Typewriters

[Brerarnold]

I keep my eyes open for one. I'd like to have a typewriter. Spent many hours at the keyboard of a typewriter; even helped work my way through grad school, doing typing for a local Family Services agency. Dreamed about being given a nice portable typewriter just last night.

[SimonJamesLucas]

Well I love fountain pens as much as the next man, I collect antiques, love classic cars and old bicycles, I even own a wind up gramophone but I recently got out my old typewriter for some reason and I have to say this is one area where I prefer the modern way. I had forgotten what a pain they were to use, one little error (I make a lot of these) and all that effort to correct it, the noise, oh no not for me I´m afraid. That said it was a rather crummy portable called a Silver Reed I think. I say was because said tripewriter has been donated to the local charity shop and as I do with my pens, I hope some collector out there has hours of fun with it!

[kernando]

What's a Silver Reed? Is that English?

 

Correction tape in the little handheld roll applicator thing, for ballpoint users, is a good match for copier/printer paper, so you can use paper that's opaque for anybody else and it's faster without the chance of eraser dust falling in. Or if you stick to erasable typewriter paper, the skinniest stick erasers are good for that.

 

When I was 16, I can't remember whether I already my first typewriter that wasn't my mom's. That's an interesting SCM era Skyriter, and a nice color combination. It looks like a transition to me, from the Smith-Corona grey crackle and green keys, then white keys, then that, then probably the Corsair/Cougar models. Oh yeah, that one has the bigger carriage return lever and the same platen knobs of the Corsairs.

 

Hey rustysuper, does the Skyriter have a case? My old one is missing the cover, and I've seen pictures of later ones with cases. And yours is missing the name plate over where the page props come out?

[Alice L]

My mother still uses her Royal 10. It's older than I am, and it works wonderfully. All of us learned to type on it, and when I fly back to visit her I always figure some reason to use it.

[Parkermaniac]

Wow. All of these comments have convinced me (even the ones that remind me why computers are easier) to buy a new typewriter and to find my family's older ones. Right now, my primary typing machine is my MacBook and my primary writing machines are my fountain pens. I think the typewriter is a wonderful combination of efficiency and classiness.

 

-Nate

[J English Smith]

Alas, even I, nostalgic tech guy that I am, have no active typewriters.

 

My college machine was an Adler - big German electric typewriter with minimal self correction. It weighed as much as the Titanic and was only slightly less bulky. It broke getting transported to Middlebury and I had to have it repaired upon arrival. It had a huge sound when you typed on it - made you feel like you were Norman Mailer or Bob Woodward on a deadline.

 

My other college machine was a Lettera 22, classic little Olivetti manual that I bought in Grinnell, Iowa. Still have that one and still works. Don't know where I would find a replacement ribbon for it, though.

 

At Middlebury, my friend Scott Corbett had a IBM Selectric III. I would have killed for that machine. Later, when I worked in publishing, I had a Selectric, but I never owned one. I think I have never typed faster than on a Selectric keyboard. I watch Mad Men and drool at the lovely Selectrics...(well, yeah, and at Joan too).

 

I love to revise, so once I bought my first personal PC in 1991, the typewriters never got much use.

 

I am a classic Mac buff and have several gently aging Macs, including the venerable Powerbook 1400, which may have the best computer keyboard ever. Keyboards matter a lot to me. I am typing this on our new Windows 7 machine, a Toshiba A505 laptop, which has a pretty good keyboard but not perfect for me. Yesterday, I got a reat deal on a circa 2000 Mac Pismo laptop, which I am anxiously awaiting.

 

I miss the sound of typewriters. When I was up at 2 a.m. writing papers, the big sound of that Adler kept me awake. With this Toshiba, I'd nod off in a second.

 

I am sad that typewriters time has come and gone. I'm currently rehearsing a play in a college setting (Grinnell) and it's amazing to me that the kids will not have that deep electric typewriter sound buried deep in their back brains...

Edited November 12, 2009 by J English Smith

[oldnavy1988]

Hmm, if one were to shop for a vintage typewriter, say from the 30s or 40s, where would one look? I mean for one that is fully functional and can be used regularly? If you have any suggestions please PM me. thanks.

[humblescribbler]

I miss the sound of typewriters. When I was up at 2 a.m. writing papers, the big sound of that Adler kept me awake. With this Toshiba, I'd nod off in a second.

 

I am sad that typewriters time has come and gone. I'm currently rehearsing a play in a college setting (Grinnell) and it's amazing to me that the kids will not have that deep electric typewriter sound buried deep in their back brains...

