oz.Typewriter

Making Paper Typewriters

2012-02-26T01:13:00.002+11:00

It's a year now since I presented at the Sticky Institute's I Am Typewriter Festival in Melbourne.

The zine makers down there showed me lots of things you can do that are typewriter-related. And going through my bits and pieces today, I found one of them: Making typewriters out of paper -

The Olympia above is a series of images of the typewriter, printed in black and white, cut out in sections and pasted to an inner cardboard frame. It is just over four inches square and an inch high. The Blue Bird below is a little simpler to try, if you can print out on an A4 sheet. It has no frame, but perhaps it should be printed on stiffer paper:

I bow, however, to the real expert in this area, a man called Bryan, at Paper Foldables:

http://www.paperfoldables.com/

Bryan made this paper typewriter for Canal Publishing, promoting a novel by Christopher Herz, "The Last Block in Harlem". Bryan says, "Herz writes the first draft of his books on this cool old typewriter of his, which also makes an appearance on the cover of the book. He plans to promote the book grassroots style and make a bunch of these little typewriters and leave them all over NYC! If you are in town, keep your eyes peeled and maybe you'll be lucky enough to find one!"

The layout above is a PDF at
http://www.canalpublishing.com/images/foldables/LBIH_Foldable.pdf

And this one is way out of my league: Jennifer Collier, a British artist, recycles paper into 3-D objects by sewing sheets of it like fabric.

Tough Typospherian Tattoo

2012-02-25T22:15:00.000+11:00

I won this typewriter tattoo in a competition run by Richard Polt on his Writing Ball blog. Entrants had to come up with something a Tough Typospherian might say. I threw some barbs at the writer of this blog and his unethical editing behaviour with typecasts.
Duly the tattoo arrived from Cincinnati, with a charming letter written on a gold-trimmed Olympia SM4 called Marie Antoinette, on the back of the instruction sheet - you know, how to hold the tattooing needle straight and grip a leather strap between your teeth - all that sort of thing.
Yes - I'm a Tough Typospherian: I tattooed myself!

Richard is now daring me to wear the tattoo and my typewriter key necktie "for a specially eccentric effect!" Now that would be a tough look!
Meanwhile, Richard is feeling like a plutocrat for typing with Marie Antoinette and I'm feeling like a bikie gang member for wearing a tattoo.
Anyway, thank you for the tat, Richard ...

2012 Manual Portable Typewriter?

2012-02-25T20:15:00.002+11:00

I have long been under the impression that manual portable typewriters are still being made in China, that they are still available for purchase, and that of those available, the Olympia Traveller C was far superior to all other models.
I now find I may well be wrong on all three counts.

Based on my searches today, the Olympia Traveller C is no longer in stock anywhere. That also seems to apply to the Olivetti MS 25 Premier Plus. In the case of the Olivetti, that is no bad thing, since it didn’t deserve to be called “premier” in any regard whatsoever and is a definite minus, not a plus, to the reputation of manual portable typewriters.

The unavailability of both the Olympia and Olivetti might indicate production has stopped. But I have no idea whether this applies to all Chinese-made manual portable typewriters: I’d be very interested in find out.

I have owned an Olympia Traveller C for some time, but as I have, until now, only used it for exhibit purposes – taking the line of 1878 to the present day – it has hardly ever been out of the carton it arrived in, let alone its case. Until a few hours ago, the polystyrene packing was still on either side of the carriage.

However, I finally decided today to give it a test. And, oh, was I disappointed. The typing action seemed fine, although a few keys were very stiff – I guess through lack of use all this time. The big shock, however, was to find the design of the platen-turning mechanism is that awful lift and grab device which I date back to the Antares Annabella and Underwood 18. It’s a shocker, and sure enough, it doesn’t turn the platen on the Olympia Traveller C.

Given this is a brand new machine, one can imagine my feelings. I can’t help thinking of the collector in Chicago who bought an Underwood in 1938 and never took it out of the case or used it. Seventy years later it was in my possession and worked like a charm.
I must admit, however, the Olympia Traveller C is still vastly superior to the Olivetti MS 25 Premier Plus, wonky carriage lever or otherwise.

The Olympia Traveller C seems to have been first made in 1995 and was certainly still readily available for sale from various outlets, including Amazon, up until about four or five years ago. Amazon records one buyer feedback of four out of five stars.

Looking at the history of Olympia, and its use of facilities in the former Yugoslavia to make Traveller DeLuxe portable typewriters, I am tempted to believe the design of the “space age” Traveller C is Slovenian in origin. The closest design relation I can find is a typewriter put together by Sergio Gobbo and Dragica Samsa for Mehano in 1994. This took its lead from two typewriters designed by Vid Bratasevec for the same company in the old Yugoslavia in 1988 – one of which (below) became the Barbie typewriter. The overarching Chinese company which facilitates the distribution of these Traveller Cs also deals with Mehano.

From memory, the Olympia Traveller C and the Olivetti MS 25 both cost me around $US67 plus shipping – but I have seen prices on the Olympia of up to $150 and the Olivetti at around $105. I bought both on eBay at about the same time.

The cartons looked almost identical, which made me think they came to me via the same route: that is, made in China, shipped to Mexico, on shipped to the US, then sold to me.

The Olivetti packaging indicated the parent company for this product was the Royal Consumer Information Products Inc of Somerset, New Jersey. The handbook also indicated it was a Royal product. The Olympia packaging gives no similar hints.
Given what I have discovered today about these typewriters, I am going to have to consider them in the past tense.

My researches indicate the manufacture of the Olympia Traveller C was the responsibility of the Elite Industrial Group in Hong Kong, which was established in 1978. The actual production, however, was done in Shenzhen, immediately north of Hong Kong, on the Chinese mainland.

This group has at least 10 subsidiary enterprises engaged in, among others things, product development and the manufacture of electronics, optical instruments, precise machines, business machines and high technology. It has dealings with, among others, Motorola, Southwestern Bell, IBM, Siemens, Alcatel, Philips and AT&T. The president of the group is its founder, Liu Yongling (below).

One of the Elite Group’s subsidiaries is Olympia Asia. Elite says that in November 1987 it bought the molding and tooling and development rights for Olympia typewriters from Daimler AG. Olympia Asia uses the Olympic Werke logo with which all typewriters lovers are so familiar, yet so too does an existing German-based company.

There are also Olympia companies in Mexico and the Philippines. Elite’s dealings with Olympia De Mexico SA De CV (Sociedad Anónima de Capital Variable) of La Paz were handled through the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, established in 1966 as a statutory organisation creating business opportunities for Hong Kong companies.

Elite took control of Olympia Werke AG’s Olympia Office Sales Company Ltd, the brand name, global sales network and production facilities in Mexico City in July 1994.

The Chinese-made manual portable typewriters were then shipped on from the port of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico to Houston, Texas, presumably for further distribution. Shipments of manual portable typewriters from Veracruz appear to be dated to as recently as this month. Shipments also include a manual typewriter called Olympia Models 300 and 330. Olympia Asia also advertises a Splendid MD and a Compact DM, as well as Carina semi-portables.

Long before the Olympia typewriter brand went down this Asian-Mexican path, AEG had spent 55 million marks in 1962 to acquire additional shares in Olympia Werke to take over the entire share capital. In 1969 it adapted the Alpina typewriter factory in Kaufbeuren and built in Roffhausen three new manufacturing facilities. It also had plants in Belfast, Mexico City, Santiago (Chile) and Toronto. But soon enough the proliferation of small computers spelled the end of Olympia Werke AG. The parent company, AEG, was taken over by Daimler AG, which in October 1991 decided to close the works.

Parts of AEG Olympia AG were converted into smaller public companies, and this included the Hong Kong deal.

The rights to use the brand name Olympia in Germany were retained in 1995 by Heinz Prygoda (above), who runs Olympia Business Systems Vertriebs GmbH in Hattingen.

Olympia Philippines Inc (above) is one organisation which imported these Chinese-made Olympias – it advertises the Traveller C as well the Carina 3 semi-portable (including with a wide carriage) and the SG3. But whether these are still available for sale is difficult to tell.

Olympia Philippines was formerly Olympia Business Machines Co Philippines Inc, started in 1966 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Olympia Werke AG and acquired by a group of Filipino investors in 1981. A major online distributor is NBLM Enterprise, a Manila company operated by Napoleon C. Miranda.

Will Davis at the Portable Typewriter Reference Site says the Olympia Traveller C “is certainly an interesting machine. Its styling is very modernistic, and truly distinctive, with curved depressions in the sides and an overall ‘swoopy’ look. Aside from this, it's a well-made machine whose heritage, design-wise [mechanically], dates back to the mid-1960s and Silver-Seiko machine: carriage-shift, rapid spacebar, touch regulator, three-colour ribbon selector, 44 keys, fixed 10-space tabulator.”

Australia's Biggest Typewriter Seller: From Zercho's to Chartres and Stott's

2012-02-25T12:45:00.003+11:00

The names Chartres and Remington are so closely associated with typewriters in Australia that people here selling old Remington typewriters often refer to them as Chartres Remingtons.
They are Remingtons, but the Chartres Business Services decal on the front on them (and this includes the Rem-Blick below from the MuseumVictoria collection) might give the impression Chartres had something to do with making them. Chartres merely imported and sold them around the country.

Chartres Business Services was by far the biggest seller of typewriters in Australia in the first half of the 20th century. And the typewriters that the company sold were almost exclusively Remingtons. These include Remingtons assembled in Australia and labelled “Australian built”. At that time, while still operating as Chartres Business Services, the company was legally known as Remington Rand Chartres.
The ties between the two were so close that Remington gave Chartres one its original 1876 Remington Model 1 (Sholes and Glidden) machines. Towards the end of its days operating as Chartres Business Services, in 1940, Chartres donated this typewriter to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

Chartres also sold Remington typewriter ribbons under its own name.

