a “twelve-pound look” when typewriters became available for 
sixty dollars or so. This look was in some way related to the 
Viking gesture of Ibsen’s Nora Helmer, who slammed the door 
of her doll’s house and set off on a quest of vocation and soul-
testing. The age of the iron whim had begun.

     The reader will recall earlier mention that when the first 
wave of female typists hit the business office in the 1890s, the 
cuspidor manufacturers read the sign of doom. They were right. 
More important, the uniform ranks of fashionable lady typists 
made possible a revolution in the garment industry. What she 
wore, every farmer’s daughter wanted to wear, for the typist 
was a popular figure of enterprise and skill. She was a style-
maker who was also eager to follow styles. As much as the 
typewriter, the typist brought into business a new dimension of 
the uniform, the homogeneous, and the continuous that has