 

My 2 a.m. college typewriter was a Brother portable manual, circa 1970. I fell asleep across it many times. A hard pillow. Kids also won't know the origins of QWERTYUIOP keyboards if PC's eventually go away. (It could happen!!) I challenge kids today when I hear them say they've "dialed" a phone number. They've no idea what "dial" was. But they use those words. (Not all, some say "enter" a number, or I've heard "punch". C'est la vie, and vie certainly moves on!

[Tricia]

I have a couple of older manuals - a giant Underwood and a portable Smith-Corona from the 40s - as well as an Olivetti electric from the 80s. The last one uses a spinwheel and has some sort of chip in it which, when it overheats (which it inevitably does), decides to spin the typewheel to random letters. It's kind of like writing in a secret code to which there is no key. Once it cools off, it's back to typing normally (until the cycle repeats itself). Built-in writing breaks, I guess.

 

The Underwood is currently out of commission because it won't advance the ribbon and I haven't taken the time to figure out how to fix it. I did find an old typewriter repair manual from the 20s online, but mine is from the 50s (I think) so I'm not sure if the same mechanics are involved or not. The Smith-Corona works fine except for skipping after the 'a' (i.e., it adds a space).

 

They are fun to have, but like Penmanila, I am sooo not giving up my MacBook Air.

 

Their biggest downside, imo, (other than maintaining something so obsolete) is how tired my hands get after using them a while. One reason I love writing with fountain pens so much is how much they don't tire my hands, so it doesn't make sense for me to use something that does.

 

And remember erasable paper? :::shudder::: It felt icky just to touch it. Give me Clairefontaine any day!

Edited November 13, 2009 by Tricia

[ZeissIkon]

Kids also won't know the origins of QWERTYUIOP keyboards if PC's eventually go away. (It could happen!!)

 

I doubt personal computing will ever go away, but the keyboard and screen interface will probably persist only so long as we can't enter text reliably and easily by either voice or direct thought (the latter sounds like science fiction, but it's actually been demonstrated on a laboratory level, currently at about the same level as the control Stephen Hawking uses to "talk"). That said, most folks who used typewriters forty or fifty years ago still had no idea where QWERTYUIOP comes from. It wasn't designed for efficiency (get a Dvorak keyboard if that's your interest); it was designed to minimize key jams when typists first started to get faster than 25-30 wpm. The faster you type with a type-bar machine, the more likely you'll have two or more bars "in flight" at the same time, and as anyone who has used a manual type-bar machine for a while knows, if you type keys that control adjacent type bars one after the other, quickly, there's a likelihood that one bar won't clear the gate before the other arrives, commonly resulting in a jam. Most jams are easy to clear, but that takes time, as well as likely depositing ink on some fingers. The earliest typewriters had keyboards designed for efficiency, with the commonest letters in English in the home row (like the etaoinshrdlu of a Linotype -- how many kids today have any idea what that is?), but anti-jamming efforts required scattering those most commonly struck keys around -- not primarily to slow the typist (as anyone who's seen Mavis Beacon banging away at above 150 wpm can attest, that doesn't happen), but to spread the strokes around the type arc so the keys clear each other almost all the time.

 

Of course, by the time type-ball and similar machines came along, the QWERTY keyboard was so firmly entrenched that nothing short of a mass extinction is likely to erase it. For every Dvorak keyboarder, there are fifty or more who type just as rapidly on a QWERTY, demonstrating that conditioned reflexes don't really care how inefficient the movement is.

[humblescribbler]

That is very cool, thanks, ZeissIkon!

 

My granddaddy "threw hot lead" working a Linotype in a Philadelphia newspaper factory floor in the early 20th c. Then they became sheets of hardened mold plastic or something. But the Linotype he used was fingerkeyed just as you say. Years ago he also had wooden print sorters in his basement, dozens that my grandmother would use for threads and spools and tschotche.

 

Not certain about PC's, but admittedly my prediction is purely anecdotal, as neither of my 20-somethings have much use for one anymore. It's maddening when I get email responses from what I know are their handhelds, and judging from those responses they didn't read too well because they couldn't really see the screen!! Makes me nuts.

[ZeissIkon]

Not certain about PC's, but admittedly my prediction is purely anecdotal, as neither of my 20-somethings have much use for one anymore. It's maddening when I get email responses from what I know are their handhelds, and judging from those responses they didn't read too well because they couldn't really see the screen!! Makes me nuts.

