The typing pool originated around the start of the 20th century, reflecting the American economy's shift from agricultural and industrial sectors toward finance, information and services.
Large banks of typewriters and typists were assembled to centralize the work of creating documents needed in the public and private sectors.
Typing classes were common in schools in the '20s and '30s, and many young women were encouraged to learn to type so that they might find employment; jobs were gender-normed until WWII. (Remember the possibilities the typewriter held for dear, sweet paralytic Laura Wingfield in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie?)
Typewriting as a career option was replaced by word-processing in the '70s and '80s and dedicated word-processors (I spent a few months employed as such the summer before started graduate school) eventually were replaced by user-friendly personal computers. Folks did their own composing with the help of early forms of spell-checking and a Merriam-Webster and a printer.
Today, AI stands poised to take over not just the transferal of handwritten notes on legal pads to onionskin and parchment -- like the ladies in the typing pool -- but the entire compositional process.
I fully anticipate ...
careers to evaporate,
jobs to disappear,
creative impulses to wither, and
brains to atrophy.
A Grave New World!
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