Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Radio Mill with Finger Flight Champion Style

Greetings from an Underwood that should have been introduced a year ago. Busy is no excuse for zombie blogs, but I'll claim it anyway.


The color scheme on this machine is understated with bits of flair. The green and gray combination have an army look to them, but the burgundy highlights are pretty daring for something military. Either way, it has no service markings.


The keyboard is classic mill, but some of the type slugs look like refugees from other machines. There is even a curly 'C' that one would find on an Underwood script typewriter.


And for posterity, here is a proper type sample.


 I'm not having any luck finding the serial number - any tips on where to look?

As an aside, I've noticed that Blogger is meshing better with my cache of backed up images. Perhaps I will get around to blogging more often!

Thanks for stopping by!

Please stand by for the usual copyright notice. As in, everything on this blog is copyright Dwayne Fuhlhage. Please share the social love by linking and sharing freely, but refrain from stealing digital content. We have an enforcer and are not afraid to use him. Much.






10 comments:

  1. ooh, that's an attractive one. Gonna put it in the TWDB? :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Damn, you are persistent and you have a point. So much typewriter awesome should be shared. It would be if I only had a time turner!

      Delete
  2. Interesting! I have that same typeface on a 1963 Smith Corona Secretarial, which you can see at: . There is one small difference in that the spur on the "8" is slightly longer on mine.

    Let's compare the keycodes that we have (on the slugs between the upper and lower case characters): there is a cross dividing the space into 4 quadrants, UR, LR, LL, and UL. Now, most of the slugs on mine are marked in LL="4" and some others are:
    C and G are UR="F", LR="1", and UL="1";
    8 is UL="4";
    5 is LR="E" and LL="4".

    And there are a few other variants. Comparing these may tell us whether Underwoood and Smith Corona bought their slugs from the same foundry.

    == Michael Höhne

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cool. I'd love to see your machine but the link didn't come through in the comments...
      Are you on Blogger, or do you have a website?

      Delete
  3. Replies
    1. I do love this color scheme. Most of the examples I've seen in search are icky, gray crinkle finish that looks nowhere near as nice as Olympia crinkle.

      Delete
  4. On mine, the serial # is under the carriage on the right side, but on the silver frame just below the carriage track. Yes, interesting combination of type styles, and colors - grey and burgundy were popular in the 40's I have a few "mil" machines, and I think they weren't all military. Telegraph, and telegram offices used them, especially in smaller towns that didn't warrant the big expensive equipment.
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  5. I seem to remember our mills had NO QUESTION MARK. What was on that key???

    ReplyDelete

Dang. My blog was hit by Spam comments. Comment moderation has been turned on for some time yet to be determined.