made the typewriter indispensable to every aspect of 
mechanical industry. A modern battleship needs dozens of 
typewriters for ordinary operations. An army needs more 
typewriters than medium and light artillery pieces, even in the 
field, suggesting that the typewriter now fuses the functions of 
the pen and sword.

     But the effect of the typewriter is not all of this kind. If 
the typewriter has contributed greatly to the familiar forms of 
the homogenized specialism and fragmentation that is print 
culture, it has also caused an integration of functions and the 
creation of much private independence. G. K. Chesterton 
demurred about this new independence as a delusion, 
remarking that “women refused to be dictated to and went out 
and became stenographers.” The poet or novelist now 
composes on the typewriter. The typewriter fuses composition