Two examples from ETCetera, No 42, March 1998

Thus the name Chartres still has a presence, at least among Australian typewriter and typewriter ephemera collectors.
But its presence is also still felt in other areas, of which the typewriter collectors may not be aware.

For instance, Chartres continues to operate, in a sense, through the worldwide franking machine company Pitney Bowes.
The Australian subsidiary of Pitney Bowes, with six branches across the country, is proud to state that its history “can be traced to 1891, when Remington typewriters were distributed by our corporate predecessor, Chartres Ltd."
The fact is, Remington and Chartres did not link up until 1909, when Chartres took over Zercho's Business Colleges in Melbourne and other parts of Australia. Before that, Remington's Australian agency was Stott and Hoare. Nonetheless, Pitney Bowes' claim can be said to be true: Stott (which became Stott and Underwood in 1910) did finish up owning Chartres, in 1968. But more of that later.
On its website, Pitney Bowes says, "[Chartres] in turn became Remington Ltd, Remington Pitney Bowes and finally, Pitney Bowes Australia Pty Ltd.
“The first Pitney Bowes meters entered the Australian market in 1930, when the company was represented … by the legendary Remington Company.
“This association lasted for many years before Pitney Bowes established its presence in Australia under its own name in 1987."

Arthur Pitney (above), of Chicago, formed the Pitney Postal Machine Company in 1902 and in 1920 joined forces with English-born Walter Harold Bowes (below), owner of the Universal Stamping Machine Company, to establish the Pitney Bowes Postage Meter Company. The combined operation allowed the US Government to collect $4.4 million on postage in its first two years. It has since evolved into the global leader in mailing equipment and describes itself as a “leading provider for software, hardware and services that integrate physical and digital communications channels”. Its 2010 revenue was $5.4 billion.

Interestingly, the world headquarters of Pitney Bowes is in Stamford, Connecticut, home of the Blickensderfer typewriter. Bowes moved his operations to Stamford in 1917, the year George Canfield Blickensderfer died and his company began to go into rapid decline.
Until now, very little has been known about the origins of Chartres Business Services. But its sudden emergence in the early part of the 20th century as one of Australia’s leading typewriter suppliers can now be explained.

Zercho's, Melbourne

Melbourne

Adelaide

Sydney

We still don’t know anything about members of the Chartres family, but we do know their office equipment supply company started in 1909, when it gained control of the very well-established Zercho's Business Colleges.
Frederick William Zercho was born on August 16, 1867, at Barkers Creek, Victoria, the son of a Saxon migrant, Henry Zercho, a stonemason.
At 14 Frederick began an apprenticeship at Thompson's engineering works, Castlemaine; he later qualified as a licensed shorthand writer, winning distinction at the Melbourne law courts examination. In 1895 he became manager of Stott and Hoare's Business College in Melbourne, where he taught shorthand, typing, book-keeping and English.
Stott and Hoare were in 1910 to meet the challenge of the emergence of Chartres by joining forces with Underwood, becoming Stott and Underwood and the major 20th century competitor with Chartres in the sale of typewriters around Australia.

In 1896 Frederick Zercho joined the United Typewriter Company as head teacher at its Central Business College, which topped the Melbourne law courts' shorthand examination in 1896-1902.
In 1906 Zercho resigned from the college and, with his former assistant Andrew MacDougall as co-proprietor, set up Zercho's Business College, first in Flinders Street and from 1911 at 144 Collins Street. It became the largest business college in Australia.
MacDougall sold out in 1909 to the Chartres family, who took up a majority interest in the college. MacDougall went on to establish his own major office supply company (not to be confused with Sands & McDougall, another national office equipment supply company, now part of Corporate Express). Andrew MacDougall's company also sold typewriters and marketed typewriter ribbons.

But it did not prove to be in quite the same league as Chartres or Stott.
After 1909, Zercho retained shares and the position of headmaster, while becoming a director of Chartres Pty Ltd.
With Remington funding behind it, and in fierce competition with Underwood, Chartres grew and expanded rapidly. In order to maintain sales and overcome import duties, Remington established a factory in Sydney in 1930, where typewriters were assembled.
The outbreak of war in 1939 stopped the importation of typewriter parts and new typewriters, and the Chartres typewriter business naturally went downhill.
However, it continued on as an office equipment supplier, with links to Remington as well as other typewriter makers, into the early 1950s. During this period, the emphasis was on refurbishing typewriters, as the resumption of the importation of new typewriters into Australia was slow after the war. The priorities were more essential machinery, and Australians had been warned at the outbreak of war to keep their existing typewriters in good working order, as it would be some years before new ones arrived here.

A Chartres Brothers business college, with Zercho as director, lasted longer than the typewriter business, and well after Zercho died at Kew in Melbourne on April 15, 1953. With a touch of supreme irony, the Chartres-Stott battle finally ended in 1968, when Stott took over Chartres.

The Stott college continues to operate to this day, on Elizabeth Street, near the Flinders Street Station in Melbourne. Through it, in a way, both the Chartres and Zercho businesses live on.

Students at the Zercho's Business College in Launceston, Tasmania. Note the typewriter poster on the back wall.

Sholes and Glidden

Pratt typewriter

Above is a series of glass slides. There were used to give students a background on the typewriter at Zercho's Business Colleges, Collins Street, Melbourne in about 1906.

A colourful rendition of Princes Bridge, Melbourne. Rising into the sky is a white streamer inscribed with Zercho's Business College. In keeping with the business theme there is a short inscription in Pitman's shorthand, at the lower right hand of the card, which translates as "Where I am being educated for business".
The reverse describes an invitation as follows: Social Evening at Austral Salon. Students' Presentation to Mr Zercho. First Birthday of ZERCHO'S BUSINESS COLLEGE. 20th August, 1907."

Some of my Favourite Typewriter Things

2012-02-24T23:26:00.001+11:00

Small gold Underwood,

World's Fair, New York, 1940

Royal 50th Anniversary tie pin

Imperial 25 Years Service large lapel badge

SCM staff clambake badge

(I also have the emblemed apron!)

The Crocodile Dundee Typewriter

2012-02-24T19:51:00.000+11:00

Smith Premier only ever made standard-size typewriters, right?

Yes, that’s right.
Standards only?
Umm, yes, I think that’s right.
Never a portable?
Umm … OK, so you’re going to surprise me now …
I surprised myself when I walked into a Canberra antique shop some years back.

I was still pretty fresh in the typewriter-collecting game, but I still felt sure I was on to something very special. And I was.
A Smith Premier portable in a most striking green paint pattern. OK, so the drawband was unattached, but that shouldn’t be a problem, I figured.

More importantly, the price was right.
Next to it was an Olivetti Lettera 22 with a more substantial price tag and the carriage lever turned upside down.
“You know,” I said to the shop owner. “You might just jag a sale at that price on the Olivetti, but only if you grab a screwdriver and turn that lever the right way around.”
“Oh, really?” the owner. I knew in a flash he knew better. Or thought he did. So I paid what he was asking on the Smith Premier portable and skedaddled.

The first thing I did when I got it home was photograph it and send off an image to Richard Polt.
The reply came straight back: “The Crocodile Dundee portable,” pronounced Professor Polt.

And the “Crocodile Dundee” portable it has been ever since. It even appeared under that name as the page two pic of the quarter in ETCetera.

The Croc Dundee has been on display for most of its life with me. But having read a reference on a US website to Mr Dundee – don’t believe all Australians are like that, it rightly warned – I decided to finally take the Smith Premier portable down off the shelf and fix it.

Five minutes later I had one very snappy crocodile, its jaws opened in the typing position, ready to strike and take big bites out of the waiting page. And it did.

I love this typewriter, and even more so now than ever. First, it was a rare find. Second, it was a bargain. Third, it looks so very different (even if it is just a common old Remington portable).

Fourth, it was christened by none other than Richard Polt. And last, it now writes so fantastically well, as sharp and snappy a portable as I have ever used.
Go Croc Dundee!

PS: The serial number of NP87270 indicates it was made in January 1928 – by Remington, of course.

PPS: A few years later, the antique shop where I found Croc Dundee closed down. Before it did so, the owner invited me to go back there one last time. I went, and I noticed the Olivetti was still there, same price. And the lever was still upside down.
PPS: I used the original ribbon for the typecast. Just sprayed some lube on it.

Typewriter lovers linked across the oceans in Virtual Type-In

2012-02-24T09:31:00.000+11:00

A small piece of typewriter-lovers’ history was made this morning when Richard Polt in Cincinnati organised a 40-minute “Hang Out Type-In” on Google+ to mark International Typewriter Appreciation Month.
Richard hosted the event and Adwoa Bagalini in Geneva, Switzerland, Peter Baker in Tacoma, Washington, and myself in Canberra, Australia, were able to join in.

Richard described it as a “virtual type-in”, a multi-party video conference that was “a strange and enjoyable sort of event”.
Indeed it was. For me it was wonderful to be able to see and talk to my friends for the first time. And look at their typewriters ...
Richard commented that we may well look back on today and laugh about how primitive it was, but still it was fun.
And it was an historic occasion!
I look forward to doing it again some day ...
This is some of what I rambled on about as I typed on a Barr portable during the "hang out".

Sun Arise: The Great Burridge Typewriter

2012-02-24T00:24:00.001+11:00

Sun arise, she bring in the morning.

