on paper began in Italy in 1575 with a printmaker by the name of Francesco Rampazetto; however, typewriters, as we know them, were not introduced commercially until 1874 by the Americans. They peaked in popularity from the mid 1970’s until the late 1980’s and underwent several important changes and improvements along the way. (Wikipedia, 2018) This technology has since been replaced by computers and their accompanying keyboards.

 

Schools often had typewriters for students to use for word processing and often had classes dedicated to typing. As a result, students gained new typing skills but did less traditional writing. Some may see this as preparing students for the future and beneficial and others my see it as a loss of writing skills.

 

There have been many learning benefits to using typewriters in the classroom. It helps students become more prepared for the digital age, improves revising skills prior to committing with the typewriter, and encourages proper grammar/spelling. It also has many benefits as a learning technology for schools such as: no power consumption, long lasting equipment life, and has the ability to be fixed by the mechanically inclined. In our current education system and society, typing is becoming an essential skill for workers as well as university/college students. With enough practice, typing becomes faster than writing and can make typists more efficient than those who write using pen and paper (Weigelt-Marom, 2018).

 

On the other hand, there are numerous disadvantages about having introduced typewriters into the classroom.  First, it does not allow for students to correct their mistakes easily because there is no eraser for the ink. Second, the students do not develop their penmanship as much as they would using traditional methods. Penmanship/writing activate specific parts of the brain that are important to cognition in primary students (Wollscheid, 2016). Typewriters in a classroom setting are far from quiet, students who need a quiet work space may find it difficult to work with the constant mechanical noises from the machines. Finally, there is a steep learning curve in learning how to type and use a typewriter efficiently which often takes a long time to master. During the time period, typewriters were not easily portable and could subject a student’s or worker’s work to damage/jamming which would not happen with the use of traditional pen and paper methods.

 

Even though typewriters were only popular for a short length of time, the skills they allow users to learn are still important today and will be for the foreseeable future. In 2018, typing is nearly unavoidable because do to the requirements on a computer, cellphone, tablet, or other digital device and is a skill that needs to be stressed in school but should not fully replace pen and paper.