 

Sorry to disappoint you, but I'd consider a modern wireless handset a personal computer. My first home computer (1986 -- I was a latecomer by some standards, since the Altair hit the market in 1974) had 64k RAM, a 986 kHz processor (that's just under 1 megahertz), and no hard disk; my sixth (after five various slightly different versions of the Tandy Color Computer in not much over a year) was a DOS machine with 640k RAM, 10 MHz processor (which was just barely as fast as the 2 MHz mill in the last CoCo model), and still no hard disk (though by the time I sold that machine it had been upgraded to 4.5 MB RAM and 80 MB of hard disk space, as well as VGA graphics). My current cell phone, an LG enV², has 64 MB RAM, a processor faster than that first Color Computer, better resolution on the internal screen than the EGA card and monitor I had before upgrading to VGA, and a tiny QWERTY keyboard inside.

 

I doubt the problem is your kids being unable to see the screen; they just aren't paying attention.

[bphollin]

My bride's got an Olivetti Lettera 32, but for me, I'll stick with Visconti. The way I see it, fountain pens help me write better and make writing more pleasurable, but typewriters don't help me type better. To each their own!

[humblescribbler]

Not certain about PC's, but admittedly my prediction is purely anecdotal, as neither of my 20-somethings have much use for one anymore. It's maddening when I get email responses from what I know are their handhelds, and judging from those responses they didn't read too well because they couldn't really see the screen!! Makes me nuts.

I doubt the problem is your kids being unable to see the screen; they just aren't paying attention.

 

http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/3/3_8_2.gif I see what you mean. PC evolution. Now, how do you know my kids!!??

[randyholhut]

I learned to type (badly, never progressed past the two finger stage) in high school in the 1970s on a manual Olympia.

 

Thinking electrics were too new-fangled for me, I used my high school graduation gift money to buy a Smith-Corona Classic 12 in 1979.

 

A neighbor was getting rid of a old typewriter in the early 1980s, which was how I ended up with a Royal Model 10. I used both the Smith-Corona and the Royal through my college years.

 

The radio stations I worked at in the early 1980s still used Royal Deluxes from the 1940s -- indestructable beasts.

 

It was nice to use IBM Selectrics from time to time, but never cottoned to them.

 

But once I started working in newspapers in the mid-1980s and discovered that the typewriters were gone, I got my first computer in 1986 -- a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 102 laptop. 32K of memory and a built-in 300 baud modem. I used that thing for about 10 years, and never went back to using typewriters.

[Nikhil]

I only used a typewriter once and I actaully liked it a lot better keyboard-wise then todays qwerty's. A bit of trivia for you all. Did you know that the QWERTY keyboard was mathmatically formed to make a typist go slower, so they would not jam the keyboard from typing to fast. The DVORAK is proven to type the fastest

[mstone]

I only used a typewriter once and I actaully liked it a lot better keyboard-wise then todays qwerty's. A bit of trivia for you all. Did you know that the QWERTY keyboard was mathmatically formed to make a typist go slower, so they would not jam the keyboard from typing to fast. The DVORAK is proven to type the fastest

It was about spacing, not slowing down. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY

 

It's non-obvious that there is real benefit to Dvorak at this point, given the many external factors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard

[JustinL]

The Underwood is currently out of commission because it won't advance the ribbon and I haven't taken the time to figure out how to fix it.

 

If you decide you want to try to fix it, I might be able to help you figure it out.

 

Their biggest downside, imo, (other than maintaining something so obsolete) is how tired my hands get after using them a while. One reason I love writing with fountain pens so much is how much they don't tire my hands, so it doesn't make sense for me to use something that does.

 

The hands and fingers get tired at first but if you use one constantly and correctly (quick and light tapping, good posture, steady, moderate pace), fatigue can be avoided.

[JustinL]

My other college machine was a Lettera 22, classic little Olivetti manual that I bought in Grinnell, Iowa. Still have that one and still works. Don't know where I would find a replacement ribbon for it, though.

 

That was the first typewriter I ever owned (several years ago). I got rid of it because I switched to a different machine but now I wish I hadn't sold it. They're great.

 

Ribbon is easy to find. Office Max, Office Depot, et cetera, should have one that works fine for around $6.

[Shangas]

I purchased this from the local flea-market today. I'm currently fixing it up. So far, so good...

 

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a215/Fruffles/Typewriter/UnderwoodStandardNo5-BEFORE1_zps301b9caf.jpg

 

Despite it's decrepit state, I have already...

 

- Unjammed the keys.

- Unjammed the tab-stops.

- Unjammed the margin-stops.

- Unjammed the CARRIAGE (that one was fiddly, but I think I got there in the end!)

- Lubricated most of the machine.

 

Now I'm just trying to clean it, before I start working on the more major things like new rubber and repairing the spacebar.

 

It's mechanically excellent, it just needs a LOT of work to get it working perfectly. It's also incredibly filthy!

 

It's an Underwood No. 5 Standard, from 1927.

Edited September 22, 2013 by Shangas