Sun arise, bring in the morning, fluttering her skirts all around.

Sun arise, she come with the dawning.

Sun arise, come with the dawning, spreading all the light all around.

Sun arise, on the kangaroo paw.

Sun arise, on the kangaroo paw, glistening the dew all around.

Sun arise, filling all the hollows,

Sun arise, filling all the hollows, lighting up the hills all around.

Sun arise, come with the dawning,

Sun arise, she come every day.

Sun arise, bring in the morning,

Sun arise, every, every, every, every, day.

She drive away the darkness, every day,

Drive away the darkness,

Bringing back the warmth to the ground.

Just a bit of Australian "culture" there

If I thought having an image numbered “007” for a photograph of the “Goldfinger” typewriter was spooky enough, this was worse: I had just, yet again, researched Lee Spear Burridge, for a post on his Sun typewriter, when I picked up the latest copy of Time magazine. And there, on the inside back (where I always start reading my journals), was an interview with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in which Kareem began by talking about his latest book, What Color is My World?, which is about inventors.

“I wanted to pick a subject that would really surprise people. Most people in the world, including black Americans, don’t think of black Americans as inventors of anything.”
Happily, Kareem didn’t go on to mention Lee Spear Burridge among African-American typewriter inventors. And let me be quite clear about this from the start: Burridge wasn’t an African-American. But we’ll get back to Burridge and his Sun.

A follower of this blog, in Seattle, asked me a few questions last week, one of which took me by complete surprise. Among those about the weather here and Royal Model 0s and Ps and displaying typewriters, came, “Also, what is the average reaction [in Australia] to the song Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport ?” This is not a question I get asked very often, about a song I think about even less often.

I have to say it’s a song which I didn’t mind back then, 53 years ago, and don’t really mind much now, on the very rare occasion on which I think about it. Most Australians didn’t mind it, either. It was a No 1 hit in this country in 1959. What they really minded was Pat Boone’s version of it, which was worse than his version of Speedy Gonzales, or his white man’s take on Little Richard’s Tutti Fruitti. Not that I minded Pat Boone, either, his ballads were beautiful.

But, having said all that, Australia was a deeply racist country when Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport was first released by Rolf Harris. Harris’s attitude towards Aboriginals changed after Horrie Dargie's cover version of Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport “pointedly deleted” a racist verse that had been included in Harris’s original. Thereafter, Harris took an explicitly anti-racist view. In 2006, he apologised for the offensive lines, but for 40 years he had consistently championed indigenous music and offered respect to Aboriginal culture.

The B-side of the George Martin recording of Sun Arise (1962) was Someone's Pinched Me Winkles, Harris's swipe at Charlie Drake's racist My Boomerang Won't Come Back. (Dargie also answered Drake: his quintet recorded My Boomerang Did Come Back. It wasn't a hit.)
What’s all this got to do with typewriters? I’m getting there. My Seattle friend’s question got me thinking about Rolf Harris and his weird music (remember Stairway to Heaven?). Without a doubt my favourite Harris song is the aforementioned Sun Arise, and that turned my attention to Burridge’s Sun typewriter arising.

Sun Arise was Harris' second charting hit, coming two years after Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport. Unlike many of his early songs, Sun Arise was not a comedy record, but came within the genre of world music with its didgeridoo-inspired music. The song was written with fellow Western Australian Harry Butler, a naturalist later known for his television show In the Wild. George Martin, of Beatles fame, recorded it using eight double basses to mimic the didgeridoo, which Harris could not play at the time.

By the way, Martin at first said Sun Arise was "boring" because it was repetitious. He obviously hadn't heard She Loves You at that stage! At least Sun Arise has more than six words.
The song was covered by Alice Cooper and Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin performed it with Harris on TV in 1994 (as, no doubt, revenge for Harris recording Stairway to Heaven).
Harris said, “Butler and I wrote Sun Arise together, trying to capture the magic of Aboriginal music by reproducing the repetition of lyrics and music that make it so mesmerising.” As I said, I like it, and hope to introduce it to you (the Alice Cooper version is worth seeing on YouTube, too).

And so, finally, to the Sun typewriter and Burridge and the “touchy subject” (as an overseas typewriter-collecting friend called it) of Burridge’s ethnicity. It’s a mystery Paul Robert of the Virtual Typewriter Museum in Amsterdam and myself have been trying to unravel for some time now.

In May last year I tackled the question in my newspaper column - I was simply curious as to how the suggestion Burridge was African-American had come about and especially, if it was a fact, how that fact had been ignored in everything written about Burridge during his lifetime.

The impression I have is that if Burridge was African-American, the fact of it would have been highlighted in stories about his typewriter inventing and his many other pursuits in the wider world.

I got an immediate response from readers to my column. It seems to have been a case of mistaken identity, according to researchers who wrote to me. Lee Spear Burridge was listed on the 1880 and 1900 US census as white. His co-inventor Newman Marchman was listed in the 1880 census as white. Meanwhile, a Lee Burrage of almost exactly the same age as Lee Burridge was listed in the 1880 census as living in Mississippi, and he was an African-American.

Why this has all come back to me is that while digging for Burridge’s original patent for the Sun typewriter, I came across a card game patented by a Kathleen O. Johnson Prillerman of Philadelphia in 2002.

This game, which concentrates heavily on African-American inventors, states Burridge and Marchman were African-Americans. I’m now wondering if this is how the whole misconception first emerged. I’m also wondering whether Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has fallen for it in his new book.

Before anyone starts accusing me of being racist in raising this matter, they ought to look into my background a bit. This is, as I said, simply a case of curiosity. In truth, I think it would have been fantastic if Burridge had been a African-American. But my first allegiance is, as always, to the truth. And he wasn't. Yet the misconception has gained an awful lot of currency in the past 10 years.

And now, finally, let's concentrate solely on the Sun. It was a typewriter which relied for its inking on a small ink pod, which fed an ink pad, against which the typeslug rubbed. On mine, as you will see, it isn't quite working properly, although I have restored the elements. In these images from Paul Robert's website, you can see the idea:

It was called the No 2 model because of Burridge's 1888 Sun linear index typewriter.
The patents on the back of the Sun make it clear that Burridge started out in 1898 with the idea of a semi-circular keyboard. The next year he had worked out the typing action. The inking system came in 1900, followed by the body design taking shape in 1900, and the Sun was completed in 1902:

Is this the World's Most Picturesque Setting for a Typewriter?

2012-02-23T11:35:00.000+11:00

Late last year I posted on the typewriter-toting Australian Arctic explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins. As a result of my outline of the many achievements of this remarkable man, I have been made aware of another wonderful Australian: Joice NanKivell Loch.
A reader pointed out that “Wilkins once shared a sled – literally - with two other unsung Australians of exceptional courage. The intrepid missionaries that Wilkins met on his way to Russia included Sydney and Joice Loch, whose humanitarian work in Europe earned gold medals from other countries and an MBE from Britain.”
Naturally, this inspired me to research the Lochs, and the first thing that popped up was a marvellous image of the Loch’s old Remington portable typewriter, in the most idyllic setting imaginable.

The absolutely gorgeous surrounds are a table in the Lochs' former home in the Byzantine Ouranoupolis Tower, looking at over Siggiticos Bay from the top of the Mount Athos peninsula in Greece. The tower is now a museum dedicated to the Lochs.

(On the paper plate of the Remington Compact portable typewriter is written that the machine was assembled "by British labour", at a Remington factory in London.)
Joice Loch has been described as “The great heroine Australia forgot … She is Australia's answer to the Scarlet Pimpernel, or Mother Teresa with a dash of Indiana Jones.
“Joice NanKivell Loch is Australia's most decorated woman - pipping war heroine Nancy Wake [the 'White Mouse' of World War II fame] by two medals. Yet the journalist and author turned humanitarian and rug designer remains virtually unknown. At her funeral in Greece in 1982, the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Oxford named her ‘one of the most significant women of the 20th century’.” She was indeed the most decorated woman of any nationality in the 20th century.

Joice Mary NanKivell was born into considerable wealth at the height of a cyclone, at the family-owned Farnham sugar cane plantation in Ingham in Far North Queensland on January 24, 1887. A monument unveiled on Palm Terrace, Botanic Gardens, in Ingham in late 2002 describes her as a “local heroine” who “devoted her life to humanitarian causes and was decorated by the Governments of Poland, Greece, Serbia, Romania and Great Britain”.

Her heroics and humanitarianism were the legacy of her childhood. The family’s great wealth was accumulated through the sweat of Kanaka (South Sea Island) slave labour. When that was abolished in 1890, the NanKivells fell into penury. They themselves had to experience what it was like to live poor, at Boolara in Gippsland in eastern Victoria.

Growing up on an isolated farm, Joice sent away for a book on touch typing. Once she was satisfied her typing speed was adequate, she successfully applied for an advertised part-time position as secretary to Dr Alexander Leeper, Professor of Classics at Trinity College, Melbourne University. Dr Leeper encouraged Joice's writing. She joined the Melbourne Literary Club. The Melbourne Evening Herald took her first war poem, and she appeared thereafter regularly in a short column, Under the Clock. Then she started book reviewing for the Sun-Herald.

The original book with Loch's World War I medals

One of the books she reviewed was The Straits Impregnable (later republished as To Hell and Back), an horrific account of the Anzac campaign in Gallipoli in 1915, written under the pseudonym of “Sydney De Loghe”. “De Loighe” was, in fact, Sydney Loch, a London-born, Scottish-raised young man who had emigrated to Australia at 17, in 1905, and worked as a jackaroo.

