This machine at the TWDB.
Category: From the Desk of Reverend Munk
Typecasts from the desk of the Right Reverend Theodore Munk
Mechanical Calculator: 1963 Underwood-Olivetti Summa Prima 20
Couldn’t resist this one when I saw it on the shelf at Deseret for $3 a few weeks ago, so I snatched it up. The thing was *filthy*, but seemed to be intact, although it was so gummed up that the lever wouldn’t pull. I’ve currently got it working now, but it still needs another […]
Why it is impossible to keep cat hair out of typewriters…
Polaroids: 10 Years Expired
I found a pack of Polaroid 600 film the other day at Deseret, and having had no luck getting a vintage 1981 pack I found some time ago to work, I was only mildly hopeful that this pack, which expired in 2005 might actually work. I dug up my One Step Flash and tried it […]
Raybestos Manhattan: The Space Age – The Age Of Reliability
Ahh, 1961 – how optimistic America was at the dawn of the Space Age, especially a certain leading manufacturer of Asbestos products called Raybestos Manhattan. I found this one at the last record show that Wayne Butane dragged me along to a couple months ago, and the guy at the booth had it marked at […]
Smith-Corona Presents the greatest success story in Portable Typewriters…
Tom Robbins’ Remington SL3 Typewriter from “Still Life With Woodpecker”
… was as far as I can tell, a work of fiction. It doesn’t exist and never has. This was surprising to me, as it seems commonly reported as fact that Tom Robbins used a Remington SL3 to write “Still Life With Woodpecker“. Wikipedia proclaims this and even Richard Polt’s “Writers and their Typewriters” page […]
Nothing good is ever easy: Timelines and TWDB Part 2
Well, after 3 tries at finding a visualization library capable of timeline display that is both simple and flexible, it ended up being kind of a Goldilocks situation – Google’s libraries were too dependent on off-site resources and couldn’t do point data display (like a single date such as “company formed” or “merged with so-and-so”), […]
Timelines in TWDB
So, I was playing around a bit with various APIs last night and found out I could utilize Google’s Visualization API to do stuff like this fairly easily, given data changes I’m planning for the TWDB. How useful would you think this sort of thing might be?
First Look: TWDB World eBay Typewriter Hunting widget
I’ve been at a loss lately how to get the eBay listing widget that is set up on various places on the desktop version of the TWDB to work on the mobile version. Part of the problem was that getting Javascript to run properly in the DOM-lunacy that is the jQuery Mobile framework is at […]
Breakfast At Tiffany’s: Paul Varjak’s Typewriter
UPDATE: Brian asks below in the comments why I call this machine “red”. The simple answer is “it looks red to me”, but it’s an important question that deserves further examination. He owns a machine of this vintage which he describes as “dark orange”, so the question would be twofold: 1) is the color shown […]
IBM Typecasting Circa 1968
Here’s a gem of a paragraph, pulled completely out of context from the 1968 edition of the “IBM Journal”. This issue was composed of articles from the team that developed the IBM Selectric Composer, and the articles explain in painstaking detail the entire design philosophy and describe the minutia of every unique mechanism of the […]
New Spring in Mothra’s Step, the arrival of Monster Zero, and DIY Composer Ribbons
Unraveling the Royal Quiet De Luxe – Part 5: Reprise – The End of the Royal “A” Model?
