“Beneath the smoothly rounded surface” of the forearm thoroughly trained in the “New Way” of typing, lay “strong and tireless muscles capable of doing any work that may be required of them.”
No wonder Superman worked as a reporter.
But the trained forearm wasn’t merely aesthetically pleasing. Those muscles were ready to do work on the most important office machine of the era — the typewriter.
As a story on Page C1 of Monday’s News-Sun will detail, during the teen years of the 20th century, the Tulloss School sent out materials to more than 100,000 correspondence students around the nation, in the process giving work to 40 people in 14 rooms of the Bushnell Building.
Many toddlers today do their first keyboarding as they’re learning to walk. But in 1913, when the booklet was written, the typewriter was a relatively new and important technology.
Training in touch typing was so serious a matter in 1913 that before depressing the first key, students were told to spend at least 20 minutes, and preferably an hour, doing “finger gymnastics.”
Exercise No. 1 involved raising the fingers to full height while stretching them to their full span, then holding them for a moment with the muscles tense. Next, the hand was to be slowly closed until the fingers fell on the bottom of the palm. There, the fingers were again to be held with the muscles tense.
This was to be repeated 25 times with each hand.
In a tone usually reserved for warnings on heavy machinery, the booklet says, “except where specially instructed otherwise, the student is to perform the exercises one hand at a time.”
For those who might consider the exercises unnecessary or frivolous, Paragraph 18 seeks to overwhelm all doubts: “The object of Special Finger Training in typewriting is fourfold, viz.: the acquirement of (1) muscular strength, (2) swiftness of motion, (3) independent finger action and (4) precision of control.”
“Fingers need not only to make the exact movements required in typewriting,” the instructor cautions with the tone of a martial arts master, “but they need to be prepared to make these movements easily.”
As with all forms of physical exertion, advises Paragraph 82, “a slight feeling of fatigue is to be expected, and is not understandable. But no exercise should be continued to the point of excessive fatigue.”
Although the booklet does not call Exercise No. 5 the “Buckwheat Exercise,” those familiar with one of stars of “Our Gang” would recognize in it the movements necessary to form the OK (or as Buckwheat put it, the “Otay”) sign.
The exercise goes beyond that, of course. By encouraging the typist-in-training to form the Otay sign not just with the thumb and index finger but with the thumb and each of the fingers of the hand — too be repeated three times — it represents progress toward a Bachelor’s Degree in Buckwheat.
Warns the instructions: “Watch other fingers than the one being exercised, and see that they maintain their extended positions. You may not be able to keep them entirely motionless until you have practiced for a time.”
The booklet reassures that the exercises “have been selected after long experiment, from among hundreds of exercises, as the ones best fitted to provide the training that is most needed at the beginning of your study.”
Otay, whatever you say.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368.
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