Loch survived Gallipoli but decided the truth of that unnecessary bloodshed – the evil work of Winston Churchill - needed to be exposed. However, the Australian military censor, fearing the realities of Gallipoli would dissuade other young Australian young men from enlisting to lay down their lives on the Western Front, banned the book.

Joice, who had lost a beloved brother Geoff in that “Great War”, meet Sydney after reviewing his book and in 1919 they married. They left soon after for London. In 1921 the Lochs decided to travel to Ireland, at the height of the Troubles (Civil War) there, and to write about what really was happening. As this closing passage from Ireland in Travail would indicate, the Lochs soon fell foul of the Irish Republican Army and with their lives threatened, they had to quickly decamp to the Continent.

Joice and Sydney went to Poland as aid workers for the Quaker Relief Movement with the aim of writing a book about the damage that Lenin's troops had inflicted on Poland, and were awarded medals by the President of Poland for their humanitarian work. In 1922 they went to Greece as aid workers following the burning of Smyrna. The Lochs worked in a Quaker-run refugee camp on the outskirts of Thessaloniki for two years before being given a peppercorn rent on a Byzantine tower by the sea in the refugee village of Ouranoupolis.

To help the villagers, Joice purchased looms so the women could work as rug weavers; she designed Byzantine rugs, using flowers, leaves and onion skins as dye for the wool. One of the rugs is now on display in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. Joice also acted as a medical orderly and held regular clinics for the villagers. For their work in Greece, the couple were awarded medals by the King of the Hellenes.

Joice Loch working with the dyed wool.

During World War II, Joice was awarded another two medals by the Governments of Romania and Poland for saving 2000 civilian refugees, mostly women, from Poland and 50 orphaned Jewish children from the Nazis. Joice had led a daring 18-month escape known as Operation Pied Piper from Romania, where she was running a refugee centre for Poles who had escaped from the Nazis and the Russian invasion. To enter British-controlled Palestine and be eligible for food rations, all the refugees had to be registered as soldiers. Hence, the first Polish soldier to land on Palestinian soil was a four-year-old girl! Subsequently Joice and Sydney ran a refugee camp for Poles at Haifa.

The Lochs with chidren at a Quaker school in Greece

In 1945 they returned to Greece and their tower home and re-established the Pirgos rug industry in Ouranoupolis.

Sydney died on February 6, 1955. Joice outlived him by 27 years, and died at Ouranoupolis on October 8 1982, aged 95. For those Australians who do know about Joice, Ouranoupolis has become a place of pilgrimage, where they lay gum leaves on her grave.

Let's Buy the Funky Typewriter

2012-02-22T16:44:00.000+11:00

DEFINITION: funk·y (fngk): a. Having a moldy or musty smell. b. Having a strong, offensive, unwashed odor.

The Funky Typewriter, ooo, ooo, ooo

Buy, buy, buy the Funky Typewriter (The Funky Typewriter)

We are here to show you how (Ooo, ooo, ooo)

Ooo, ooo, ooo, the Funky Typewriter (The Funky Typewriter)

It's just atomic

So go on and bid on it

The Funky Typewriter now

- With apologies to The Goodies and The Funky Gibbon

Funky, retro, atomic is now officially in. It’s firmly ensconced, apparently – so we'd better get used to it. And image is everything, too. As are Eames and Kartell, who apparently have something to do with typewriters – but I know not what.

And where, pray tell, is there any core information about the typewriter itself? Little things like name, rank and serial number? Forget those matters when listing a typewriter for sale on eBay. Oh, of course, silly me … yes, that’s right, it’s funky, retro, atomic, ain’t it? And associated with people called Eames and Kartell, somehow.
But let’s get back to funky, retro, atomic a little later.

First, the astonishing typewriter sale of the week on Australian eBay, especially since it wasn't listed as "funky, retro or atomic": a first-time buyer paid $400 for a “rare” Hermes Baby.

This item was listed a week or so ago at a buy-it-now price of $420 and a starting price of $200. So if someone had bid at $200 back then, the buy-it-now offer would have been nullified and the typewriter might have sold for $200 – still at least about four or five times what it’s actually worth.

But no, the “rare” Baby went unsold, was then relisted at a buy-it-now price $20 lower, and sold! Breathtaking stuff.

A “rare” Baby typewriter is one thing, but a funky, retro, atomic typewriter is another – and these types of typewriter are consistently fetching top dollar in Australia right now. You know, typewriter salespeople on eBay are now reminding me of many real estate agents – the ones who describe an apartment as having great views when it's blocked on three sides by chemical factories.

As far I can tell, the same seller who flogged the "rare" Hermes for $400 failed to shift a very ordinary Japanese-made Adler on which there had been a starting price of $115 and a buy-it-now price of a hugely inflated $300.

Another amazing sale during the week was a very common Olivetti Studio 45 fetching $125 after 25 bids. This was a classic case proving the value of a large number of high-quality photos and a typewriter over which an oily rag had at least been rubbed to clear off the dust.

The description was also pretty good: “This typewriter is fantastic!!! It looks new, works perfectly and is the most amazing high gloss aqua colour. Currently has black ink (!) which is strong and but can also use red and black ink on the one roll, just flick the switch to change colour! It is an absolute delight to type on - the keys depress easily and feel springy ... the font is pretty cool too and look at the keys - so different, it's ever so nice. Use it everyday or admire it as a retro display from a bygone era … you won’t be disappointed!”
I bought the exact same machine three weeks ago for $26, $99 less.

Encouraged by this success, the seller of the Studio 45 has now listed a extremely common Brother 215 as an “funky, atomic, vintage retro industrial all-metal typewriter” which “works perfectly”. Staggeringly, there have been 32 bids and the price is up to $80 - and there’s still four days to go! A new buyer and a second-time buyer are going head-to-head. I hope they know what they're doing!

Again, the images are great, and the description sooooo enticing: “The Brother 215 typewriter is such a fantastic neutral (!) colour (which means it has no colour at all!) Every key works perfectly and it looks FuNkY on display [seller’s capital “N”, not mine!] ... just love how the casing is all metal - very industrial! Complete with the 2-in-1 black and red ribbon and changing colour is just simply flicking the switch! This typewriter is strong in colour (it has none!) and works perfectly. Love the shape of the keys - they are the classic square boxed in rich black. Such a FuNkY typewriter, use it everyday or admire it as a retro display from a bygone era … you won’t be disappointed!”

Oh, I think I would be … funky, atomic, retro or otherwise, it’s still just a very common or garden Brother, for goodness sake! They're a dime a dozen in this country.

Catching on to the “vintage, funky” thing, a seller has listed an equally common Brother 210 for $75 - but this time one WITH colour. “Authentic and original” (what else would it be?) “Fantastic. Funky. Retro -1960s (actually, this model was released for the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988!). In brilliant strong colour with contrasting black hard case (hardly any visable [sic] signs of wear or damage).” I’d say the seller is a hard case! (I should explain for US readers, a "hard case" in Australian lingo is a character).
What’s so interesting about this machine is that it apparently represents an advance on the 1874 Sholes and Glidden. It “Types perfectly - in capitals and small letters … types in black, red and stencil.” Will wonders ever cease with the advance of modern typewriters?

If the seller of a much more rare Olivetti Lettera 41 was watching that last Studio 45 auction, they will be encouraged to think they can do better than a starting price of $30. But no bidders yet, despite excellent photos.

At the other end of the scale, image-wise, is an Imperial Good Companion Model T. Now, is this the shiny black or the flat, crinkle black model? Who knows? It’s a prime example of how not to sell a typewriter for $99. The seller has now made two attempts for a quick sale (24-hour listings) but has not included any images. We have to take his or her word for it: “Sold as is. Pick up only – Melbourne. The item may have some signs of cosmetic wear, but is fully operational and functions as intended. This item may be a floor model or store return that has been used.” I'd like to believe the seller, but I'd like to see it, too.

A Litton Royal 203 “from the Kartell-era” (whatever that means) sold for $121 (even though the seller admitted, “Although I can't type with it, everything appears to be in good working order.”) These things are now just about as consistently priced as Valentines – and just as common!

I bought a Hanimex Consul portable for $10 a week or so ago and another is now listed at that same price. But this one is a “Super retro and very vintage typewriter, perfect for the retro home as a decorative piece, on a sideboard or even for the children to play with. Crafters ...they really are kinda special. Awesome for scrap booking or card making.”

The day after I posted on Bulgarian Maritsa typewriters, someone listed a “collectable vintage retro” Pacific 30 (Maritsa 30). The ask is a bit ambitious: $55 starting price, $120 buy-in-now for some nasty Bulgarian plastic.

The good news is that a nice brown Royal sold for $192 and Derrick Brown’s latest offering, a beautifully-presented (as always) black Royal, fetched $411.

As well, a lovely centenary-year Corona 3 sold for a healthy $332 after 22 bids and a starting price of $99.

However, a nice Halda failed to sell at $150.
I suppose it was also good news that the Remington rust-bucket in Hervey Bay sold for $41 after attracting five bids, which pushed the price up by a whole $7.

I guess someone must have worked out it just needed a wipe-over. It’s probably also good news that some buyers can see through the flashy images and find in the grime some really decent old typewriters. Now there’s a funky thought!

DEFINITION: Futile, unnecessary, nonsensical and kinda yawn-provoking.

IBM Selectric Typewriter with Blick Keyboard!

2012-02-22T12:18:00.003+11:00

My very clever friend Peter Brill, of Perth, Western Australia, has finally succeeded in converting an IBM Selectric III electric typewriter from a QWERTY to a Blickensderfer DHIATENSOR keyboard.
Peter has been working off-and-on with this project for about 15 months now.

