Alas, Poor Clackity-Clack
Typewriters were already on their way out when I was a kid. My dad had a couple of sturdy Selectrics at work, and they still showed up on TV in the mid 80s, clacking along in newsrooms or police stations or office buildings. But by the time I got to college they were pretty much history.
Two artifacts from the typewriter era lived on, though: that crazy speed-crippling keyboard layout, designed in the era of manuals that couldn’t deal with people typing too fast; and the clackity-clack.
QWERTY is still with us.
The clackity-clack is not.
But it did hang around for a while. When IBM came out with their first PC, they shipped it with a keyboard that was — and is — a hulking thing of beauty: this curved slab of metal that looked like it had been torn out of the side of an amphitheater, with keys rising from its firmament like ancient slabs of stonehenge, solid and timeless. And here’s the thing: when you pressed those keys, you pressed those fucking keys. No feather-light pressure here, no gentle touch, no soft sibilant strokes: you had to jam those bastards down, and it was like punching a tombstone through a sheet of mylar. But it was worth the effort: the sensation you got when the key dropped home was incredibly satisfying, a reverberating validation of the entire typing experience.
But it was more than just tactile, it was the sound: a solid, authoritative thunk, both on the downstroke and the release. It was the keyboard speaking to you, saying Yes, you have pressed this key. You have pressed it as no man or woman has ever pressed a key before. Well done, my friend. Well done.
You just don’t get that anymore. Keyboards these days are mush, and typing on them is like plunging your fingers into a vat of tapioca: just the barest semblance of resistance until you bottom out. It works, sure, and it may even be more efficient: but it’s not in any way satisfying.
There’s no going back now, of course. Your coworkers would no more tolerate that chunky cacophonous clackity-clack than they would scudding clouds of cigarette smoke: loud keyboards are a relic of bygone era. They’re still making them, but they’re curiosities, boutique items, targeted at the kind of people who prefer gramophones over iPods.
There are even utilities that mimic the sound through your computer’s speakers — I’m using one right now, in fact. But I think I’ll stop soon. It’s just sad: like a buggy enthusiast mounting a team of fake horses on the hood of his car.
I miss you, clackity-clack.
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