AROUND HOME : Notes on Spanish Colonial Furniture, IBM Selectrics, Etched Glass and Goldfish : HIGH STYLE : ‘Select’ Typing

IN 1961, THE late IBM design director, Eliot Noyes, revolutionized the electric typewriter. His Selectric replaced typebars and the movable carriage with a mobile, golf-ball-like element bearing the usual alphanumeric and punctuation characters. The typist could “select” from different elements, changing typefaces in seconds.

Gone forever was typebar clash (jamming caused by striking two keys simultaneously). Banished too were inky fingers: the Selectric’s self-contained ribbon cartridge (anticipating the tape cassette) meant that the typist no longer had to thread the end of a new ribbon onto the pickup reel. And who hadn’t learned from bitter experience that repeated carriage returns could slowly, insidiously, “walk” coffee cups and Rolodex files right off the desk? Noyes got rid of that nuisance, liberating precious desk space previously expropriated for the carriage’s “crash” zone.

About 10 years ago, the daisy-wheel printer superseded the Selectric. Its simpler, flat round element costs less to produce and prints faster (the daisy wheel only rotates around its axis; the Selectric element moves up, down and sideways).

Still, the Selectric’s keyboard remains state-of-the-art because Noyes, after filming finger action in slow motion, devised a contoured keyboard with each row of keys meeting the fingertips at a different angle. The keys themselves were also a novelty: In place of straight-sided keys peeking through a face plate, Noyes designed keys shaped like truncated, four-sided pyramids, nearly touching at their bases and with concave tops cushioned for the fingertips. The Selectric’s touch, like the action of a fine piano, conveys the heft and inertia of the mechanism’s moving parts. Today’s computer consoles, though mimicking the Selectric keyboard’s appearance, can’t quite equal its satisfying sense of tactile feedback and control.

The Selectric’s chassis makes a strong sculptural statement. Noyes thought of the shroud’s shape as “a large, smooth stone with scooped-out areas for the keyboard and platen.” The exuberant, sweeping curves of the sides and the Pop Art, oversize platen knobs struck an almost subversive note in the impersonal, bland office interiors of the day. Even in today’s computer-laden offices, IBM Selectrics remain a prized product.

Selectric typewriters are sold by IBM throughout the country.