Typewriter Talk / Touch typing on the Smith Premier

**Posted by mre12ax7** 31-12-2016 11:43:53

I would like to learn to touch type on my Smith Premier No. 2.
Any advice?

**Posted by M. Höhne** 31-12-2016 15:01:18

Sure. On eBay you can find many typewriter instruction books to carry you through learning and practice.
Some even have accompanying LP records to talk you through it, if you can play them.
Practice is the key to success---the principles are easy.
Good Luck and Have Fun!

**Posted by Uwe** 31-12-2016 15:29:00

I think he might be after specific advice on how to touch type on a machine that has separate upper and lowercase keyboards versus using a standard typewriter keyboard, but I may have misinterpreted his post.

**Posted by M. Höhne** 31-12-2016 16:09:18

Uwe wrote:
I think he might be after specific advice on how to touch type on a machine that has separate upper and lowercase keyboards versus using a standard typewriter keyboard, but I may have misinterpreted his post.

You're probably right, Uwe. So I suggest that it will be very hard to find that particular advice and many of the standard booklets will give enough principles to be useful.

**Posted by mre12ax7** 31-12-2016 19:45:49

I was indeed referring to a full keyboard.

**Posted by Repartee** 31-12-2016 21:03:03

I am sure by the immutable laws of foot in mouth that if I assert nobody learned full touch typing on that thing that it would turn out some had, but I would think most would be satisfied with touch typing on the lowercase letters and looking when necessary to drop in a capital letter. It's hard enough to touch type the top numbers row much less three extra rows above the lower case letters, not to mention the sides!

If you are really determined though I would just develop your own exercises and technique - start with the first row above, decide which fingers should hit them, and practice through them in among the little guys without looking and successfully returning to the rest position on the lower keys. They the next row. Pianists can learn wild jumps in certain passages and execute them blind so it's certainly not beyond human ability. In fact you make me want to find one of those and learn this - it might be a cool party trick.

**Posted by Repartee** 31-12-2016 21:10:51

Another possible technique - instead of jumping from the lower rest position shift your hand position altogether when typing capitals, like moving to a different keyboard on an organ. This would probably be easier to learn since you only have to learn one new skill - moving your hands from rest position to rest position by touch only - versus 26 special moves for the capital letters. Maybe to find one letter you just move that hand up to the upper rest position momentarily. That's the way I would try to do it first.

**Posted by TypewriterKing** 14-1-2017 00:41:32

It all brings the question of just when the science of touch-typing really was developed. As you know, the qwerty keyboard was designed to slow the typist down, not speed them up. Those days, if a typewriter went too fast, it jammed up a lot easier than more recent models do. I'm just thinking, mind you (in a closed-off room, under VERY controlled conditions so as not to destroy anything with my very powerful superthought waves), that typewriters pre-dated touch-typing just a wee little bit.

**Posted by Repartee** 01-2-2017 23:03:30

mre12ax7 wrote:
I would like to learn to touch type on my Smith Premier No. 2.

Came across this from the online Encyclopædia Britannica

"For many years the double keyboard and the shift-key machines competed for popular favor, but the development of the so-called touch method of typing, for which the compact keyboard of the shift-key machines was far better suited, decided the contest."

But you could still become a virtuoso in finger jumps, something like this...

https://youtu.be/cIxGUAnj46U?t=48s

**Posted by TypewriterKing** 01-2-2017 23:28:47

Touch-typing would definitely be different. One hand would have to be above the other to reach the upper keyboard--I would suspect the right hand. There have been times when, while I'm on the phone, or eating or drinking something, I could type with one hand--usually my right.

I know each finger would be responsible for twice as many keys as on a shift-type machine. I am not sure just how much longer, if any longer. But a secretarial pool of these typewriters and the fluttery hands of all the secretaries (who were, back then, called typewriters themselves).