Typewriters

[dr_mabeuse]

Anyone have any old typewriters?

I have an IBM Selectric, an ancient Underwood from way before I was even born, and a couple of less interesting models: a portable Olivetti and a Royal or something.

What do you do with them? I can't bring myself to throw them out, especially the Underwood, whose ribbon is hopelessly dried out, though I think the roller is still okay. I was trinking of putting a potted plant in it.

---dr.M.

 

[pop_54]

Yeppers

Got a Smith's portable, same dried out ribbon, and a later Daisey wheel Panasonic all singing all dancing thing with auto correct bold print, shadow print, auto store for several templates, the lot.

Still use the later model in the office for lining up typed stuff on pre made forms that the PC doesn't recognise or there's no software for. Biggest problem is getting the ribbon carts now.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

I have a Rover 5000, but had to go look for it even to tell you this much. It was under the bed.

I haven't used it since I got my first computer four or five years ago, and it still looks almost brand new... *sigh*

 

[Guest]

I didn't have any worth saving. Before WP my dream was to own a Selectric but at the time they cost about 1000 bucks, way out of my league. Now my job pays for my laptop and accessories (except the webcam ).

Perdita

 

[oggbashan]

I still have five after giving two away to my creative writing class.

One is an electronic typewriter which displays a whole line of text for amendment before it is printed on the paper.

The other four are all manual portables. They are all in good working order with new(ish) ribbons.

I used to have a collection of pre-1914 typewriters but I gave them to a museum because they took up too much space. That's where the sewing machines and cameras went too.

Og

 

[Guest]

I have an old typewriter -

from undergraduate days.

Thank God by the time grad school came around computers were the thing. (I could not even imagine retyping a thesis or dissertation on a typewriter!!)

A funny side note? At the beginning of Moulin Rouge Ewan McGregor as the young writer is using a typewiter. My daughter (who was then 6 years old) wanted to know what on earth was that?

My kids are growing up in a different age. They will never not know computers and the internet!

 

[shereads]

I gave my undergraduate portable to my mom, who still uses it for typing letters to the phone company.

Don't throw it away, Dr. Mabeuse.

This, from a person whose idea of a productive afternoon is one spent getting rid of any object in my home that I haven't used within the last six months; I like to travel light and to be ready to break camp at a moment's notice. But among the things I regret getting rid of are my Macintosh Plus, which would have made a fabulous lamp or goldfish bowl.

The other thing I regret getting rid of - grrrrr, kicking self - a small shoebox full of non-official Disney figures that I found stored at my mom's, bought for me at a toy store in Germany when I was 5. There were dozens of them, all identical to the Disney characters but I assumed they were worthless because they didn't have the Disney mark. Sold them at a yard sale, the entire box for $5, when I was in a spring-cleaning frenzy. Later read an article about Disney collectibles and learned that "the most valuable are German knock-offs made during the early 1960s." Turns out that there are fewer of them around because people like me thought they were worthless. They're worth hundreds. Argh.

Why not sell it on e-bay? There's somebody somewhere who wants your typewriter, probably as a display shelf for their priceless collection of 1960's German Disney figurine knock-offs.

 

[sweetnpetite]

there are people who will buy them whether they work or not.

check the yellow pages. try typewriters, collectors, auction houses, flea markets, musuems ect.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I might sell my newer ones, but I really love that ancient Underwood.

I read somewhere that there were two mass-produced artifacts that epitomize the very pinnacle of the machine age: the typewriter and the sewing machine. Even more than the internal combustion engine, the sewing machine and the typewrioter were showcases of the mechanical engineer's art. I don’t know much about sewing machines, but I know that Underwood has some really ingenious features, all mechanical. My kids love it.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

Air conditioning is the only thing that really matters.

 

[Guest]

 

[Mhari]

I have a manual Underwood. It takes some serious arm-strength to make the keys go. And I still type too fast for it. (Whenever I do have to use it, I frequently have to stop and untangle the, um, thingies. Strikers? WTF are those things called??)

But I'd never get rid of it!

 

[A7inchPhildo]

I don't have an old typwriter, but I can still remeber getting whacked hard by my Grandmother. She was a school teacher and I loved to play with her typwriter. It was the coolest thing watching the keys strike the paper. Wasted countless hours writing nothing.

Whacked? Oh yea, what kid didn't hit all the keys at once to see what happens? I know now they get stuck one on top of the other.

 

[shereads]

I had to pass a typing-speed test to be allowed to take journalism classes. I practiced for weeks that summer in preparation - and for weeks afterwards, I "typed" my dreams.

I don't mean that I just dreamed about typing. I dreamed, with plots and characters and things, but instead of seeing the images I saw - and felt my fingers - typing the dreams on a dream-page. It was tiring.

Something similar happened when I became involved with Lit. I "read" my erotic dreams off of a dream-website that looked like this one. It was great.

 

[Guest]

 

[shereads]

There's a sound program that duplicates a typewriter when you use your computer keyboard. Right down to the satisfying "return" ping.

Mine was on a CD called Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time, still available for Windows users but no longer made for the Mac...I loved the typewriter sound. It gave the keyboard character.

Rhino, would you mind doing the sounds for me instead? You're not bad.

 

[Guest]

 

[A7inchPhildo]

kinda funny... i just recently bought a new cell phone and set the ringer to old style bell ring...cracks me up.

rhino-easily amused

That is funny, My cell is set to the bell sound as well. I kind of like the ring it sounds like a phone to me. Besides it is the only way I can know my phone is ringing amidst the thousands of yankee doodle fans and chirps everyone else has set.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I got my IBM Selectric at a time when the first word-processors were coming out, and I paid $50 for it at a flea market.

It was a great typewriter, except it's huge, and it's electric so that it sits there and hums at you impatiently when you're not typing. It has a kind of IBM personality: very smug and efficiency-oriented.

My Underwood has a totally different personality. He just sits there in his brash mechanical glory like some sort of cast-iron Grecian temple, seeming to smle. I get the feeling that he judges what I write, and not in an unkindly way, but he's wary of my own impatience. If I start getting carried away, his keys jam, as if he's saying "Whoa there, young fella! Let's just slow it down a little!"

My computer has no personality at all. Now that I'm plagued with these screen-freezing pop-ups so that at any time my keyboard might suddenly lock up in Caps mode, it's like I'm working with some flighty air-head with syphilis.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

I wonder if there would ever have been a home computer industry, if someone had been able to invent pop-up ads for typewriters.