In part 4 of this series, I guessed the appearance of the Silver-Seikos and Adlers in Royal’s lineup in 1970 to be the death knell for the Portugese Sabres. This turns out to not be the end of the story after all. In the comments, Mr. Royal himself Nick Bodemer mentions that he’s seen advertisements […]
Unraveling the Royal Quiet De Luxe – Part 4: The Colorful End of the QDL, and What it Became
I’ve been a bit hesitant to type up this fourth and last post detailing what I’ve learned of the history of the QDL, because I’m sad to get up from the immersive bath I’ve taken into the Royal portable serial number lists & galleries and say goodbye to the venerable Quiet De Luxe. The line […]
Unraveling the Royal Quiet De Luxe – Part 3: The Post-War Royal Portables (A, B and C Models)
With the end of World War Two, Royal starts up “A” and “C” Model production right where they left off in 1941. The 1946 “Quiet De Luxe” and war-hero “Arrow” models are snapped up by a typewriter-starved public, and you can have any color you want, as long as it’s black. The middle-market “Aristocrat”, un-needed […]
Unraveling the Royal Quiet De Luxe – Part 2: Birth of the QDL (and siblings)
The Quiet De Luxe “A” Model that Royal introduced in 1939 had direct parentage in the “A” Model “De Luxe” and the short-lived 1938 “Quiet”, but it looked like neither one. Royal had consolidated all four of it’s 1938 higher-end models into just three variations of a single brand-new design: The “A” Model “Quiet De […]
Unraveling the Royal Quiet De Luxe – Part 1: Ancestry (Model P, O and B)
Ahh, the Royal Quiet De Luxe, AKA the “QDL” or the “Model A”. It’s the most popular typewriter among the TWDB’s Typewriter Hunter members by the number of galleries entered (100+ so far). The TWDB’s Royal Serial Number page is also the most popular page on the site by a long shot, among those users […]
The Royal Sabre of Portugal
Oh, and just so you know I’m not off my Composer kick, look what’s headed my way as you read this: Nick T’s Composer and typeballs, adopted by yours truly to the Corral of Increasingly Print-Industry Related Machines. We’ll see how I do with one of these finicky difference engine escapement typewriters when it has […]
Presshunting: A. B. Dick 320
When I was fairly little, about 8 or 10, my dad brought home an old A. B. Dick tabletop offset printing press (they’re actually called “duplicators” when they’re this small) and set up the beginnings of his print shop right there in the laundry room of the little ranch house on Dolphin avenue. This was […]
More Typeface Fun with Mothra!
Classified News (Composer ball CN-x-x) and a Large Elite 72
In answer to a comment below, I typed up a sample of the phrases they wanted ID’d using Mothra (my Composer) and my guess at what type balls were used.
Spot The Typewriter – Upside Down, Left To Right: A Letterpress Film
You can play “Spot The Typewriter” while watching this short and interesting film about letterpress printing. Why doesn’t that surprise me in the slightest? :D Oh, and neat idea for a Typecasting-sized BAROP… Upside Down, Left To Right: A Letterpress Film from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.
The Rosetta Stone: Olivetti Lettera 32 Cracked wide open!
Behold: The Rosetta Stone. Four legal-sized columnar notebooks filled with serial numbers and dates entered into inventory for every new and used typewriter that passed through the doors of MTE between 1950 and 1987. Thirty-seven years worth of handwritten notes in pencil by (from my count) at least five different hands. 138 pages of essentially […]
Brown Plastic Cases are KEY! Smith-Corona Datecodes
I found a 1970’s Galaxie 12 today while doing some light thriftin’ – normally I don’t much like the Brown Plastic Case era SCM’s, but these latter-day Galaxies are usually good machines. Besides, I had to at least look for a datecode. For eight bucks, I didn’t pass up this one, and yep – brown […]
Machines Should Work – People Should Think!
Well, it turns out Olivetti wasn’t the only typewriter company producing trippy acid-fueled industrial films in the 1960s’. IBM got into the game too, and in 1967 commissioned Muppets creator Jim Henson to produce this short film extolling the benefits of IBM office products, including the newly introduced Selectric Composer. A weirder mix of suits […]
Possibly the most convoluted, obtuse and pointlessly time-consuming method for typecasting ever devised by a Typospherian! :D
TWDB Secret Mission – Operation: SCM Datecode!
I’ve been emailing with Jay Respler back and forth the past few weeks regarding a couple of serial numbers on some very unusual Smith-Corona Galaxies and Classic 12’s. During the course of this conversation, he pointed me to a Yahoo thread where he discusses the “SCM Datecode” that is found on many SCM typewriters from […]
Photos from the 6th Phoenix Type-In
And the hits just keep on coming! 1972 Selectric 6251 Composer
My Hummingbird has finally landed!
More fun ephemera from MTE!
So I was at MTE today, wheelin’ & deelin’ for a hummingbird that has caught my fancy, when I noticed a pile of *very dusty* books on a back shelf that I hadn’t pawed through before. Therefore, it’s time for another edition of Ephemera from the Collection of Bill Wahl! This one I snagged for […]
UJTU: The Futura of Typing, and New Mission for Cougar Six-Y
The experiment maybe pays off.
Rhymin’ & Stealin’ 4 Olympia Serial Number Verification
Wow, it’s been awhile since I posted – work’s been whippin’ me like a slave driver and I’ve got typecasts lined up that may never get posted. Today however, I did some crimes for your edification, and I must confess. I went thriftin’ and saw a few typewriters – a 70’s Adler Universal 200 standard […]