The Key To Success (Backspace) – 9/52 (Haiga), Week 9/BlackBerry 52, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
the key to success,
no matter what type you are —
know when to backspace.
Week 9′s Jump-Off in the BlackBerry 52 collaboration with Lotus sprang from the keys of my Royal typewriter on a Sunday afternoon in the Casket Arts Studio. Feel free to join us if you wish. You can learn more about the project’s beginnings at BlackBerry 52 Collaboration.
-posted on red Ravine, Monday, March 1st, 2011
-related to posts: Waning Moon (Haiga), A Warm Game Of Texas Hold ‘Em (haiga) — 6/52, Celebrating The Lunar New Year — Postcard From A Friend, Flying Solo — Dragonfly In Yellow Rain, The Mirado Black Warrior, icicle tumbleweed (haiga) – 2/52, Best Of BlackBerry 365 — First Quarter SlideShow, BlackBerry 365 Project — White Winter Squirrel, haiku 4 (one-a-day) Meets renga 52
QM, is the typewriter old enough to have the cent symbol above the “6” on the keyword? That’s where it was on the old typewriters before we lost out cents. (Couldn’t resist the bad joke.)
I notice the keys on the right that make me think the typewriter was French. See the “c” with the tail on it above the carrot symbol (^)?
I remember the old manual Royal typewriters. We had one at home with its own case. By the time I took typing in high school (1968/69) we had IBM electric typewriters and manual typewriters. We had to become proficient on both of them.
Thankfully word processors came along, but I still remember fondly typing on those manual typewriters.
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lol, good question. I’ll have to look for the cent symbol. I can’t remember. I love this little Royal typewriter. Liz got it for me as a present. It’s got a sticky “c” and I need to get it serviced. But I can work with it.
I’ve got two other typewriters in the studio. One’s a portable with a zipper case. The other is an old Underwood that belonged to my mom’s brother that died a few months before I was born. They need some work to restore them.
I was thinking about how hard it would be to write a book with a typewriter, how long it would take, how physical it must have been for the writers of yore. Then when typewriters became electric, what a joy that must have been at first. I don’t see many electric typewriters when I’m out at garage sales. I wonder where they have disappeared to?
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I think electric typewriters became part of the disposal society in which we find ourselves up to our necks. You could probably find a lot of them in landfills somewhere.
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QM, I LOVE this Haiku! It is just too, too clever. Is your tongue still in your cheek?
We have an electric typewriter here in the Archives, but it sits, languishing in the back room. No one has bothered to even plug it in since we moved our “digs.” We also have an early, heavy! portable manual typewriter that I pulled out of a dumpster. Its ugly yellow, hard case caught my eye. It will probably be part of an “antique” display some day.
I was on the newspaper staff all through high school, and we used those big black Underwoods, (that had probably been in the school since the twenties, when our most famous alumnus, Bing Crosby graced its hallowed halls!) Haiku reminds me of having to create headlines; distilling the meaning of an article into a few words. We had fun, but it was stressful, having a full load of classes AND meeting the paper’s deadlines!
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oliverowl, thank you! I’m not usually this punnish, but just couldn’t resist. Wow, it would be so much fun to use the electric typewriter at your place. I hope I get to see the yellow one someday, too. The Underwoods are pretty cool. The one I have is heavier than the Royal, clunkier. Bing went to your high school? How great is that. I know what you mean about creating headlines. I was on the newspaper staff in high school, too. In fact, I just ran across an old year book during spring cleaning and saw that I was on the year book staff, too. I guess I always wanted to be a writer. And a photographer. Maybe I should have been a journalist. Next lifetime, I guess. Great to hear from you OOwl! I think of you often.
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QM, did you find a cent symbol on any of your manual typewriters? I’ve done some research and the cent symbol disappeared with the advent of the computer keyboard.
This post brought back lots of memories of typing on the manual typewriter when I was a kid.
Funny thing I noticed when I look for an exact date when “cents” disappeared, several people said, “There was a cents sign on the keyboard?”
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Bob, I’ll look tomorrow night when I’m at the Casket Arts Studio for First Thursdays. My typewriters are there. I’ll take a photo and post it somewhere. It’s strange about the cent mark. In fact, I think I was looking for it when I was typing on the typewriter the other day. I think they should bring it back. Such a cool symbol. Will let you know what I find.
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QM, I discovered last night while I researched when the cent sign disappeared that their is a command to make the cent sign, none of them worked for me so I would have to find a character map with the cent sign on it and import it.
