Typewriters thread

[dysondestijl]

I love typewriters!!
Here is a beautiful USA smith corona that I just saw in an antiques store I absolutely love it!!

 

[dysondestijl]

A close up of it:

 

[dysondestijl]

And heres another one I found in the same room:

 

[turbo500]

would this not have been more relevant in the thread that's already going on Typewriters?

http://www.vacuumland.org/cgi-bin/TD/TD-VIEWTHREAD.cgi?20591_62#start_20591.60

 

[dysondestijl]

Yes but that thread is asking you if anyone has used a typewriter, not for typewriter fans to chat about them!

 

[dysondestijl]

Here is my Olympia

 

[dysondestijl]

Here is my 'Brother':

 

[dysondestijl]

Here's my sharp font writer which is basically a more revamped typewriter:

 

[electrolux137]

Typewriters are great, another (of many) examples of obsolete technology. I taught myself to type when I was in the fifth grade, using my high-school-age sister's "Gregg Typing" textbook. On good days, on a good electric typewriter, I can average a hundred words per minute. I've never tested myself on a computer keyboard but I expect it's probably significantly higher.

I currently have about a half-dozen or so typewriters including a 1940s Underwood with a 15-inch carriage for typing mimeograph stencils; a Smith-Corona Sterling; a 1920s Royal office typewriter; a Royal portable; two IBM Selectrics (II & III), and a couple more stuck away somewhere.

When I was in elementary-, middle- and high-school, I made money typing for teachers, including tests and exams (but never of the ones that I had to take, hahaha!). They were prepared on "spirit master units," for the duplicating process that produced heavenly scented purple copies.

 

[electrolux137]

Smith Corona Sterling portable, mid-1940s. My mom had this model that she got as a graduation gift in 1945, from her father -- I grew up with this typewriter in our household. I have many memories of her sitting at the kitchen table, tapping away on it. She kept it for many years, only giving it away when they moved into a senior housing complex. It had a ribbed-black carrying case, the inside of which had a very distinctive and pleasant scent that I can recall to this day.

I found one in a thrift shop about 20 years ago, for only $10.00. It's in perfect condition.

 

[electrolux137]

The historic and groundbreaking IBM Selectric, whose interchangeable type-balls were the forerunner of desktop publishing inasmuch as typists could, for the first time, easily change fonts in a single typewritten page. I have a pretty big collection of these balls, about three dozen of them.

Here are two of them in gorgeous peacock blue, one a Selectric II and the other a Selectric III.

 

[electrolux137]

I like typewriter fonts for the computer and have found quite a few over the years. Most of them are only good as display fonts -- e.g., to simulate typewritten text in a layout, because they're too "messy" or blurry and are hard on the eyes in large blocks of text.

There are very few that are clean and crisp enough to actually use for computer-generated text. I've only found two, in fact -- one is called Traveling Typewriter which I actually use as the mono-spaced screen font on my Mac, and the other is called VTBulletin which is great for "typed" correspondence. I set the font color at 80%-Black and it's very convincing!

Here's a screen shot of the two fonts.

 

[jmurray01]

Here is a typewriter I bought from eBay a few weeks ago, it is a Smith Corona SMC Empire-Corona de luxe. It originally had a carry case but that broke in transit (got to love Hermes) so it is now desktop only.

Mechanically it worked perfect right out of the box, with the exception of a few sticky hammers which freed up with some oil and typing.

The ribbon was very badly dried up so I replaced it today and it now works like brand new apart from the 'Z' key which is still sticky, but I expect that is just because it is probably one of the least used keys on a keyboard and as such just needs some use to get it going again.

Pictures!

 

[jmurray01]

If anybody knows what "SMC" stands for I would appreciate it!

 

[jmurray01]

The logo that you can trust - Smith-Corona! And of course, being from the 1970s it is "MADE IN ENGLAND".

 

[jmurray01]

And the model:

 

[jmurray01]

Please excuse my erroneous references to "SMC" which is actually "SCM"!

To hazard a guess at what it MIGHT mean, could it be "Smith-Corona Miniture"?

