Protecting America’s typewriter and slide rule industries is critical for the nation’s future, said John Underwood, with the American Public Typewriter Association, and William Keuffel, with Slide Rule America, in a report released today by the Typewriter-Slide Rule Center. “Typewriters and slide rules played a vital role in the nation’s victory in World War II,” noted Underwood. “What will happen to the U.S. if we don’t have access to these irreplaceable technologies in the future?”
We couldn’t have won World War II without it.
It is commonly believed that these tools have been replaced by microcomputers and the internet, but Keuffel scoffed at that claim. “The original internet was subsidized by the Defense Department,” he pointed out. “If the typewriter and slide rule industries had received similar subsidies, they would be thriving today.” Continue reading
