Ed Foote, At 07:32 3/26/99 EST, you wrote: >Greetings, > It is surprising that for all the years that manual typewriters were being >banged upon by millions, RSI (repetititve stress Injury) didn't get documented >as being a problem. It seems that most of this problem comes from unweighted >boards in use these last 20 years or so. >Regards, As a person who has undergone bilateral carpal tunnel surgeries, it surprises me not. In the manual typewriter days the range and diversity of motion helped to prevent the problem. When typing you would be manually reaching up and hitting that lever for the carriage return, constantly feeding in new sheets of paper, inserting carbon paper as necessary, adjusting the paper so the typing fit on the line of a preprinted form, occasionally turning up the page to erase a mistake then trying to type over and make it look pristine. (Pre-whiteout days) ...or turning up the page, opening the bottle, painting on the white, etc. When finished with the page you would be stapling, folding, stuffing in envelopes which had gone through the same typing processes, or had actually been addressed using a _pen_! With computers all you do is hold your hands (wrists) virtually immmoble, with the only change of position being to grab the mouse and run the cursor around the screen. (also while keeping wrist immoble) Part of my therapy has been to do excercises which maintain flexibility and range of motion. Conrad Hoffsommer - Music Technician mailto:hoffsoco@luther.edu Luther College (319)-387-1204 Decorah, Iowa 52101-1045 "I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it." - Ray Bradbury
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