[Windflier]

Once I searched under my real name and found a letter I had written to the New York Times a lot of years ago. The letter was typed on a typewriter back in the days before personal computers, but evidently, the Times kept it in their database.

That's really interesting. Think about it...someone at the NY Times went to the effort to transcribe your letter into digital format. That's the only way you could have found reference to it on the internet.

[fatnotlazy]

I didn’t think the letter was all that wonderful that it had to be archived.

Or maybe the NYT thought I was some kind of subversive and had to keep the letter as evidence. *Snort*

[Minn]

Think about it...someone at the NY Times went to the effort to transcribe your letter into digital format.

Use of Optical Character Recognition software, combined with micro film or micro fiche is far more likely.