What a mess! I can clearly remember uttering those very words many years ago. I'd look around the floor at the large mound of crumpled papers I would try to toss in the waste basket – but missed. Maybe I should have moved the waste basket closer to my desk but even then, I know for sure I'd be making too much of a mess on the floor. We all did it, so I was no exception to the rule. We'd type a page – ok, sometimes we wouldn't even get as far as a full page, make a mistake, and rip the paper out of the typewriter in complete frustration. All too often, we'd type a few paragraphs, and then, after reading them over, change our minds about a sentence, or an entire paragraph, and decide to begin again. I've just added another ball of paper to the collection on the floor. Back then, there weren't many residences that had computers. For that matter, not too many stores had them, either. Home computers, while still not terribly popular, finally saw the inside of private homes in the early 1970s. However, they weren't actually computers. They were computer KITS. For about $400.00, you could purchase a kit and assemble it on your own. There was no monitor, no keyboard. The user manipulated the device using toggle switches. Around 1975, Paul Allen and Bill Gates emerged as computer geniuses. They introduced their Apple computer and that began the Personal Computer revolution. These machines had memory, a cheaper processor, and a monitor! Yet, they only stored memory on an external hard drive. In 1977, the external hard drive was replaced by floppy discs which measured around 3-1/2 inches square. Eventually, these were replaced with smaller discs that were only about 3” square but the casing was hard molded plastic. In the 1980s, the first internal hard drive was sold in personal computers for the home, however, they were expensive and only the serious user dared spend the money to buy one. In the 1990s, the cost of the personal computers was beginning to lower, enabling more people to make the purchase. That small but very significant invention changed the way people write. No longer do you see crumpled paper on the floor. White out and typing erasers are no longer needed. Neither is that thin “onion skin” copy paper that was used with carbon paper. Yes, typing certainly has changed. Now, we ruin our eyes with so much time spent staring at the computer. But let's also backtrack a bit. Let's go back to the time of the typewriter. Oh, yes, that glorious little invention that spared us the necessity to constantly sharpen pencils or refill our ink pens. Ballpoint pens were invented around the late 1800s for the primary use of writing on things like wood, very coarse paper, etc. However, the little “ball” was entirely too big for it to be used in letter writing. Although the patent was granted, it was also allowed to lapse. If you had the desire to “pen” a letter, you used just that – a regular ink-holding pen! At least, we'd graduated from using the quill. Sometime around 1943, the ballpoints that we know today were patented and the rest is history. While typewriters were first invented around the late 1870s, it wasn't until the mid- 1880s that had become commercially used. Notice, I said “commercially”. A home typewriter was still in the future but the near future. The people who would mostly make use of a home typewriter (manual or the newer electric) were those who made their livings from the written word, namely authors. And that, dear friends, is how the mountain of crumpled paper began littering the floors. Enter the world of home computers! No more messy floors! No more piles of papers to clean. Hey, wait just a darn minute! I'm sitting at my computer and on my desk are several piles of papers. True, I know what's in each pile, but they are there, nonetheless: bills, appointment (yes, I also have a calendar), notes on scrap paper, mail to be answered, answered mail that needs to be posted, my list of things to do and places to do, another list of phone calls that need to be returned, and recipes I'd like to try that I've just printed from the internet – and that's just my stuff. I have a pile or two of items that belong to my husband. I'll get to them eventually. At least, now I have a shredder for those unwanted, useless, bits of paper that still contain personal information that I'd feel uncomfortable just tossing in the trash after picking them off the floor. But that's another story.