A Second Coming?

By Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser —— Bio and Archives September 9, 2022

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Ever seen one of those machines as in the picture above? If so, you either were visiting a museum – or are born a long time ago. Actually, I typed many pages, including my scientific theses on a similar device. This kind of old-tech appears to be making a come-back. At least that’s what the Daily Mail reports from the British government facility Whitehall. The reason is a fear of potential (electricity) blackouts this coming winter.

Carbon Paper

Needless to say, even in the worst times, civil service communications must keep flowing and, if necessary, by carbon paper copies to all correspondents. However, these old-type devices required equal force on each keystroke to produce a clean document, especially if several carbon copies were needed. One big plus is that these machines had woven ribbons that were used repeatedly (in reversed direction), thus making it extremely difficult or impossible to leave a readable trace of anything typed. A second plus is that they don’t need any electric power at all.

IBM Selectric

In the ‘60s, a new invention came about: the IBM Selectric, an electric ball typewriter. It allowed much faster typing, easier corrections, and simple change of fonts. It could also produce high quality carbon paper copies. One big (security) problem though was that any snoop could temporarily remove the plastic ribbon and read the entire typed text. Of course, it also required electricity to operate.

Fast Forward to the 2020s

Just like the old rotary phones that, by the way, also do not require external (i.e. for base-/hand-set) electric power, many members of the currently young generation might not even know what the old manual typewriters looked like. Now, it’s electronic keyboards in various forms that, together with instantaneous worldwide electronic communication enable one to send any text or picture to a myriad of recipients in split seconds. Despite all attempts to securely encode sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands, with enough computing power, just about any security code can be cracked. Furthermore, any computer program or hardware with secret backdoor(s) is vulnerable or could be used to access anything written or said over the electronic channels.

“Hacking” – a criminal business and high-stakes warfare

“Hacking” of all kinds of electronic communications, data files, and computer-driven devices has not only become a big business for criminal elements but also an important part of modern electronic warfare. A high-stakes competition all around that neither side appears to be able to decisively win. Perhaps, some of the old-tech really deserves a second coming.