what was the cost of that kind of typewriter??? Fred Barnes was talking about it but I missed the amount. I think he said either 2K or 20K.
Don't know the cost, I was a lowly clerk-typist at the time. But it was expensive enought that in an office with about 300 people in it, there was only one Executive -- and that was for the president's office. It was so hard to use, everyone hated it!
Someone else (on this thread or another, I can't remember) said you couldn't center a line of type on an Executive. You could, but it was painstaking. Regular centering was done by tabbing to the center, then backspacing once for every 2 letters in the line you were going to type. With the Executive, each backspace moved you back only one 'unit' - and you had to know how many units each character contained, both lower and upper-case, and count backwards according to that formula. For example, for the word Kiwanis, with 7 letters -- but - K and w are 3 units, i is 1 unit, and the a, n and s are all 2 units. So that's 14 units. So you'd go to Center and backspace 7 units. Clear as mud, huh? And if you made a mistake? YOW! Start over!