 

[dysondestijl]

Nice jamie

 

[super-sweeper]

It's unlikely Smith-Corona-Miniature,

As SCM Was the company's name, Smith-corona Corporation.That's the name on all the vintage adds and literature I have with my '71-'76 Smith-Corona Electra 220. I'm guessing the likely un-abbreviated form would be Smith-Corona Manufacturing.


 


Speaking of literature, You should see one early 1970s add I have for SCM, In which they list reasons why you should send your child off to collage with a new Smith-Corona, Featuring the new (And quite Innovative) Corona-Matic ribbon.


Some reasons included the crisp fronts, How you could correct mistakes and  type in bright, fun colors by simply inserting another cartridge (Corona-Matic feature), But the best example being...


 


"Notice how Smith-Corona <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Sounds</span> Professional, Like the sleek machine it is".


 


That give me a kick!

 

[petek]

SCM stood for Smith Corona Marchant.  


Smith Corona bought the Marchant Calculating Machine Co. in 1958 and added it to their name. 

 

[petek]

UPdating old typewriter to tweet

Was reading this article in this mornings Toronto Star.. here's the link and hopefully the video works for you

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...g_robots_and_3d_printing_a_family_affair.html

 

[jmurray01]

Ah, thank you for clearing that up Pete.

 

[spiraclean]

This is what I learned to type on, an Olivetti 82 with the wider carriage. I was about 7 years old, and our next door neighbour offered it to us as a freebie for my brother and I to "bash about" on. At the time it seemed ridiculously big and heavy, and to be fair it probably was. Any time I wanted to use it my father had to drag it out of the cupboard and set it on the dining room table for me, because there's no way I could ever manage to lift it myself.

Will never forget the smell each time the cover was taken off, a mixture of inky ribbon and the grease on the mechanism!

 

[spiraclean]

A couple of years later my parents bought me an Olivetti College for Christmas. Much smaller and lighter, so I could carry it about myself - this, plus the fact that I had been given permission by my teacher to type up my school homework, meant that it saw a heck of a lot of use.

Come to think of it, I still have this typewriter, tucked away in the back of my mother's attic. Haven't had it out for years, so perhaps I ought to dig it out sometime, find a new ribbon for it and tap away for old time's sake.

 

[spiraclean]

Fast forward a few years and I had started secondary school, and decided that it was finally time to enter the electric age. Saved up all my birthday, Christmas and odd-job money until I had enough stashed away, then picked up a Smith Corona SD685. The small, single-line LCD display and internal memory meant that it could also be used as a basic word processor. I seem to recall the memory was enough for about three pages of text, after which you could print out the document (it would pause at the end of each page so you could load another sheet, after which it would continue printing).

Used this for about three years before trading up again, but eventually found another use for it when I ran my own business and had to print up carbonised invoices and receipts in duplicate or triplicate.

 

[spiraclean]

Having become proficient at using the word processing features of my first Smith Corona, I soon outgrew it and decided it was time to step up to something with more features, external memory and a larger display. Decided to stick with SC, and opted for their top of the range PWP3900 model. This one had a separate monochrome display monitor (10" I think) and a built-in floppy disk drive. And it could still be used as a regular electric typewriter for quickly typing up short documents where word processing capabilities were not needed.

This was about £400 at the time, which was rather a lot of money even for the mid 90s. Worth every penny though, as it was in daily use throughout school, college and beyond.

After that, I moved onto using an Amstrad PcW word processor, which worked well enough but looking back was probably considered to be seriously outdated by the time it even appeared in the shops. Gave me the push to finally step up to a PC though, and the rest is history.

 

[petek]

I learned to type on my mothers little blue Olivetti Lettera 22 back in the 60's. In highschool I really wanted an electric SCM but they were pretty expensive and not something my dad was about to fork out the money on. One day I was in Kmart and found an el cheapo Wedgefield (rebranded Brother) electric and bought that with some money I'd saved. I was a little miffed when 30 odd years later I move back here , they were both still at her house as she'd never gotten rid of any of my remaining childhood stuff without asking first but a few months later I went to retrieve them and both were gone.. AAAAggghhh LOL.. To make matters worse I think I saw both of them at Value Village before I'd found out she'd done that and it didn't click at the time that they were mine so I didn't buy them. Oh well, what can you do.

Here's perhaps my favorite in my small collection of typers.
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