I typed my first papers (mid to late 80s) on an Olivetti typewriter. I was and still am a two-finger typist and the whole process was an unmitigated pain. To add to the misery, owning a typewriter in communist Romania was a political liability because one could potentially type and distribute political messages making the recognition of the author a bit harder to achieve than in the case of hand-writing. To prevent this from happening, every year we had to show up at the headquarterscof headquarters of the secret police with the typewriter alongside and type a few lines dictated to us by some employee of that institution. The reason you ask? They were obtaining samples of typed words from each typewriter in use so that in case that one brave owner would type and spread some political manifesto they could trace back the text to the appropriate typewriter.
Typing was the easy part. Submitting your paper to a Western journal was a different ball game.
