He had taken the wife to his raw new palace in San Diego, where she and her people occupied a wing of great price, and Cheyne, in a veranda-room, between a secretary and a typewriter, who was also a telegraphist, toiled along wearily from day to day.
1953, Mike Harris, The Southpaw:
The typewriter got up and disappeared out a back door, and soon she come back with a man, and he said, "Can I be of some help, Mr. Higgens?"
1973, Edgar B. Jackson, Fall Out to the Right of the Road!, page 321:
The battle had opened in earnest. From the wooded ridge came in reply the clacking of "typewriters,” and bullets whined over our heads.
1996, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Virtuous vampires, page 250:
It was like sinking to sleep in a soft, dry bed with a big drink of brandy in you after you're dog-tired from a tour of duty on the firing-step, or slipping into a warm bath when you're lousy-dirty and chilled to the bone from crawling through mud and filth and dodging flares and 'typewriter' bullets half the night.
2001, Fredric Brown, Ben Yalow, From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown, page 234:
Why, any day I'd go up against a typewriter, with a forty-five. One shot I'd need and there'd be time for three while he was getting that damn' thing swung around and pointed —
2005, R. Derby Holmes, A Yankee in the Trenches, page 60:
Fortunately we were on the edge of a shallow shell hole when the sentry caught our movements and Fritz cut loose with the "typewriters."
A prank in which fingers are jabbed roughly onto someone's chest followed by striking them over the ear in imitation of using an old-fashioned typewriter.
