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07033_Field_TCUM T598.txt
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1996-04-10
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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