Although each day there’s something new that catapults me into the realization that yes, I am indeed, old, I can honestly say I’m not old enough to have grown up using a typewriter. I did play with them in friends’ attics or at garage sales and found them super satisfying.

Then, when I was 20 (also the year the first iPhone came out), I got a job logging some hours as a part-time secretary for a wonderful 80-something-year-old lawyer who worked in an office on Broadway in the financial district. Mostly, I listened to him tell fascinating stories about growing up in Brooklyn during the depression and spending time in a WWII POW camp. But I also took care of a few items of correspondence and legal paperwork each week. This was when I learned how to use a typewriter, and became very friendly with the backspace key, without ever learning quite how it worked. This fun video from Technology Connections that takes a closer look at the typewriter feature correction and how it came about, and how it works: