I love the juxtaposition of my 2015 Epson wireless printer and 1936 Underwood typewriter: two high-tech and low-tech printers sitting side by side.

Made entirely of steel, the Underwood is half the size of the Epson and weighs twice as much. Mine needs a new ribbon and some dusting, but it still works just fine. The Underwood is a workhorse, the former standard of American offices after World War I.

For those of us who learned to type before personal computers were available, there’s something wonderfully nostalgic about sinking your fingers into the deep keystrokes of a manual typewriter, hearing the slap of the type bars against paper and the bell announcing it’s type to hit the carriage return bar. As the gears and bars warm up, the typewriter emits a subtle petroleum scent, like the smell of grease in old elevators.

My first typewriter was an electric Smith-Corona, a gift from my mom to help me report for my high school newspaper. But beside it was an old Royal, the typewriter I preferred to use when I had more patience for typos, which meant starting over, not pressing “backspace.” Learning on it, I figured, would make me faster on the electric, and boy, did it ever. My words per minute were impressive on my first resume. That measurement seems silly now.