They called it a "typewriter"

Before PCs, laptops, tablets and all that, before Word or Google Docs, there was another way of creating documents, the typewriter! Typewritten documents first appear in the archival record of the college in the 1890s, but many records were still handwritten up to the WWI era. The typewriter shown here was discovered in the library store room, and is now in the archives. It is a manual typewriter, a Royal office model of mid 1960s vintage. In the 1970s manual typewriters became displaced by electrics, and they in their turn were replaced by PCs beginning in the early 1990s.

For decades though, when you needed to type up a paper, a memo, a letter or other document, this was what you used!

Our School Dog!

To start off the centennial year from the Stylus here is something from a 1914 piece by a campus school student:

Dorm Room, December 1967

A large collection of negatives was recently discovered on campus, work of the campus photographer in the late '60s. One fascinating set of negatives were from a photo shoot of dorm life in December 1967. It's probably been a long time for most readers since they played a record like the girl is doing on the left!

A name for the archives!

After many years of being without a name, the archives of the college have finally received one. Through the extraordinarily generous planned gift of alumna and retired staff Virginia Campbell the archives has been named the "Rose Archives." The archives, the archivist, and the history and traditions of the college are most grateful!

NYC, June 1958

This image was recently discovered in the archives, and on the negative sleeve is written "Campus School trip to NYC, June 1958." It must have been an exciting trip for the lucky kids who went! If anyone has any memories of that trip they would care to share that would be great, please comment here or contact the college archives.

Early Campus Security Officer

A cache of photographs from the 1960s and 1970s recently was discovered in the Allen building and brought to the archives. Among the many interesting images was this 1967 portrait shot of Robert Coleman, a campus security officer as they were known then. This is the earliest known such photo of one of our officers.

Before the PC, before the typewriter...

They wrote everything by hand, everything. Minutes of meetings, correspondance, student registration records, all of it was written out by hand in ledgers and binders. For example here is a page from the 1869 registration book. These massive volumes are leather bound and about 11x17" on a side. Notice that in addition to people's names and so forth, they listed their "religious persuasion!" (Click on the image to view in a larger size.)

The first typewritten records appear in the 1890s and it wasn't till some years later that records were generally all typewritten. Many years later of course PCs and word processing came along, but that's another story!