I should explain that the images of the Selectric-DHIATENSOR conversion work in progress were taken by Peter Brill himself, in his own Perth workshop. Those images of the Blick 5 sitting atop the Selectric are taken with machines from among my own collection. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The Blick keyboard Selectric will, hopefully, be part of my typewriter exhibition at the Canberra Museum and Gallery from July until September, and if we can work it out, it will be available for public "testing".

Peter is a trained typewriter technician who worked with IBM toward the end of his typewriter career. In later life, he began collecting old manual portable typewriters and developed a fascination with the Blickensderfer. So much so, he came to wonder whether George Canfield Blickensderfer had been right all along, and that the DHIATENSOR keyboard was, as Blickensderfer had argued back in the late 1880s, a superior configuration to the then "Universal" QWERTY. These pages, explaining the preference for the DHIATENSOR configuration, are from the Blick handbook:

Thus Peter set out with an idea to test this theory through converting the Selectric to DHIATENSOR.

Peter emailed me in early December 2010 saying, "My latest project is to convert an IBM Selectric III to a DHIATENSOR keyboard. As you can see by the pic attached that it is quite a savage modification. I have never stripped a machine down this much all at once and with the intent of getting it going again. The spring bias was broken, which is a common fault with the Selectric III, a cheaper plastic one was used. I have never changed one on the Selectric I and only a few on the Selectric II but hundreds on the III. Therefore the print carrier was removed for ease and also the main cycle clutch was removed whilst it was in this state.
"The state of the machine was near perfect, one of the last models which had the ribbon carriers incorporated as part of the ribbon cartridge. But with most of these machines the oil and grease has turned into glue, completely gumming up the machine, thus a submerged washout is in store for her.

"I think people would like to try to use a DHIATENSOR keyboard but I don't want them hammering away on one of my prize Blickensderfers. Also, the Blicks are different to type on as they are slow and people are mostly used to computer keyboards which are not at all like typing on a real typewriter."
In May last year, Peter let Richard Polt know about the conversion. "I had this great (daft?) idea of converting an IBM Selectric III into a DHIATENSOR machine so people can try out the 'Scientific' keyboard using a machine that they would be familiar with rather that trying a real Blickensderfer."

I think Peter's Selectric-Blick machine will create a lot of fun for people attending my exhibition and being able to further "test" his theory.

In the meantime, Peter's achievement has made me wonder about the late Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak when they built the first Apple computers in 1976.

My understanding is that Wozniak, who had the idea of combining a typewriter with a TV set, first used an IBM Selectric keyboard when he began building the prototype of the original Apple.

I may be wrong about that, and can find no reference to it.
However, it's an absolutely delicious thought that Wozniak, back then, might have had the same idea as Peter Brill did 34 years later.

Imagine, we'd all be using DHIATENSOR keyboards on computers today!

In 1976, Wozniak supplied for sale computer "kits" for $666.66. The buyer received a blank printed circuit board, a kit of parts and 16 pages of instructions. To make a computer, the buyer needed to add a power supply, keyboard and display.

Below, technicians computer test Selectrics as they roll off the IBM assembly line:

Corona Typewriter Centenary

2012-02-22T00:36:00.001+11:00

"And it's been our friend for 100 years!"

AND CORONA CARRIES 20TH CENTURY MEN

(AND WOMEN*) INTO THE 21ST CENTURY

Anytime for the next century

Happy 100th, Corona!

*Thanks, Georg

Great TV features on Typewriters

2012-02-21T22:19:00.001+11:00

I guess most typewriter lovers in the US will have seen this CBS TV news feature on typewriters some time ago, but I have just been reminded of it by Robert Berkman of the Facebook Antique Typewriter Collectors group.
It is absolutely brilliant and for anyone who hasn’t yet seen it, I thoroughly recommend a look. Star of the show is Bill Wahl, who offers such good, quick and friendly advice to members of that Facebook group.
As Robert says, “Great video on CBS News on resurgence of interest in typewriters - of particular interest is the interest in younger people!”
There is also a very nice video on Bill here:

The Littlest Typewriters: Bennett's Bantamweights

2012-02-21T21:35:00.001+11:00

Yesterday Rowan Henderson, the charming curator in charge of my typewriter exhibition at the Canberra Museum and Gallery from July to September, contacted me about an “Eloquent Page” which had appeared on the National Library of Australia’s website.
The article in question was titled “Typing tidbits – big, small and mobile”. It might have been eloquently put together by Julie Whiting, but it wasn’t too eloquent with the facts.

Julie wrote, “Keyboards are so ubiquitous now that we take them for granted and sometimes forget what a newsworthy and amazing device they could be back in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Can you imagine the astonishment of the crowds at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition in 1915 when confronted by the sight of an Underwood 14-ton typewriter that was 21 feet wide and 15 feet high?

“Then to the other extreme – don’t think that miniature keyboards on your smart phone are a recent invention. As reported on 17 April, 1923, Dr H.E. Wetherill (above) demonstrated his typewriter that weighed just one ounce, fitted neatly into his waistcoat pocket and on which he was able to type 17 words per minute. Not bad!”
“Not bad” indeed. Except it’s not true. First, it didn’t have a miniature keyboard. Second, it wasn’t a typewriter.

What Henry Emerson Wetherill, of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, actually patented on February 2, 1926, was a stamping device, not a typewriter. And I doubt if even that was new - hadn't Robert Ingersoll invented something like this (below) about 40 years earlier?

Wetherill had applied for the patent on August 30, 1924, but had obviously been spruiking it long before then, because the article to which Julie referred appeared on the front page of the Northern Standard in Darwin, the Northern Territory, on April 17, 1923.

I suspect the headline is supposed to be "Tiny Typewriter", not "Tin Typewriter"

That small news item reads, “A curiosity in the shape of a typewriter weighing one ounce, produced from the waistcoat pocket, was shown to a scientific audience in Boston, USA, by Dr H.E.Wetherell (sic).
“So expert in the manipulation of this machine, his own invention, has the doctor become, that he can write 17 words a minute.
“The typewriter has a wheel equipped with rubber letters, and, when operated, is held-between the fingers and upon the paper.”

Julie Whiting’s “Eloquent Page” story goes on with a piece about a 1926 Chevrolet with a typewriter desk (above). She wrote:
“Think that glove boxes designed with an iPad in mind, and working while on the move are new ideas? Not at all. Back in 1926, Mr Ivan H. Parker showed off his specially designed new car that boasted everything the businessman on the move might want. It included special arrangements for sleeping accommodation for the driver, plus a removable table fitted to the dashboard that could be used as a typing desk, and small compartments with sliding panels behind the dash to hold any necessary equipment {or] supplies. Utility and appearance combined."
This was probably the way it worked:

Julie’s page can be seen at http://blogs.nla.gov.au/the-eloquent-page/2012/02/20/typing-tidbits-big-small-and-mobile/

The best contrast I can think to make with the giant 1915 Underwood 5 is a full keyboard typewriter made a few years earlier: the Bennett. This is generally accepted as having the smallest keyboard on any typewriter ever made.

The Bennett started life as the Junior in 1907 and, with the addition of a gleaming paperplate and two ribbon spools, became the Bennett in 1910. The Junior used inking rollers, which can be seen below in front of the typewheel.

These marvellous typewriters were invented by Charles Almon Bennett, who was born in Bennington, Vermont, in April 1850. The son of a machinist, Bennett worked as a postmaster, a stationery merchant and, late in life, as a storekeeper for the US Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County, New Jersey. He lived nearby in Dover.

All the while he was a constant inventor, coming up with a vast array of things from spoons to typewriters, desk covers to car awning ventilators and a internal combustion engine.

The Bennett typewriter deserved far more success than it enjoyed. My understanding is that the little filaments which lifted the typewheel for capitals and figures let the inventor done. Otherwise, it worked fine:

You can see from his original patent, applied for on October 25, 1899, and granted on March 26, 1901, that Bennett had envisaged his little machine almost exactly the way it was to be produced some six years later.

However, in April 1905, conscious of the problem with aligning the lower-case letters, capitals and figures, Bennett patented an improved typewheel alignment.

1. Circles the small, thin metal device which lifts the typewheel into its positions for capitals and figures. 2. Circles the holes on the top rim of the typewheel into which the lifting device slots.

A comparison of typewheels used by, from left, the Bennett, the IBM Selectric (golfball) and the Blickensderfer.

Bennett's improvement seems not to have worked, for the frustrations buyers apparently felt over the alignment problem with the little machines must have put others off investing in them.

Still, the Junior and the Bennett are remarkable design and engineering achievements, and these little beauties are highly treasured by typewriter collectors around the world.

The Junior and the Bennett shown above are my working but display-only models. Below are two more Bennetts, both chromed, which I use for demonstration purposes. The Bennett is very easy to take completely apart and put back together again, and invariably audiences are hugely impressed by the mechanical design under the top plate, which I have highlighted.

The Bennett also came in black, and this model was sold by Scott McNeill of the Vintage Typewriter Shoppe for $395.

Life With The Olivettis: Inside a Typewriter Empire

2012-02-20T23:11:00.000+11:00

Here is the drafting room at the Olivetti typewriter plant at Ivrea in Italy in August 1947.

In 1955, apprentice typewriter mechanics sit in a classroom at the Ivrea factory.

Also in 1955, Una Cochrone, of Airdrie, assembles a typewriter in the British Olivetti plant on Glasgow's Queenslie Industrial Estate.

The factory was described as “highly modernised and makes machines primarily for export to Australia, New Zealand and Africa”.

In 1958, Olivetti president Adriano Olivetti inspects the Ivrea factory.

