Every day of the year has its own niche in history and March 1 is no exception. On this day 152 years ago the first typewriters went on sale in the US. It was 1874 and the Sholes and Glidden typewriter, invented in Milwaukee, was proudly presented by Remington & Sons in New York.
Understandably the handwriting public were somewhat sceptical of this strange-looking contraption but within a decade it was to become an essential feature in every self-respecting commercial business.
When I first joined the Bangkok Post in 1969 it was a newspaper fuelled by typewriters and they provided a daily soundtrack bashing out tomorrow's news. There was always something comforting about the clatter of a battered Smith Corona or Olympia as opposed to the subdued, sterile sound of the computer terminals.
There used to be an elderly Thai chap who would come to our Ratchadamnoen office every fortnight to fix the broken typewriters, and there were plenty in need of repair. He was a lovely fellow and I remember the look of horror on his face in the early 1980s when he first saw computer terminals parked on the sub-editors' desks where his ailing typewriters once stood.
As late as 2012, I recall an interview by Post reporter Nanchanok Wongsamuth with the owner of one of the few remaining typewriter shops. I was particularly amused by the fact that the only words of English he knew were "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog's back". That peculiar expression features all 26 letters of the alphabet and was a traditional way of testing that every letter working.
There was a time when writers could not live without typewriters. American author John O'Hara once admitted: "Much as I like owning a Rolls-Royce, I could do without it. What I could not do without is a typewriter."
Ribbon rage
Unlike computer terminals no two typewriters felt exactly the same. Like the journalists who used them the typewriters had their own personality and idiosyncrasies and at times could be infuriating. There were always some letters which didn't work properly and you would have to bash the keyboard to ensure its cooperation. On occasions I witnessed staff cursing their misbehaving typewriters, but at least they didn't break down during power cuts.
However, things could get messy when the ribbon wore out and needed changing. I never got the hang of that and invariably ended up covered in ink.
The enemy
Some authors experienced rocky relationships with their typewriters. Hunter Thompson was photographed pointing a gun at his machine while Leonard Cohen in a fit of anger threw his typewriter into the Aegean Sea. Ernest Hemingway regularly typed while standing up. I tried it once and found it most uncomfortable. Admittedly the only reason I was standing was because there were no seats.
Graham Greene was not a great fan of typewriters and wrote most of his novels in longhand. He once explained: "My two fingers on a typewriter never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does."
The Maiwand Lion
The only time I kept a diary was in 1969 when travelling overland from London. Out of curiosity I consulted the diary this week to see what I was doing on March 1 all those years ago. We were on the road to the Afghan city of Kandahar, having just passed through Maiwand 65km west of Kandahar and scene of an extremely harrowing event in British military history.
I should explain that my hometown of Reading has a Maiwand Lion statue, a memorial for the nearly 300 soldiers from the 66th Berkshire Regiment killed in the Battle of Maiwand on July 27, 1880. The battle was an unmitigated disaster. In a chaotic retreat many soldiers died of thirst in the unforgiving Afghan desert and the survivors were a sorry sight as they reached the Kandahar fort. One soldier wrote: "I never saw such a sight in my life -- too awful to describe."
The 2,500 British and Indian troops, exhausted by the intense heat and lack of food, were overwhelmed on the road from Kandahar to Herat by the 12,000-strong Afghan force under Ayub Khan. Nearly 1,000 British and Indian soldiers were killed while an estimated 3,000 Afghan fighters perished. More than 2,000 horses, elephants and mules were also lost.
Bobbie the barker
As in many tales of war Maiwand featured a heroic dog.
The 66th Berkshire had a mascot mongrel called Bobbie, who travelled from England with the regiment and was in the thick of the battle, barking fearlessly at the enemy throughout the terrifying hand-to-hand fighting.
After the battle Bobbie was missing, presumed dead. But a few days later a bloodied Bobbie, suffering from a bullet wound in the back, limped into the Kandahar fort.
Months later when the regiment returned, Bobbie was taken to see Queen Victoria and she personally pinned the Afghanistan Medal on the dog.
A true warrior
Alas it was not a happy ending. A year later, Bobbie was killed after being run over by a horse-drawn carriage near Portsmouth.
However, the dog's fame was such that it was stuffed and now sits proudly in a military museum in Salisbury. Bobbie is also featured in the Animals at War memorial in London's Hyde Park.
