An Olivetti Lettera 22 with Scriptin' Style!

Greetings from the new arrival in the House Full of Nerds! Pistachio isn't just a an Olivetti 22; it has a variation of the curly script typeface that sometimes (rarely) appears on Olivetti and Smith-Corona typewriters. For Typospherians with typeface fetishes, this is one of those objects of desire. Pistachio is even one scarcer colors found on Olivetti machines in the wild.

Pistachio with a friend who has just been serviced. That Groma is one light and snappy machine! It isn't quite as hyper as an Olympia or Topedo, but it is really nice to type on. Boring typeface, though ;-)

After several years of searching and bidding in vain, I happened upon a Smith-Corona Silent Super and then this lovely machine within months of each other as Buy it Now items on ebay. Before I go any further, let's jump straight to the typeface samples. In order of appearance: Lettera 22, Silent Super, Olympia SM-9, and a Torpedo 18.

I was fortunate that Pistachio was in generally good condition and fully operable. The seller double boxed it as requested and Fed-Ex did its thing without maiming or destruction. I opened it up, lubed everything I could, washed and bleached the shell, put on a new generic ribbon on the original spools, and cleaned the type slugs with mineral spirits and a toothbrush. PB Blaster is a miracle lube, but curiously I find this Italian machine to be more responsive than the first year of production British Lettera 22. It still requires a light, fast stroke, but the strikes seem to be easier and more consistent. This is a good thing as I need to type more. So busy I have been.

Olivettis of feather, flock together!

Olivetti industrial design is so clean and seemingly uncomplicated. The details make a huge difference, however. Not having flattened rollers is kinda awesome. The rail and tab stop mechanisms are elegant works of art.

I love the view under the hood. The original ribbon spools are super cool. The outer shell took a bit of abuse sometime in the last 50+ years with the front, right screw tab broken off. Crazy glue seems to be holding it together.

Any chance of figuring out the year of manufacture in Italy?

And here it is with the kissing cousin from Glasgow.

For any of you typewriter nerds who enjoy a mystery (I'm thinking of Ted Munk, Ton, and Richard Polt), here is the Glasgow machine's serial number in all of its confounding glory. I have yet to find an image of another Lettera with an embossed paper table.

I'm sure there are more examples that I just can't remember at the moment. Tom Furrier at Cambridge Typewriter Works recently serviced a machine identical to my Smith-Corona. Natalie at natslaptaps has a beautiful coral color L22 with the exact same script.  If are having a hankering for a cursive typeface overdose, Notagain at Manual Entry has what you are looking for.

For anyone curious, all of these images were captured with my Fuji X-T1 and the native 35mm f1.4 lens. Lacking ambient light, these out of camera JPEG images pretty well nail white balance with a mix of halogen and fluorescent lighting on the work bench. My G+ stream is here.

As always, thanks for stopping by! I'm glad to be giving this blog a pulse again, but that is partly because I have been procrastinating on a Google+ photography challenge due at the end of the week. And silly me; I saw some really great toy images from people I follow and signed up for yet another challenge series. At least the hours and hours of darkness in winter are keeping me inside. There is that.

A note about Copyright: Yes, I am greedy. These are my copyrighted images and are not to be used without attribution and never in a commercial context without my express permission. Yes, this is the Interweb and anything can be copied. No, that does not make these the property of the world. Share the love and share the full post. The Interweb will be a better place for it. Be warned: I do have enforcers who will take matters into their own claws as necessary.

A member of the Brute Squad. You were warned ;-)

 

Where did the Summer go?

My kids go back to school on Wednesday and this blog is crying for attention.

What exactly does that sound like?

Yesterday, we were in a weed pulling frenzy next to the privacy fence. The neglected Golden Retriever next door gave up barking after I tossed a couple of sticks over for it to fetch. Then - here comes the pathetic part - it sidled up to the fence and looked through a crack with one sad eye and whimpered piteously while wagging its tail. The poor thing was just happy to get any attention at all. And we are not dog people.

The blog sounds exactly like that.

On the bright side, Google has still been getting my love with posts to G+ photo communities. It's fun, but I miss the long form and the Typosphere. You know - the long form I have not had time for because I have been on G+... and Twitter... and LEEDUser... and that pesky thing called work.