Adriano Olivetti was kept busy outside the Ivrea factory, as he was campaigning for his newly-formed comunità (“Community”) political party. The party’s platform reflected Adriano’s “enlightened approach to employment and concern for his workers”.

After Adriano's sudden death, Roberto Olivetti represented the company at the 1960 Milan Trade Fair.
Below, the massive typewriter factory in Ivrea:

Above, back in 1938, here is a typewriter display in an Italian Olivetti showroom.

Bulgarian Typewriters

2012-02-20T15:29:00.001+11:00

I have been threatening for some time to write about Bulgarian typewriters, and am finally spurred into action by notagain’s request for information from long ago (the request, not the information!). Just about all I can tell you, notagain, is that your Omega 1300F is a пишеща машина Хеброс 1300 Ф (Хеброс means Hebros, an ancient Greek name for a neighbouring river of the Maritsa; the symbol is the "F"). The white trim on your model also comes in lime green and bright orange.

Seriously, though, it has been a difficult job to find anything other than what has already been published, and that’s not much. As Will Davis said on his Portable Typewriter Reference Site, “reading of Bulgarian is impossible on most Western computers”.

About the only thing I can say with absolute certainty is that the best known Bulgarian typewriter brand name, Maritsa, comes from the deep river which runs through Plovdiv, the second largest city in Bulgaria, where the typewriters were made.

Although Bulgaria would appear to have been one of the last nations on earth – succeeded, perhaps,only by China - to start a typewriter industry, the history of that industry is obscure, to say the least.

This is not unusual. While the history of industries in most countries from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries is more often than not well documented, industry in the second half of the 20th century has yet to be a subject of much interest to historians.

But what clouds Bulgarian typewriter history is, of course, the Iron Curtain, behind which Bulgaria developed from a largely agricultural-based economy to one based on intense industry – all the while away from the prying eyes of the Western world.

It seems clear the Bulgarian typewriter industry started with the manufacture of a toned-down variation of the German Princess portable, introduced in 1948 by Keller & Knappich GmbH of Augsburg. This company, started in 1898 by Johann Josef Keller and Jakob Knappich as an acetylene factory, still operates as KUKA, a leading producer of industrial robots.

KUKA was still making Princess typewriters at least into the early part of the 1960s, as far as I can tell. Although the European Typewriter Project suggests the first Bulgarian typewriter, the Maritsa 11, appeared in the mid to late 1950s, it seems more likely the Bulgarian typewriter industry started later than that. Perhaps much later. Bulgarian typewriters and/or Maritsas do not appear on the Typewriter Serial Number Database, in the 1973 Typewriter Age Guide, nor in either edition, 1974 or 1990, of Will Beeching’s Century of the Typewriter. They did not start to appear in Australia until the 1970s.

I am guessing KUKA sold the rights to the Princess design to the Bulgarians some time later in the 1960s. It is also possible, I suppose, that the Princess and Maritsa were produced concurrently, but since Augsburg was in West Germany, I find that highly unlikely.

What we do know is that the Bulgarian Communist Government ploughed an enormous amount of money into building a typewriter factory in Plovdiv in 1971. This, on the evidence we have, would seem most likely to be the starting point.

Bulgaria’s intensive industrial development picked up pace with major industrial construction from 1966 to 1975, during the Fifth and Sixth stages of a series of Five-Year Plans which started in 1949.

At the 10th Communist Party Congress in 1971, the Government decided to invest 21.7 million lev (about $US10.3 in today’s money) into the national economy for capital investments. Among these was the Plovdiv typewriter factory.

After the Communist uprising of 1944, Bulgaria became a Communist People’s Republic in 1946 and was a satellite member of the Warsaw Pact until 1989. It installed a Soviet-style planned economy with some market-oriented policies emerging on an experimental level under Todor Zhivkov. During this time, of course, its economy was protected by the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON).
Changes swept in by the fall of Communism led to a sharp drop in industrial and agricultural production, and ultimately an economic collapse in 1997. The Plovdiv Typewriters Works was among those businesses hit hard.

By that time the Typewriters Works in Plodiv (above) had produced a number of portable typewriters, starting with the Maritsa 11 and 21 (a Princess 300 clone, complete with ribbon colour selector and touch control switches) and going through to what appear to be more independent designs, for the Maritsa 12, 22, 30 and 300 (although the last two are believed to be originally a Japanese design, from Silver-Seiko) and the Hebros 1300F.

From Adwoa's Collection

This last machine, in Bulgarian the пишеща машина Хеброс 1300 Ф, is also marketed as the Crown 68 and the Omega 1300F.

From notagain's collection

Omega, as with Lemair, Pacific and Waverley in Australia, was a brand name used by an import-distribution company - in Omega's case, one called General Consolidated.
The Pacific Typewriter Company of Melbourne had by the mid-1970s flooded the Australian market with cheap, re-labelled East European machines, mostly from Maritsa but also from Consul of Czechoslovakia.
Lemair, Pacific, Waverley and Omega were all names also applied to the Maritsa 30. This same design was additionally used for the Royal Safari IV.

The earlier, smaller all-metal Maritsas were marketed outside Bulgaria under a range of names, including Bundy and Pacific.

The brand name is often seen as “Mapuua”, which is the Anglicised version of the Bulgarian word for Maritsa, Марица.

The end of the Eastern Bloc impacted heavily on Bulgaria’s typewriter industry, in which the confusion arising from the sudden introduction of free-market capitalism reflected the nation’s broader problems.

The typewriter plant survived at least to the end of 2002, when the Plovdiv Supreme Court continued to try to settle a dispute over control of the works between at least two companies, Albena Invest Holding and Typewriters Privat. The latter company emerged from among former managers and staff of Typewriter AD. These companies were presumably trying to keep the factory operating - although Albena was accused of trying to strip assets.

It was stated in the 2002 court hearing that the Plovdiv company was "the only company in Europe for mechanical typewriters ... On the Continent we were selling 50,000 units, and the US about 35,000. Now liberated, our niche is occupied by Chinese producers. Before being removed from the factory, [we were] negotiating with the American company Cortex for overseas exports of 150,000 units annually."

These seem quite extraordinary claims for portable manual typewriters in 2002, just 10 years ago. I wonder how true they are.
Albena Invest Holding claimed a 52 per cent controlling interest in venture capital at the Plovdiv Typewriter Works when trouble started over board membership in 1999. Albena had gained control under mass privatisation in 1996, through consolidation and transfer of shares. A 36.4 stake was still held by the state, represented by the Ministry of Industry. The assets of the enterprise at that point were still more than 19.5 million lev.
Beyond that, I know nothing …

Have Typewriters, Need Reporters

2012-02-19T19:42:00.000+11:00

What would happen if you started a newspaper and nobodyturned up?

Not much, apparently. In early November,1953, The Recorder, vaunted at the time as Britain’s first new daily newspaperin 40 years, opened its doors for business on London’s notorious Fleet Street (I should know, I once worked there!).

But, since I can now find no record of The Recorder, I mustassume it closed its doors again fairly soon afterwards, without making much of an imprint on the world.

Houston, we have a problem: A wire machine, and news copy, but where’s thethingamajig that goes under here?

Hold on a minute, mate! You can’t have a newspaper officeuntil we finish banging up these here walls!

At the time The Recorder fleetingly existed on Fleet Street,the horrid News of the World was already one of the biggest selling newspapersin the world and one of the longest surviving.

Happily, Rupert Murdoch closed it in the middle of lastyear, over its despicable phone hacking habits. Now, it seems, there’s a decentchance The Sun might go down, too.

But in 1953, the News of the World was thriving. And little wonder: it used Bar-Locktypewriters.

Here is News Of The World crime reporter Norman Rae talkingto Mary Monginie – then the paper's only female staff reporter .

And here is Rae working at the paper's offices in London.

I was fortunate to acquire of these Bar-Locks last year:

The 99c Norwood: A Rare Czech Typewriter!

2012-02-19T13:46:00.002+11:00

This, I am very pleased to say, is the Czech-made Norwood typewriter I mentioned in a previous post as having won on Australian eBay for 99 cents. It is one of those portables with a detachable carriage, which Will Davis describes as rare.

I was embarrassed to win it at that price and told the seller so, offering to pay him an extra $20 or more for his efforts. However, he refused to accept any more money for it, saying he once had a small collection of typewriters but that space and domestic pressures had forced him to sell it off. The Norwood had to go, regardless of price.

Nonetheless, the seller, in listing the machine, was under the impression it had no “return string”. He was honest enough to say, “[It] needs the return string or wire replaced before you can use it."
Having not seen the typewriter, I was in no position to know better. The drawband was attached and working fine, as was the mainspring. The problem was that the carriage, thankfully detachable, had worked itself loose on the escapement rack.
Even before I discovered this, the problem was easily fixed. I applied the old typewriter mechanic's trick of holding down the spacebar or back spacer and pushing gently on the carriage to correct the placement on the rack.
“If you fix [this] it will be right for a very long time,” the seller had said. I think he was right on that count, at least.

The Norwood is a relabelled Consul 224, made by the Zbrojovka Narodni Ppodnik (national armoury company) of Brno in Czechoslovakia. It was designed by Wolfgang Prade, from the Bohemian town of Nisou, in 1968.
I have long since been aware of Consuls relabelled Norwood, having somehow acquired one many years ago. It was a ZB series machine, based on the Consul Silent. But I could never get it to work properly and in the end I think I gave it away to Terry Cooksley in Sydney.

