Typewriters

[MrKittyCatMeowFace]

.

[Spider!]

My mother was a legal and state Senate secretary for years. She could make those things buzz without making mistakes for pages.

She typed a couple of my highschool papers. 😁

Those things weighed about 30 pounds. Idk where ours went.

[glaman5266]

I miss them. Been thinking about picking one up for sending thank you notes, stuff like that. People really appreciate the extra effort of mech typing something and dropping it in the mail. Classy. Each document is like a hand crafted work of art.

Right? It's cool to do something just a tad differently once in a while. Shows the thought and dedication you have toward what it is you're doing.

A lot of the ribbons are still available.

This is good to know. I'd still do my research, of course. Thanks.

The keys are a longer and much stiffer travel than anything else. You have to adapt to the keyboard.

That's probably not a big deal. The hard part for me would be slowing down so that I don't make mistakes. I'm really good at hitting the back space key now, which is not something you're supposed to use much on a typewriter.

I sometimes really like doing things slowly & deliberately. When I get in a steady rhythm with something there's no need to go faster. There's something cathartic about it I think.

I had a Royal at one point but am not really sure what happened to it.

Particularly the Royal, was not a typewriter that you needed to know how to type. It was all henpeck because you had to hit the keys so hard.

I see Royal has newer ones on Amazon. I've read mixed reviews on them though. Not sure if I'd buy a new one or find an old one yet though.

I don't mind the stiffness of the keystrokes. I'm currently typing on a mechanical keyboard and I actually wish the switches were stiffer, lol.

I've got one that I got a garage sale a while back for $10. It mostly works...sometimes. The reason I got it was for demonstrations when I used to teach keyboarding to my high school students. The school abandoned the curriculum a few years back, and it just takes up space in my classroom at the moment. It's too heavy to ship, but I'd give it to you if you were close.

Unfortunately, I'm not. I'm in WI. Thank you very much for the offer though. I really appreciate it.

[spikeball]

I found my typewriter through craigslist.

Funny enough, if I get into a writing mood, its on my typewriter.

To me, there's something very satisfying about putting ink in paper. Feels permanent unlike typing on a computer. Also, it's much faster than writing. I enjoy the tangible nature of it all.

[Tarsun2]

if thats your reasoning, then youd probably enjoy this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCxoZlFqzwA

[glaman5266]

Well, that just sent me down a rabbit hole. Typewriters, film stuff, carbureted engines, what's next? lol

[Pyrate Jim]

And they don't try to auto-correct you!

[Tarsun2]

yeah, there have been quite a few things that have gotten easier over time but have gotten worse in the process.
were conditioned for it really. digital music is a shell of the actual sound and the thing that still trips me up is that fact that there are 3 primary colors (red, yellow, blue) yet computer monitor's and tv's only have red, green, and blue pixels. Wait, wtf, how am i looking at yellow images on my monitor if there is no yellow pixels and if yellow is a primary color, how can you display yellow by blending other colors....

[Siress]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_space because of how light mixing works. Most of us were incorrectly 'educated' about what primary colors are... the biggest tell being that 'primary colors' is a concept, rather than a rigid definition of any particular color set.

[Chaos]

This is one that was found at work .... Looks to be near new ,has all the paperwork and refills ,and even has the original box

Sent from my SM-A516V using Tapatalk

[Hp_lovecraft]

My oldest son collects them. It’s all a mystery to me, but he had a few from pre-ww2 and those old ones are magically mechanical.

[glaman5266]

*Revive!

My wife is on vacation & found one in an antique store (not sure exactly how “antique” the store was, but eh). A ‘70s Underwood 319. Quick research says is this is a clone of the Olivetti Lettera 22.

From my understanding, Olivetti bought out Underwood some time before & revived it in the ‘80s. I’m not sure if this is a straight-up clone or if these were outsourced to Olivetti before that (just did some quick research while on the phone with her, lol), but it seemed like it was good.

My wife tried all the keys, levers & whatnot and everything seemed in good condition & smooth in operation. 70 bucks. I ordered some ribbon tonight as well. Something to play around with, anyway. There was also an Olympia there, but it wasn’t in as good of shape & she said the keys were significantly more stiff, and I don’t want to spend the time doing an initial cleaning. So I opted for this one. Good enough for a first typewriter I think.

[DocsMachine]

I have a circa-1926 Underwood, left me by my dad. he used it in his office for many years.

I used to hate the idea that people would pull them apart to make things like that peacock, or Datamancer style steampunk keyboards... 'Til I found out that by the time this '26 was made, Underwood alone had already made something like 21 million of them. And there were literally hundreds of makers in those early days.

Now, countless millions have certainly been scrapped, tossed, parted out for artworks, or otherwise lost, but there's still millions around.

Doc.

[glaman5266]

[Cdn_Cuda]

Ooh, fancy! An Internet forum post typed on a typewriter!

[glaman5266]

Cdn_Cuda Yeah, I thought it'd be fitting.

Might be fun to do this once in a while for normal forum posts.