In the spirit of keeping this poor blog alive and breathing, I'm sharing a few snapshots from our July and August thus far. We traveled. I kept a daily journal on a fabulous Olivetti Lettera 22. I took a ton of photos from Fourth of July in Colorado to a County Fair in Kansas. We watched a ton of the reborn Doctor Who as we started to catch up with our daughter's awesomely geeky friends.

So, here we go with a whirlwind photo tour of the last six weeks, give or take. It's like an old-timie projector slide show, but not nearly as cool and analog.

So there you have it. We spent over a week in south central Colorado in the town of Crestone. We ate amazing food and got to visit the farm where it was grown while seeing their Yak herd. We hiked, and soaked in hot springs and miraculously bickered minimally considering we were living together constantly for over ten days. We saw amazing art at First Fridays and at the Nelson-Atkins galleries with a bonus appearance by a Devo cover band. I got to see a demolition derby and spend time street shooting on the carnival midway.

All in all, I'd say it was a pretty great six weeks!  As always, thanks for looking!

P.S. I have started a hashtag on Google+ by the name of #whatisthetyposphere  You know what to do.

A Curiously Awesome Early Olivetti Lettera 22

Greetings members of the Typosphere and denizens of the Cult of Olivetti! I'm pleased to introduce our newest traveling companion. It is a Lettera 22 of a slightly different stripe.

You like the ribbon? This is one of many festive colors offered by FJA Products on their ebay store. I bought a pack of seven colors and love them all! The bright pink is on a script Olympia SM-9. My wife suggested putting on the machine most likely to be used by the Tooth Fairy.

So much spiffier looking than the inset logo.

Ted Munk, proprietor of The Typewriter Database, has commented that Olivetti serial numbers remain a mystery. This machine is S621119. What year? Anyone? Anyone?

The typeslugs were beyond filthy! This is after three cycles with mineral spirits and a toothbrush.

The color of this machine is...interesting. It is classic Olivetti. The strange thing is that it looks different under different light sources. Getting the photo color balance right is tricky. This machine is close to the original color of my Lexikon 80, the difference being that it wasn't totally covered in nicotine and cleaning scratches. Ton: Not to worry. I'm not touching the color on this delightful rarity.

I've said it before and I will say it again: I am absolute sucker for embossed paper tables. They are a totally superfluous and would have added to the cost of a machine. That is precisely what makes them desirable design details. To an extent, the embossed table is an element of industrial design from a long gone era. Its like the logo embedded in the back an iPad. I am not an iDevice fanboy, but I do appreciate design.

I've contemplated getting a L22 for a year or so. This one popped up on ebay and I knew it was just what I wanted. There was even a typing sample that verified function and typeface awesomeness.


Here is the Lettera 22 with its office sized cousin, the Lexikon 80. Now that I have each model, I can see the design integration so often discussed by Ton at I dream lo-tech. The body styles resonate, but the similarities go deeper with a shrink ray being applied to carriage controls and the carriage bearing and margin stop system.

 

It is a happy coincidence that I happen to own machines made at almost the same time, in the same factory and with the same typeface. The Lettera 22 is a common machine having been made for decades. I'm glad I waited for just the right one come along. It will be a wonderful companion for our family summer vacation.

Experimental hashtags: I'm curious to see if these get picked up directly by Google+. Have any of you tried integrating Blogger with G+? Comment and search integration could be awesome, but I want to see how it is working for others before committing. For those of you already on Blogger, I recommend trying out G+. The hashtag functionality is helping make it less of a digital ghost town and the Communities are awesome. Having exposure increased through Google search is a plus. G+ is now number 2 in social traffic behind Facebook.

#typewriter #Olivetti #typecast #vintagetechnlogy #Lettera22

Me, on Google+  https://plus.google.com/u/0/114811329730901691376/posts/p/pub Add me to a Circle! I place fellow Typospherians in my Acquaintance category in return.

Obligatory and Probably Ignored Copyright Notice: The words and photographs on Vintage Technology Obsessions are Copyright DwayneF. They may not be used for commercial purposes without explicit, written permission of the copyright holder. Please spread the blogging and typewriter love by commenting, sharing, linking and tracking back to this blog or my G+ presence. In the vague-an-unspecified-threat department, I have a small army of giant robots and monsters at my command and I am not afraid to use them. Just saying.

My Enforcers