Recent Typewriter Sightings - Catch and Release Edition

Summer travel, garage sale season and time to browse have coincided to present some interesting typewriter sightings. As my tastes become more refined, fewer machines make the cool typeface or rarity cut that would cause me to bring them home. Hence, another round of catch and release typewriters.

This was my favorite from the weekend. The machine is electric, needs a ribbon cartridge and relatively common, but the placement with black velvet is 100% win!

More from the same antique mall...

Note the changeable key on this SCM electric.

At least this Royal would not interested key-choppers. Those are replacement keys. The carriage is huge!

This QDL was nice and overpriced.

Going back in time a bit, here are a few more interesting machines. We'll start with the uber-cool Raspberry Pi powered IBM Selectric at the Kansas City Maker Faire.

And back to normal machines...

Most of the standard machines I run across are of the Underwood and Remington variety. I was overjoyed to find a Noiseless and an early IBM electric. What a tank! This was in one of those odd, outdoor flea market zones. Given the heat and humidity in our region, these are doubtless hunks of rust by now.

Witness the King of the Ginormous Carriages. Dang.

Nice Remington. It had pretty good action.

This Underwood species is not the best typer around. Nevertheless, I have an interesting variant to show off in a future blog entry.

Bow before the huge and powerful Royal Empress! The action felt good on this machine and the price was right. I had no place to put a beast like this.

 "Recent" is a relative term. With kids in middle and high school and two working parents, time has flown by. Some of the machines below are from April and May, but that seems just like yesterday.

This brother deserves two photos. Finding a German keyboard in middle-America is an odd experience.

Yet another Galaxie. It seems to me that the age of machines appearing in thrift stores and antique malls is creeping upward. That would make sense as households are liquidated and cleaned up.

Two Royals. The white QDL was an interesting sighting. It functioned perfectly. Alas, it had a standard typeface dating back to the earliest Royal portables.

"I am Futura of Borg. Prepare to be bored to death by my color scheme."

This poor Underwood was probably harvested for its keys.

Finding any Hermes in the wild is rare in my part of the world. This one worked well and I was sorely tempted to bring it home.

I've been impressed with the light action on the Underwood standards I've found in the wild. They aren't sexy, but they appear to be good machines.

I'll leave you with a really nice Remington portable located in one of the better monthly antique stores in the Kansas City West Bottoms.

I'm pretty far behind in my blogging. The good news is that I typed almost everyday during our family vacation. The night before Tesla's birthday, I hit the 50,000 page view mark. That is a blog topic of its own, but it will have to wait. I also have two newer arrivals to show. One is a rarity and the other is an oddity. But first, I have yet more shooting to do at upcoming County Fairs and demolition derbies. Ah, summer!

Thanks for viewing!

Abandoned Analog

In the last week I have witnessed two separate instances of analog technology abandonment.  I suspect the perpetrators were hoping that someone would adopt their unwanted analog.  One pile of video tapes was around the corner from a row of dumpsters.  The box of albums was on a street corner planter.

Maybe putting up a sign that said "Free!" or "Please Take!" might have helped.  As it was, all but the most dedicated scrounger would wonder whether he or she were part of a stupid human video.

There are four dumpsters on the other side of that fence.

Remember VHS tapes?  I saw a Betamax player at a thrift shop recently.  Technology marches on.

How cryptic.

I like Flip Wilson.  However, I did not trust objects left in a random box on a street corner.

New Typing Converts

Gingercat (aka:  Claire) had one of her super smart friends over today.  Cyborg 10051438 (self-assigned designation) took to the typewriters quickly.  She served as a guest on gingercat's first typecast entry for her new blog on the Hermes Media 3 (Cursive).  But at heart, Cyborg is a future engineer and gravitated towards the Olympia SM9 (Senatorial/Robot font) and knocked out two and half pages worth of a new short story before going home.

Choice Cyborg comment on the blog entry:  "I am here today to discuss the unfairity of the fact that these typewriters are being used daily.  They should be used hourly!  GRRRRR!"

That last part I will need to scan after gingercat has a chance to do her own post.  GRRRRR looks really interesting in the Hermes' elaborate cursive.

As soon as she got home, Cyborg 10051438 showed her typing to her mom and gushed about typewriters.  Count her as a convert to the typewriter cause!

Gingercat hard at work on her first typecast and pen blog entry.  She's good with a computer keyboard but tends to hunt and peck with the typewriters.  The Oliver 9 is her favorite with more of a speed hunt and peck.  As noted by other typecasters, cursive looks really bad with errors, so the typing tends to be more methodical.

Cyborg 10051438 jamming on the Olympia SM9.  In the background sits the Oliver, a Zeiss Ikon camera of a slightly later vintage and some new/old paper supplies.  My wife is starting her own blog aptly entitled "House Full of Nerds".