In 1882, ads proclaimed that the typewriter could be 
used as an aid in learning to read, write, spell, and punctuate. 
Now, eighty years later, the typewriter is used only in 
experimental classrooms. The ordinary classroom still holds the 
typewriter at bay as a merely attractive and distractive toy. 
But poets like Charles Olson are eloquent in proclaiming the 
power of the typewriter to help the poet to indicate exactly the 
breath, the pauses, the suspension, even, of syllables, the 
juxtaposition, even, of parts of phrases which he intends, 
observing that, for the first time, the poet has the stave and 
the bar that the musician has had.

     The same kind of autonomy and independence which 
Charles Olson claims that the typewriter confers on the voice of 
the poet was claimed for the typewriter by the career woman of 
fifty years ago. British women were reputed to have developed