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Just our type
Imagine stepping back in time to nearly a hundred years ago and finding yourself in a Commercial Department classroom. Mount Royal would have been a college — the room would have been abuzz with activity and the clacking sound of typewriters would be ringing in the air.
Typewriters similar to the Underwood No. 5 shown above were used at Mount Royal starting in 1911 when the first typewriting classes were offered on campus.
Attending these classes were both young women — wanting to learn typewriting and shorthand skills for secretarial positions — and young men wanting to become successful businessmen.
Popular model
The 1921/1922 Mount Royal College Calendar features a photograph of staff members using typewriters — very likely the Underwood No. 5 model.
Produced from 1901 to 1932, millions of the No. 5 were sold, making it the most widely used of the Underwood typewriter series.
Pansy Louise Pue was the original owner of this typewriter, which was donated to the Mount Royal Archives on April 18, 1991.
Pue taught typing and secretarial courses at Garbutt’s Business College in Calgary from 1912 to 1916, using this very typewriter.
Records show some Mount Royal graduates went on to pursue typing and secretarial courses at Garbutt’s Business College and a few may well have been students in Pue’s class.
The evolution of typing at Mount Royal
Typewriting classes continued to be taught at Mount Royal right up to the 1991/92 academic year under the course title ‘Secretarial Arts 1117 — Elementary Typewriting.’
A year later, the course changed to ‘Introductory Keyboarding,’ announcing the end of the typewriting era and the dawn of the computer keyboard.
The legacy of the Underwood No. 5 typewriter lives on at Mount Royal and is a symbol of how far the institution has come over the last century.
Check out this 1928 Easter Chinook Yearbook ad for Underwood typewriters.
This page regularly showcases the collections of the Mount Royal University Archives. Thanks to the Director of the Archives, Patricia Roome, PhD, and her staff for their assistance in selecting artifacts and conducting research.