The letter “c” with the tail on the typewriter in the picture indicates this machine might be from an area where French was spoken. I read somewhere about the keys on typewriters used by French-speaking people and this key appeared on those machines. Interesting.
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Renga for QM & Bob
the key to success
no matter what type you are–
know when to backspace
’twas nonsense to remove cents
we have been PUNNISHED enough!
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Cent symbol removed.
Progress has made it useless
In a cent-less world
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oliverowl, no pun intended 😉
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lol you two are cracking me up!
Bob, I just got home from the studio. I checked out my typewriter keyboard and there is no cent sign that I could find. But then I started to wonder — what if that c with the tail IS the cent sign in another language?
They typewriter is so old, I can’t imagine it wouldn’t have a cent sign. I looked for plates that would indicate where the typewriter was used. It was definitely made in the USA. But not sure what the other address meant.
There was a sticker that said:
Kenneth E. Henry Co.
Phone 5652, Winchester
Phone 1371, Martinsburg
I’ll have to post some photos tomorrow in Flickr and drop them in here. Too tired tonight though. Thanks for being so fun, oliverowl and Bob!
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QM, the cent sign was above the number 6 on that key. The “c” with a tail is a letter used in French.
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DUH! This is a typewriter made for French typing. Look at the accent marks (left and right) on that one key in the top row. There is no cent sign above the 6 on the typewriter in the picture. I bet this typewriter was used in an area with a lot of French-speaking people like French Canadians and that’s why the keyboard contains letters and symbols specific to typing French words. What fun!
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QM & Bob,
cent symbol removed.
Progress has made it useless
in a cent-less world
Bob is indeed a pundit
his sense of cents has progressed!
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Cent-less typewriter
Leaves me without my two cents
to add when I type
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I wish I knew how to keep the thread going without looking at my notes.
Enough of nonsense
Leaves a bad taste in my mouth,
no scent in the air.
Seems the punnier we are,
The funnier the air smells.
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Bob, I’ll repost the whole renga here, adding a few lines of my own. It’s fun to do something that’s a little crazier than the normal renga style. So I have a French typewriter? Or one made for the International market? That’s wild. I wonder how it ended up in Liz’s hands? She bought it at a garage sale in Golden Valley, Minnesota.
____________
TYPEWRITER RENGA
the key to success,
no matter what type you are —
know when to backspace.
’twas nonsense to remove cents
we have been PUNNISHED enough!
Cent symbol removed.
Progress has made it useless
In a cent-less world
Bob is indeed a pundit
his sense of cents has progressed!
Cent-less typewriter
Leaves me without my two cents
to add when I type.
Perhaps the French were smarter,
leaving their cents on the floor.
Enough of nonsense
Leaves a bad taste in my mouth,
no scent in the air.
Seems the punnier we are,
The funnier the air smells.
found in the Midwest
my garage sale typewriter
turns out to be French
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What fun with the poetry form!
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[…] familiar the image, the less it looked like me. An alter-ego. I went to my studio, pulled out the Royal typewriter Liz bought for me at a garage sale (turns out, it’s French), and while Jimi Hendrix’s Rainbow Bridge played on the stereo turntable, wrote a […]
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I am digging this post, haven’t read on here for a while as i have been distracted. in a word document you can use
Hit Ctrl+/ (slash)+C and the cents symbol will be inserted.
nice bit of nostalgia for those of us who used to use it. when i was little we played shopkeeper and used it for the receipt. somehow the concept of play, using the cent key, things that make sense, and backspacing in your life are on my mind tonight. sometimes, it is true, that you may not get what you want, but you get what you need. thank you all for feeding my thoughts tonight.
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reccos62, I didn’t know you could use Ctrl+/ +C for the cents symbol in Word. I will have to try it. Great to see you here! Hope all is well. I like the idea of backspacing in my life tonight. It reminds me of a way to slow down. The typewriter slows me down. It’s great for poetry. I was noticing that I make mistakes on the typewriter keyboard more often and have to start a new line, or go back over the letter again. I was trying to imagine writing a novel on a typewriter like so many great writers have done. Maybe it’s that slowing down to let our mind flow with the speed of our fingers on a mechanical object like a typewriter. It’s so physical compared to a computer keyboard. Visceral. I love it. Thanks for stopping by!
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[…] about my father’s death from reading an obit. He died on Halloween. I wrote three poems on a Royal typewriter. I had not seen him in years; he never responded to my letter. It is a lesson in letting go. It is […]
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