Typewriter nostalgia is no cure for espionage

GERMAN politicians, in fear of American spies, have been trying out an anti-espionage device: the typewriter. I don’t quite see it. Obviously a message can’t be intercepted when it’s still gripped between the rollers and being pecked at by that semicircle of letter-headed hammers. But once ejected, the typed document is prey to every photocopier and miniature camera in town.

Typewriters are no more spy proof than toasting forks, cut-throat razors or spats. But — Lord! — they’re packed with nostalgia.

And typewriters are unforgiving. I typed “type wroters” just then, but on a computer screen it was soon expunged.

Well, you might say, you could use Tipp-Ex. But could I? In the olden days, between the birth of James Bond and the death of Diana, Tipp-Ex paper was infiltrated between the key and the paper, and the erroneous letter retyped in the same spot. After returning again to the scene of the crime and typing the right letter, it still looked a mess. Even worse was Tipp-Ex liquid, which was useful only for painting your name on the back of your office chair.

No, the typewriter was unforgiving, and yet people habitually produced a whole page of typing without a single error. The effect on creative writers was to make them think out what they wanted to say before they put it to paper. The typewriter became the necessary and guaranteed portal of an imagined world, like Coleridge’s opium dream behind Kubla Khan. No opium, no Xanadu; no typewriter, no Blandings. I’m not sure this was always a good thing.

So although the sight of the slumbering typewriter by the fridge may induce nostalgia, it shouldn’t be any more realistic than nostalgia for gentle gaslight, clacking railway lines or wayside horse troughs. We’re better off without them. —