This is being written on a new computer and I report, with some trepidation, that I seem to be learning how to use this one. Never mind how long it has taken to pick my way through the new processes. Somehow, that progress has made its way into print. But, as usual, I have had the help of enough people for whom this new technology seems reasonable and intuitive.
As a lad in junior high school, I had my first experience with a typewriter. It was a wonderful experience. Whether for simplicity, my age, or my sense that I wanted to be a writer, I took to it quickly and easily. My uncle gave me an elderly Underwood that I could pound away on, and so I did. Then I took a course in typing in high school. I was the star of the class. I could type up to 40 words a minute and instead of copying exercises from the instruction book, I wrote essays, which the teacher said were more interesting than correcting the repetitious exercises. When I started writing for the local newspapers, I banged away better than the society editor, who typed with only three fingers.
I went off to college with a portable typewriter, for which I paid $5 to one of our neighbors. In all of my working spots, there was a Royal manual typewriter. By that time, there were IBM electric typewriters. I tried a few. But they were more complex and I found that the pressure needed for manual keys was too much for the electric ones. Also, correcting errors was more difficult.
I still have the first typewriter that my employer bought for my first job and gave it to me when I moved on. I continued using typewriters until I approached retirement from the American College of Radiology (ACR) and began writing books. I had a secretary who was proficient with the newfangled computers and who cleaned up my rough drafts. Then, she began teaching me successfully to use a computer. At the time, the ACR used only Apples. And the computer was a 1989 model, a Mac Centris. About the time I left, the ACR converted to other makes of computers and I took home four that would have been discarded. The keyboard of the Mac tolerated my finger pressure and I relished the simplicity with which I could change, insert, delete, and correct my writing.
So, for a dozen years now, all of my books, columns, essays, and other words on paper flowed through the Mac at home and the PC Dell computer I was given in my office. I had developed a sense that the Mac understood and accepted what I was doing. If something went amiss, I would punch another key and the computer would blink and proceed. Contrarily, the Dell would stop in the middle of a paragraph, blank the copy, and defy my profane comments. But, that computer was linked to the internet and I found myself sending e-mails around the world. But our only e-mail connection at home is with my wife’s Mac G4, a larger, sophisticated gadget that I do not even know how to turn on and off. I did not dare to hook my 1989 version into internet.
In all of this, I relied on floppy discs to record and share my pellucid prose. That worked for a few years. Then I began to get complaints that my Word 5.1 was obsolete (and so was I) and that contemporary PCs could not relate to floppies. Furthermore, floppies are becoming difficult to obtain, especially for Macs. Fortunately, several of my editors use Macs and have old enough machines to read my floppies. But they warned that the charitable days would come to a rapid end and I had to do something to catch up. So with a bit of encouragement and support, I set out to get a new one.
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