These Presidents are the same machine as my previous Norwood, a variation of a "ZB" series Consul Silent

Meanwhile, Richard Amery came across a Japanese-made Norwood small portable, which Will Davis featured on his Portable Typewriter Reference Site and said was a Silver-Seiko, but which looks for all the world to me like a Nakajima ALL design. Either way, it is clear Zbrojovka Brno had given or sold the rights to the brand name Norwood to Japan.

On the subject of typewriter brand names ending in "wood" - had it not been for my previous experience with Norwoods, I might have been suspicious of this listing. A few weeks ago a reader of my blog contacted me about a Sherwood typewriter which was listed on craigslist in the US. I replied, having done a little bit of research in this matter a few years ago, that the only Sherwood typewriters I had ever seen listed were an Underwood on New Zealand Trade Me, when the “Unde” had worn off the paper plate and the seller simply took a punt on the name, and when an Underwood was listed in the US and the seller simply decided to call it a Sherwood, although the real name was very clear on the paper plate. Eventually this lady sent me an image, and the Sherwood was indeed labelled under that name: it was an Engadine portable made by IMC in Italy. So there is a Sherwood out there!

Anyway, back to the Norwood …

Zbrojovka Brno stopped making typewriters in the 1970s, but an offshoot continued on with sporting rifles, shotguns and airguns for another 30 years or more. Brno, by the way, is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia.

During the First World War, Austria needed to expand its arms-making capacity. A subsidiary of the Vienna arsenal was established in Brno in 1916. As the Austro-Hungarian empire began to fall apart just before the end of the war, Československá Zbrojovka Brno was founded as a Czecho-Slovak Republic state-owned firearms factory in 1918. From the repairs of railway cars and military rifles, the company gradually switched over to the production of the components of telegraph and telephone equipment.

In 1932, the company started the production of standard and portable typewriters under a Remington licence. During its boom, Zbrojovka Brno had more than 70 facilities and operations.
After the Second World War, it fell under Kremlin control, and its own typewriter designs, labelled Zeta in 1949, turned into Consuls in 1954.
As Eastern Bloc operations were merged by the Soviets, Consul also made some of its portable typewriters under East German brand names, such as Optima. In need of foreign currency, Zbrojovka Brno exported Consuls to Western nations, including Australia, where, like the Bulgarian Maritsas, its typewriters were relabelled Pacifics, Majestics, Waverleys, Hanimexes and many other names.

However, as Czechoslovakia was part of the Warsaw Pact, the US imposed stiff import duties. To dodge these, Jack Tramiel had Consuls shipped to Canada, either as parts or already fully assembled, and relabelled them as Commodores. As well as Commodore and Norwood, these larger Consuls appeared in some countries as Admirals and Presidents.
Here is Richard Polt's Commodore-assembled Cavalier Speedwriter, which, as is very obvious, is very closely related to the Consul 224. From memory, I believe Richard's machine may also have a detachable carriage:

Here is the Consul 224 as a Commodore:

But by 2003 the rifle-making Czech company was declared bankrupt. It continued to trade under administration until Zbrojovka Brno finally closed in 2006. The Z banner trademark was sold in 2007.

This is how it appears on the back of my Norwood

My researches into my own 99-cent machine led me, as always, back to Will Davis’s Portable Typewriter Reference Site and a page he has there on a Consul 224 from the Tim Champlin collection (see below).

On Tim's Consul 224, one can see the lever under the carriage which is pulled to release the carriage

Will describes the machine as rare. On my Norwood, the lever to remove the carriage is either missing and did not come with this model. Nonetheless, by moving the clasps under the carriage, the same operation is very easy.

Will says, “This modification required a very serious redesign of the back end of the whole machine in order to accommodate this feature … the general idea was the provision of carriages of various widths; users could purchase one machine, and a variety of carriages to meet special needs. This was often aimed at small offices which did not wish to purchase standard machines.”

500th Post: Golden Typewriter Anniversary

2012-02-18T16:03:00.000+11:00

By a spooky but sheer coincidence, this image number is 007. I swear it's true!

How better to mark my 500th post than with my gold-plated Royal Quiet DeLuxe portable typewriter? I call it the “Goldfinger” typewriter.

As many will know, just such a gold-plated Royal portable was the typewriter of choice of English author Ian Fleming, who had a fascination with things gold.

Fleming’s typewriter was used by him at his 14-acre Goldeneye estate at Oracabessa, St Mary, in north Jamaica, to create James Bond, Secret Agent 007, starting with the novel Casino Royale (1953). Fleming wrote Goldfinger on the Royal in 1959, and included a gold typewriter in that book.

Fleming paid $US174 for his gold-plated Royal, which he received in the West Indies on January 15, 1952. It was a special issue to mark Royal’s 50th anniversary, its Golden Jubilee. It is an adaption of the 1945 re-design by the great Henry Dreyfuss.

While Fleming took Bond’s name from an American ornithologist, an expert on Caribbean birds, Bond was in large part based on one of Fleming’s old friends and secret service colleagues, a real-life secret agent in Sir Peter Henry Berry Otway Smithers (born Moor Allerton, Yorkshire, England, December 9,1913; died Vico Morcote, Ticino, Switzerland, June 8, 2006, aged 92).

In 1943 Smithers was a British naval attaché in Mexico, tracking German U-Boat movements. He married, after a three-week courtship, Dojean Lane-Sayman, of St Louis, a divorced American heiress of part-Mexican ancestry who owned a gold typewriter. This is the machine which made a cameo appearance in Goldfinger.

My gold-plated Royal typewriter was originally owned by Dr Carl Richard Wedler, of St Clair Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio, and was kept at his home at 4504 Superior Avenue, East Side Cleveland.

Dr Wedler was a leading member of the Germania Turverein Vorwaerts, a gymnastics movement affiliated to the American Turners, and had a fondness for Antonio Y Cleopatra cigars, made in Cayey, Puerto Rico, of Cuban-seed tobacco.

His grandson is Richard Wedler, the noted woodworker (he makes custom cabinets and furniture), inventor (founder of Micro Fence) and musician, who now lives in Southern California.

Before Richard turned to woodworking as a career, he toured the US opening concerts for such well known acts as Judy Collins (Amazing Grace), the legendary Josh White (House of the Rising Sun arranger) and Tom Rush (No Regrets)

On May 5, 1995, Irish actor Pierce Brosnan, who played Bond, paid £56,250 after fierce bidding at an auction at Christie’s South Kensington rooms in London, for Fleming’s gold—plated Royal.

Until Cormac McCarthy’s Olivetti Lettera 32 fetched more than $200,000 in December 2009, Fleming’s Royal was the most expensive typewriter ever sold.
At another action at Christie’s of London, on November 1, 2006, a number of Fleming’s letters were sold, including one to his typist, Margaret Anderson, jokingly describing the gold-plated typewriter as a "beastly machine".

Tintin: Typewriter Collector

2012-02-18T13:59:00.000+11:00

The Oscars are still a week away and I have found yet another nominated movie which features typewriters: Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin.

Indeed, Spielberg has turned Tintin into a typewriter collector!

Apparently Spielberg has a friend who collects typewriters, and that gave him the idea.

I wonder where lead conceptual artist Chris Guise got the idea from for the display of old typewriters on shelves in Tintin's lounge? Herman Price's Chestnut Ridge Typewriter Museum, maybe? The late Tilman Elster's collection? It looks vaguely familiar. As does this pale blue Royal portable:

I have been trying to get to see the movie for weeks now, without success so far.
But I can see the extent to which Spielberg planned to feature typewriters in the movie from a book called The Art of the Adventures of Tintin. It is published by HarperCollins (New Zealand).

This shows the original artwork from which various scenes were built. Tintin, a young journalist, and his dog Snowy are surrounded by typewriters in Tintin's (Brussels?) apartment.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is a "performance capture 3D film" (whatever that means) based on a series of comic books created by Belgian artist Hergé (Georges Remi).

Spielberg directs the movie, which is produced by New Zealander Peter Jackson. It the first animated film for Spielberg and also for Oscar-nominated composer John Williams.
Jackson's Weta Digital company provided the computer animation. The film won Best Animated Feature Film at the Golden Globe Awards and is nominated for an Academy Award for Williams' Best Original Score.

Bloggers have commented: "I loved that detail in the movie. I can see Tintin being fascinated with typewriters, since they can be quite beautiful!" ... "I wonder if he actually uses all of them, though?"
The book The Art of the Adventures of Tintin was put together by art director Guise, who is the Weta Workshop lead conceptual designer. Along with Guise's own set designs are those by Frank Victoria, Robert Baldwin and Rebekah Holguin.

Weta, by the way, comes from the Maori word 'wētā', and it's a rather large and nasty New Zealand insect which has been known to find its way into cosy typewriters left in sheds.
As Michael Clemens points out in a comment here, Spielberg's friend is probably Tom Hanks, who also diplays his typewriters in this way:

The Royalite and The Nippo: Typewriter Cousins?

2012-02-18T11:41:00.000+11:00

When I received my Condor from Richard Polt, I was alerted to the possibility it was made by Nippo in Japan, as was Richard's Alpina Baby. Sure enough, when I compared the mechanical design with my Nippo Atlas, it came up a match.

I must confess I found it a little harder to believe this same design went all the way back to the Dutch-made Royalite, although it was on Will Davis's say-so, and one knows better than to query Will on the mechanics of a typewriter.

Eventually I got around the getting out a Royalite and comparing it with the Nippo P-200. Yet again, a match in the mechanical design.

Royalite

Condor

Nippo P-200

What really surprised me in this exercise, however, was to discover that I had allowed myself to accept all the bad publicity about the P-200 - I had contributed to it often enough myself.

When typing with both the Royalite and the P-200, the Nippo machine came out miles ahead.

