From
Ball Point Pen
To Lap Top
Typewriter-maker
Smith-Corona has sadly closed its door forever. That's
death of an important part of history. By Seah Chiang
Nee
May 5, 2001
When I started my career in 1960, my high-tech
reporting tool was a ball-point pen that allowed me
to take notes without smudging when it rained.
From that, I graduated to the typewriter, a weather-beaten
orange-coloured portable Olivetti, which followed
me through the length and breadth of Asia.
And as progress marched on, an electric version emerged.
When I installed one at home, it was with a sense
of pride.
For several years, this equipment served me well and
when the demise came, it was an end of an era. No
journalist my age can talk about the typewriter without
a deep sense of gratitude.
It had nothing to be ashamed of, though. It lost out
to one of mankind's greatest inventions - the personal
computer.
When I explained to my teenage son in 1999 that with
Corona's closure the world not see another typewriter,
it hardly raised an eyebrow. I don't think the news
fired his imagination.
Not many teens had actually seen a typewriter.
How could you fall in love with something you didn't
know? Oldies like us had different emotions about
it.
Corona's rival Olivetti had earlier closed its plant
in Singapore that produced 100,000 electric typewriters
for the world. It was like part of my own history
was gone.
It however raised an irony.
While it was an obsolete tool for the advanced countries,
the typewriter was still a high-tech machine that
billions of poor people still hankered for - and could
not afford or were unable to use.
It was too expensive so they stuck to their existing
technology, the pad and pencil.
In the early 90s, a friend of mine returned from Yangon
and told me the ball-point pen was still pretty much
in evidence in most government offices.
While their richer neighbours were resorting to the
PC, the Myanmarese were still writing out their report
on paper.
While the West is not moving fast enough to throw
it out, for many poor people in Asia and Africa the
typewriter was still an unreachable luxury.
In one department he counted a dozen people sharing
two ancient typewriters. There were no computers.
For many developing countries, the typewriters still
survive on cannibalised parts
In many rural areas, the PC is actually the redundant
thing - not the typewriter or the ball point pen -
because there is no electricity. So technology is
relative isn't it?
Often it depends on the individual user.
When the PC was moved into the editorial floor of
the newspaper in Singapore I worked in. it encountered
- not a chorus of cheers - but worried frowns from
many senior editors.
This was a quarter of a century ago. A few of them
just didn't want to have anything to do with it and
continued using the pencil.
They were afraid it would gobble up their stories,
which, in fact, happened several times when blackouts
occurred. Others feared if they hit the wrong key,
the whole document would disappear into the cyberspace
unknown, never to return.
The anxiety worsened when a technician with a twisted
sense of humour passed word around that the PC would
blow up if any one spilled coffee onto it.
This immediately put off the coffee lovers, but technology
eventually - years later - triumphed without casualties.
Nothing exploded.
There were old souls who believed in a hard day's
work. Pounding a typewriter was real work. Flicking
a computer mouse, they felt, was playing around, not
working.
Besides, you couldn't really cover the wireless jungles
of Southeast Asia with a lap-top. When the battery
ran out your PC was dead if the monsoon rains had
not knocked it off first.
There were, of course, other tools. When I first walked
apprehensively into my first meaningful job at 20
- back in 1960 - I encountered a world of technology
I didn't know existed.
Until then I never knew that words could travel round
the world so efficiently and there were so many ways
you could make money out of it, until I joined Reuters,
the international news agency.
It was a fairly impressive office behind green doors
opposite Lau Pa Sat, which was then an old run-down
wet market where bumboat operators had their morning
porridge in the midst of chicken shit.
I was enthralled by the rows of clattering teleprinters
and operators punching out stories on a ticker tape
that had more holes in it than Swiss cheese.
As it was fed into a machine, millions of words were
sent all over the world at 50 words a minute. Fantistic,
I told myself.This was a lot more impressive than
Julius Reuters' pigeons.
What I disliked was having to operate the machine
and learn to read the tape language. The boss Jimmy
Hahn (father of CNN's Loraine Hahn) had a ready explanation:
Suppose you were a correspondent in an African crisis
without an operator, you'd have to send out your own
stories, no?
But there was also the ancient Morse code, the 19th
century wonder, which came in useful during a military
coup in those days when the first thing the generals
did, on grabbing power, was close the airport and
telecommunication. The Morse was the only means of
getting your stories out.
I saw an old operator with earphones plugged into
a radio set decoding stories transmitted from less-modernised
cities of Southeast Asia.
Later during the Indonesian coup in 1963 that led
to the overthrow of Sukarto, I sat with him for days
monitoring official announcements from Jakarta, the
only information out of the country.
Even in the 60's not many people could read codes.Nowadays
this skill is as dead as the dodo bird.My friend was
an old British army hand who had suffered bouts of
slight mental disorder, probably through a lifetime
of listening to bibs and bleeps. I'd have gone stark
raving mad myself.
Another channel of communication was something called
Hellscrieber, a small German black box that spilled
out words through a flowing tape. An operator would
retype it into ticker tapes and send out to subscribers.
New and old, these technologies were transmitted through
atmospheric waves. When the weather was bad, it would
not work. Garbled words, empty spaces and sometimes
a complete halt in all movements were the results.
All these were used to send not only news to subscribers,
media outfits, but also stock, rubber and other commodities'
prices.Businessmen paid a lot for this quick information.
They have all thrown into the proverbial historical
bin long ago. The first to go was the Morse, the last
the typewriter. In between technolgies like the Hellscrieber
and teleprinter disappeared. The question now is:
When will the PC go their way.
At any rate, none could replace the wonder of the
human brain. Take the instamatic - now digitalised
- camera. Even a seven-year-old can be taught to take
a picture. All he has to do is press a button.But
for a great picture, it needed the trained eye, fast
brain and a reflective finger. And you can't learn
them from university.
Other high tech stuffs came and went - some very quickly,
while others took their time.
One of them which disappeared rapidly was the walkie-talkie
set, which although illegal to use in Singapore, served
its purpose.
Laughable? Yes.The authorities did not want the bookies
to use it to relay race results from the Turf Club.
Police, who used a lot of it, feared it would help
criminals would use it to kidnap people and lookout's
to warn underground casinos at the approach of a raiding
party.
Actually they did not need to bother. Reception was
so poor (too many high buildings) that it was never
effective beyond a hundred metres.Today's crminals
and bookies have better equipment to help them - the
handphone and computer, for example.
In one of the trips to Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City)
I was asked by my Reuters Bureau chief to buy several
of these sets in Singapore.
The war-hit city was then wracked by a lot of anti-war
Buddhist demonstrations and the walkie-talkie was
a handy reporting tool. That's when I found out that
I could buy it - but not use it.
Today, it is the era of the hand-held wonders - and
impending Bluetooth technology - that are slowly easing
out the lap-top and hand-phone. It is only the beginning.Who
can tell what the next 40 years will be like.
Seah Chiang Nee
