If Ribbons Could Talk

 

The IBM Selectric took the world by storm.  Unparalleled speed, ease of typeface change, and print quality revolutionized the way we communicated, and maybe even how we thought.  Typewriters serve as the last true organic representation of the human thought process, unhindered by the digital qualities that drive us away from computers.  They feel safe, familiar, robust, but in the case of the IBM Selectric, the security of our innermost thoughts loses its guarantee.  Let's set the scene: 1980s, the height of the Cold War, tensions between Russia and the United States are at their height, and CIA agent Aldrich Ames was busy typing on his IBM.  He reaches the end of the ribbon, and discards the used cartridge, fleeing the scene.  For those of you familiar with the nature of a carbon ribbon, you recognize his mistake immediately.  

Carbon ribbons exist under the same principles that define carbon paper.  A strip of thin cellophane dusted in a rich black coat of carbon.  Once the type hits the carbon and presses it into the fibers of the page, it is removed from the strip leaving a negative space behind.  A repeated pattern starting from the bottom up the ribbon, and feeding letters right to left.  The nature of negative space means there is a lack of usable carbon in that area, so the machine advances to the next space...and the next....and the next....

For agent Ames, it was his undoing.  The CIA discovered his discarded ribbon cartridge and it talked.  It talked about how he was a double agent working for the KGB, and his planned Venezuelan meeting.  

Nowadays carbon ribbons are often destroyed for legal and privacy purposes, and it isn't hard to know why.  Last week, I purchased a black IBM correcting Selectric II off of Facebook Marketplace.  It was obviously sitting for many many years as the motor sputtered and struggled to stay on, and the felt padding had deteriorated into a brown sand dune on the inside of the machine.  It was my goal to restore it to it's former typing glory, but FedEx had other plans for it.  It arrived at my doorstep smashed.  Body panels bent and twisted, cracks in the frame, broken leavers, broken keys, snapped motor mount, missing pieces... it was a crime scene.  And a sad fate for such a nice machine.  

I didn't know much about it, if it had worked at all recently, or if it was just left to rot.  Most people type a few random letters on new machines before they sell them, but this one...this one typed one last message to the world before it died.  And that message is the point of this blog.  Before this machine was shelved, it already had problems.  The index tooth just under the lowercase t on the Delegate Pica typeball had cracked off, forcing the machine to type caps only.  I have decided to transcribe the last thing this machine ever wrote: an anonymous letter, possibly from the hands of a child.  Personal information will be marked redacted, and corrected or omitted letters and words will be taken into account.  It is a rare peek to the life of a typist many years ago, and the last words this machine will ever have written.

DEAR BABY, SOMEBODY SAID THAT YOU WERE THERE

BEDTIMES BACK THEY SAID THEY LOVE YOU  IT WAS YOU KNOW WHO???   

THEY HAVE DREAMS ABOUT YOU AND EVERYTHING GIRL.  BABY BABY I LOVE YOU SO MUCH THAT I CANT STOP THINKING OF YOU

WELL NOT ALL THE TIME

YOU KNOW WHO THIS IS

YOU SOMETIMES BE WITH THEM

MOST OF THE TIME

EVERY DAY

WELL I GOT TO GO BABY

WRITE BACK

FROM SMILEY 

I LOVE YOU.

YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE MY AGE THAT I CAN TALK TO ABOUT ANYTHING

LOVE SMILEY

DONT LET NOBODY ELSE READ THIS

ALL THIS

And with that, the machine was shelved, and forgotten.  Half a carbon ribbon used, half a 500k character yield.  Who knows what else it has to tell, maybe I'll take a look sometime.