Fred Woodworth on “The Typewriter Revolution"

Hot off the Varityper

Issue 47 of Fred Woodworth's Mystery & Adventure Series Review recently reached me, along with a short essay by Woodworth on why he uses a typewriter to produce the publication. If all goes well, this essay will eventually be incorporated into my book, The Typewriter Insurgency: A Field Manual for the Typewritten Revolution.

Woodworth doesn't use just any typewriter, but a Coxhead DSJ Varityper -- just the magical contraption I recently found at the antique mall:

Woodworth writes in praise of this mechanical technology: "I can use it in every sense, instead of being used by it." In the same issue he makes the delightful observation that since the mainspring in an old typewriter or clock normally remains partly wound up, it contains potential energy that was put there by a particular human being decades or even centuries ago.

And then I found this in the Review's lively Letters department:

Thank you, kind sir! I haven't reproduced the name of this reader in Alabama since I don't know whether he wants it publicized on the blog. But I appreciate this well-written illustration of writing to the future and of a complex exchange among media. My January 2013 essay has now been referred to in a letter published in June 2013. An intolerable delay? Not at all—this kind of temporal distance can provide room for reflection and deeper consideration, whereas online, we're apt to forget what we read within hours. The thoughts exchanged here went from typewriter to blog to typewriter to Varityper-printed magazine to blog—a model of fruitful typewriter-computer interaction.

I have two copies of this issue of the Review. If you think this is a publication that might seriously interest you, be the first to request a copy in the comments and it will come your way.

My thoughts on typewriters and the future

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