IBM Selectric

I've never had a problem hitting my arrow keys on the fly. I trained in touch typing in the 80s/early 90s in typing classes, on Selectric typewriters. Beautiful keyboards.

I have never seen a Selectric in which the ball moved instead of the carriage. I can't imagine how complicated the mechanics would be for that and how often it would jam, break, or malfunction. Certainly not something a company such as IBM would make their reputation on. I used many Selectrics in my time.

I skipped typing classes altogether, and I'm not sure how; they were a requirement in every school district I attended and a prerequisite to the programming classes that I took instead. My typing has developed "organically"; I use most of my fingers at least sometimes, but heavier on index and middle. > IRC and AIM in the 90s/00s were the big drivers for fast typing. Those are how I developed my touch typing; the incentive was to see everything happening in the chatroom full of friends without missing anything, and being able to react quickly. > The tactile response and feel of an electric typewriter is pretty cool. Granddad was a retired IBM employee, and had a Selectric typewriter (either II or III, not sure). That thing felt (and sounded) awesome. The whir of the flywheel, the amazing feedback of the "thunk" of the ball hitting the ribbon. I used to type random crap that didn't need to be typed just to use that thing for a few minutes.

Whoof — this brought back memories of endlessly typing things like... kkk kik kik k,k k,k jjj juj juj jmj jmj hhh hyh hyh hnh hnh ...on a lovely, bangy, ink-scented IBM Selectric in typing class. Which at the time felt like a meaningless exercise, but absolutely strengthened the ability of my fingers to find the right keys in a hurry without looking at the keyboard.

It's what I've internally compared every keyboard to ever since; I also miss the hum.

I first learned typing on a Selectric. The keyboard felt so nice, then they put me on a Commodore 64 and eww. I remember switching with my parent cause I didn't want to use the Commodore again, but after a few weeks I had to stop that as some assignments had to be handed in electrically (I think on disk, though my memory is fuzzy and network options did exist). I haven't seen a Selectric since, but I still remember how nice it felt to type on.

The Selectric was the peak of keyboard technology. But it was extremely expensive compared to what you pay for a keyboard today.

If you learned to type on a Selectric like I did, a lot of computer keyboards are unpleasant. The C64's and its ilk are especially bad.

About 10 years ago I started seeing writing as a creative practice very similar to playing an instrument. If you want to get good at playing an instrument there's no shortcut to replace playing a LOT. I found that when I wrote on a computer I was too distracted by where the writing would go. I was conscious of writing for an audience, and would get too caught up on saying things in a particular way- stopping starting deleting rewriting. I ended up getting a Selectric III, the pinnacle of mechanical typewriter achievement. It is a beautiful, heavy, loud machine. While there is a corrective function, I've never used it. Writing on a typewriter is like a one way street- words come out of your hands and can't be put back in. I was focused on pushing out as many pages as I could, practicing on the instrument for an hour a day or more. It changed my writing style and helped me discover a personal voice. I still use the Selectric for writing letters to friends, and for "daily driver" writing use an Alphasmart NEO (another beautiful purpose-built machine). Edit to comment on TFA: I use an "IBM Selectric Script" ball. A sort of light cursive.

Nice. I signed up for the preorder. The first keyboard I used was an IBM Selectric on which I learned to type in a high school typing class. Great keyboard. Another aspiring software geek suggested the class. I am so glad I took his advice. The next keyboard I used was the DEC VT100. Again, a great keyboard. The third keyboard I used was on my Mac 128K. An okay keyboard. The fourth keyboard I used was an IBM Model M. An outstanding keyboard. I am typing on it now ;)

Those beam springs had the second-best feel ever, after the Selectric. Then the Model F cost-reduced (and thickness-reduced) it, and the Model M further. > The downside is how tall and aggressively angled the keyboards are, which are very far from modern ergonomic standards. Like a typewriter. And like a typewriter, you were expected to have them on suitable furniture so the keytops were at the right height.

"Mechanical keyboards" like these are not very mechanical. I've overhauled Teletype machines with real mechanical keyboards. You can only press one key at a time, because the encoding mechanism pushes back if you push two keys at once. When you press a key, it briefly locks down during the scan cycle, then releases. Typing is speed limited, and it's like playing a piano at a constant rate. An original IBM Selectric keyboard has the same lock-down properties, but allows one-key rollover. Nobody replicates that, although the Selectric was once held up as the gold standard of keyboards.

Hope it has a KTV and its descendant the space cadet keyboards. TTTT the space cadet was too mushy for me, but the 70s keyboards of the KTV (and most of the keyboards of that era) had perfect key travel and solid metal base plates. Selectric was great too; shame about eh PC keyboards which were OK but inferior.

Typewriters. One of those hobbies that's very malleable towards any given mood. There's a zen/expression interaction between the mechanical keystroke, sound, metal scent, etc. that puts me in flow much faster than anything else. When you want to tinker, they give both the challenge of complexity, the beauty of 100 years of design refinement, and a mechanism with no black boxes (unlike electronics). You can build a mental model of how the core design works very quickly and then decide how much or how little of the nuances you want to learn between various makes and models over the eras. If you want a true maintenance challenge, a Selectric is one of the more complex and beautiful purely-mechanical devices created by man. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJITkKaO0qA ] Note, the average manual typewriter is conceptually 10x simpler, so if this video is intimidating, no worries! Very active communities centered around restoration, creative writing/blogging, pen pals, and collecting. Forums, discords, FB groups, meetups, international snail mail, etc. Inexpensive if you hang around some collectors groups and watch what prices they tolerate vs Etsy prices. Lots of sound machines can get the habit going in the $20-50 range. --- Other suggestions: * Funkier tech niches that are adjacent to the big popular ones, but aren't themselves big players--PDAs, Wonderswans, etc. * Instruments--another multi-sensory hobby * Foreign languages--if you're a native English speaker something like F…

IBM selectrics were essentially word processors. The input and output made an easy transition into the current office environment. Paper and a rollerball was far superior to any printer or monitor I saw in those days.

The Selectric remains the world’s best feeling keyboard.