The not-so way back machine

When I started in journalism, I used a phone and a computer that had no Internet connection. Sure we had a fax machine that spit out page after page of useless spam ads, and a modem that let us dial in to the local water district to get temps and rainfall totals, but there was nothing to pass the time when we weren't working.

And that was 1997.

Imagine what it was like in 1987! Heavy, bulky typewriters, rubber cement, hot wax, indoor smoking, and other forgotten horrors.

Well, the Journoterrorist set up an experiment to see what would happen:

Want to freak out a newsroom full of college journalists?

Sit them down at manual typewriters and ask them to plunk “2011″ onto a piece of paper. 

They’ll only make it halfway.“Mine’s broken!” one reporter at Florida Atlantic University yelled a couple of Saturdays ago, when we launched the inaugural ALL ON PAPER project. 

“There’s no number 1 key.” 

“This one is busted, too!” yelled another. 

“They’re not broken,” I replied. “Manual typewriters didn’t have a number 1 key. They used a lower-case L instead.”

The good old days. Oh, and here's a video (this is multimedia after all):

All on Paper from Tatiana Cohen on Vimeo.