Meaning:
Typing by looking for characters on the keyboard individually.
Background:
As a two-finger typist, I've always admired the speed and dexterity of those
who touch-type. I stick with `hunt and peck - that is, I find for a character
on the keyboard and then stab at it with the nearest index finger.
The expression `hunt and peck' of course began with the typewriter and we
need not look for its origin beyond the date of that machine's invention. As
it turns out, that gives us quite some scope as the earliest machines that
can lay claim to being called typewriters date from the early 18th century.
In the UK in 1714, Henry Mill was granted Patent No. 395, which was described
by the patent committee like this:
Our Trusty and welbeloved Henry Mill, gent., hath by his petition humbly
represented vnto us, That he hath by his great study and paines & expence
invented and brought to perfection an artificial machine or method for
impressing or transcribing of letters, one after another, as in writing,
whereby all writing whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so
neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print.
We have no picture of the device, but that sounds like a typewriter to me.
Early typewriters were heavy and not suited to fast typing - there was little
alternative to `hunt and peck' as a typing method. Nevertheless, the
expression didn't come into public use for some long time after typewriters
were in general circulation.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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In high school our job was to cram for Gaokao but the first summer, as one of
the "good" students, I had the enviable opportunity to learn to program, on an
Apple 2. I didn't know there was such a thing as touch-typing and for two weeks,
our teacher, a tall, handsome, artistic-looking man, mesmerized us with panache
at the keyboard. "Hunt and peck," however, was all I could do to try to ape. As
a result, coding was 80 percent about finding and pressing the right keys and
erasing and re-entering characters and then fixing more typos after the machine
failed to execute. It was as much fun as rewiring my brain to become a machine
myself. The computer finally ran my program but I would gladly stay away from
the touchy little critter the rest of my life.