Many typospherians have commented that when comparing models, it is necessary to factor in that they vary from machine to machine.

However, I have to say I have seldom found a very good Royalite. This one seems to be suffering from much the same sort of problems as my Laird Fortune Covey-designed Royalite, the one Richard Amery spent many hours fixing, starting with a sticking spacebar. That machine types quite well now, and this Halberg-designed Royalite may need some of his magic touch. For the time being, it's tinny and loud and pretty awful to type with.

By comparison, the P-200 is a pleasure to use. Maybe it's just my luck to find a good Nippo and a bad Royal. Who knows? What I do know is that I won't be taking the Royalite on any assignments in the foreseeable future. It would wake the dead.
But in 1963, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Maine Republican, had no choice than to be photographed typing on her Royalite, as Nippos hadn't been made back then.

Frank Sullivan Rose and the Standard Folding Typewriter

2012-02-18T00:14:00.002+11:00

This futuristic Canon Typestar ad, with its boast about re-defining "portable" for typewriters, coupled with Richard Polt's post about the pocket typewriter, got me thinking about the Standard Folding Typewriter.

We should be thinking about the Standard Folding, anyway, given this year marks the centenary of the launch of the Corona 3, which emerged out of the Standard Folding.

The Standard Folding was invented by Frank Sullivan Rose, of Newark. He applied for the patent 109 years ago last week, and it was issued on March 8, 1904, 13 months later.

It was Rose who first defined "portable" in typewriters.

His aluminium machine weighed just 6lb, and its folding carriage made it far more portable than any other typewriter to that time. The Blickensderfer 5 of 1893 weighed about the same, but was carried in a heavy box.

Until this post, very little has been known about Frank S. Rose's life. It was thought he was born in about 1850.

I can now reveal that the “S” in his name stands for Sullivan. It was his maternal grandfather’s first name (Sullivan Cook).

At a young age, Frank was also referred to on a census form as Frank Henry Rose, which makes me wonder if he was actually Frank Sullivan Henry Rose or Frank Henry Sullivan Rose. Usually only two initials were used, of course. By the time he took out his patents in 1904, both in the US and Canada, he was just Frank S. Rose.

Frank Sullivan Rose was born at Rosehill, near Bridgehampton, Suffolk County, New York, in January 1857. That makes him a bit younger than we had previously thought.

When he died he would have probably been just 48 or 49. I cannot find a record of his death, but it must have been around 1906. He looks much older than that in his photo with his wife Catherine M.Rose.

Frank Sullivan Rose was the fourth child and eldest son of Henry Martin Rose (born Rosehill, March 1823) and Elizabeth (but always known as Betsey, also Betsy) Cook Rose (born Rosehill, April 1818).

Henry Martin Rose and Betsey married in 1850. Their three daughters were Hannah Rose (also known as Anna, born September, 1851), Charlotte Pierson Rose (also known as Lottie, born 1853), and Henrietta Rose (born November 11, 1854, died 1910). Another son who came after Frank was Stephen E. Rose (born September 2, 1858).

Henry Martin Rose was the son of Stephen Rose (born New York 1780).
Anyway, getting back to the Canon Typestar ad making me think about the Standard Folding. I decided to put the two machines together to see how Canon's ad held up.

Bear in mind I can pack spare ribbons or pens or whatever in the little compartment in the Standard Folding case. No allowance for even spare batteries in the Canon case! Here are the vital stats:
Standard Folding (in case): 11 ¼ inches wide, 9 inches deep, 5 ½ inches high. Weight 10lb.
Canon Typestar (in case): 14 inches wide, 11 ½ inches deep, 2 ¼ inches high. Weight 6lb.
There you have it. The Canon is half the height of the Standard Folding, but much wider and deeper. It's all plastic, of course, but only 4lb lighter.

Here's the crunch though: I can take the Standard Folding almost anywhere on earth (like Jack London did) and type with it for a almost infinite period of time, limited only by how much paper and how many ribbons I have with me.

The Canon Typestar, powered by electricity, is only as portable as the nearest power-point; powered by battery, it might last a week or two?

So how do we define "portable"? I say the Standard Folding way, and Canon's claim to have "re-defined" it is a load of old bunkum.

And, let's remember, the Canon came on to the market almost 90 years after the Standard Folding. Progress? Modern technology? Give me a break!

It may be of particular interest to Georg Sommeregger that this particular model Standard Folding was sold by the Rex company in Vienna:

The Canon electronic typewriter was patented in the US on January 19, 1993, and in Japan in April 1991. It was designed by one of the company's most prolific all-round designers, Hidero Matsumoto, of Yokohama, for Canon Kabushiki Kaisha of Tokyo.

But when I roll my sleeves up and go out into the back garden to type, what will I take?:

A real portable, as originally defined and designated by Frank Sullivan Rose!

Bijou On The Nile: Part XII - The Conclusion

2012-02-17T15:02:00.000+11:00

PART XII

- THE CONCLUSION

Typed with a Rem-Blick in a London office in 1936*

This is the only known photograph of the recently departed

Mr Dudley Archer,foreign correspondent

*It's fiction, folks

Gobbledegook and Typewriters

2012-02-17T10:59:00.002+11:00

A typist working for Californian congressman Arthur Monroe Free in Washington DC in January 1925 writes the representative’s correspondence amid stacks of typewritten documents.

The points made by Bill M, notagain and myself in earlier posts regarding typewriting secretaries and their command of the English language were compounded here in Canberra, Australia’s capital city, yesterday.

A Senate Estimates hearing here was told that the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs is paying $55,000 of taxpayers’ money to outside consultants to teach government officials the “arcane skill of writing like a bureaucrat”.
This money from the public purse is going to a management firm called the Interaction Consulting Group to run workshops on the “unique style needed for written briefs and letters to and for the minister”.

The Australian Government could save a lot taxpayers’ money if it supplied these bureaucrats with typewriters and threw away their computers and Word programs.
On a typewriter, there is an automatic need to exercise one’s brain. The typing process needs to be very precise and considered. Writing is by necessity concise. For one thing, there can be no cutting and pasting of slabs of gobbledegook. For another, there is no sneaking across to a thesaurus site to steal a 10-letter word when the four-letter one the writer has in mind will do just as well, if not better (Except, perhaps, it will make the writer seem more learned than he or she really is).

An official from this Australian Government department, Julia Burns, told the senate hearing that said dozens of university-educated, mostly junior departmental bureaucrats – and possibly more senior officials who had been recruited from outside the public service – were taking part in classes.
“It’s … very specific ... how to write in a concise way for ministerial briefs etc, so even people who are well-educated may just need to learn the ways of the public service, frankly,” she said.

Department head Finn Pratt said: “This is very much a core skill of the public service and it’s one which we constantly have to ensure we are doing as well as possible. It is very, very important that we write as well as possible for ministers.”

Liberal senator Mitch Fifield said after the hearing that concise writing ought to be a skill officials could learn on the job.
“With over 3000 public servants in FaHCSIA, is there no one who can pass down the knowledge of how to write a letter? Why they would need additional training in such a key competency is beyond me.
“I think most Australians would be very surprised to hear that their taxpayer dollars are being spent on teaching bureaucrats skills that they should already be across.”

From Show Boat to Giant on a Typewriter

2012-02-17T10:04:00.000+11:00

What’s the connection between James Dean’s last movie Giant and Jerome Kern’s musical Show Boat?
Why, it’s Edna Ferber, of course.

Giant and Show Boat were both based on Ferber novels.
Other musical, theatrical and film productions based on her works include So Big, Stage Door, Dinner at Eight, Ice Palace, Saratoga Trunk and Cimarron (which won an Oscar).

Ferber, born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on August 15, 1885, was a novelist, short story writer and playwright. When he was 12, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she later took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel, Dawn O'Hara in 1911.

She covered the 1920 Republican and Democratic national conventions for the United Press Association.

She won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1924 book So Big, which was made into a silent film starring Colleen Moore that same year. An early talkie movie remake followed, in 1932, starring Barbara Stanwyck (below) and George Brent, with Bette Davis in a supporting role.

A 1953 remake of So Big starred Jane Wyman.
Ferber died of stomach cancer at her home in New York City on April 16, 1968, aged 82.

Typewriters report an A-Bomb Blast

2012-02-16T13:46:00.000+11:00

They look as though they might have been enjoying a Sunday afternoon barbecue among work mates. Instead, these journalists have been invited to watch an A-bomb explode.
At 9.30am on April 22, 1952, US authorities allowed news reporters and television crews to witness and film an above-ground atmospheric test of an A-bomb.

The United Press reporters on the so-called “NewsNob”, nine miles south of ground zero, are, from left, Frank M. Bartholemew, Robert N. Bennyhoff, Joe Quinn and Hugh Baille.
In Operation Big Shot, the equivalent of 31 kilotons of TNT was exploded 3500 feet above the ground at the Nevada “Proving Ground” (test site) at Yucca Flat. It was the 15th atomic test in the US, the 26th nuclear explosion in history. The bomb was dropped from a B-50.

Mice, sheep, pigs and 1700 soldiers were among the animate objects which took part in the test. Ground troops, in deep drenches 7000 yards from ground zero, and airborne troops held military manoeuvres on a simulated nuclear battlefield. Trucks, tanks, aircraft and other pieces of military equipment and ordnance were placed at varying distances out from the detonation point to ascertain how well they would survive a nuclear attack. The test was also used to determine whether nuclear weapons could be employed to clear mines. The sound of the explosion was heard 42 seconds after detonation.

It was the first time the media had been allowed to cover such an event. Klaus Landsberg made an KTLA telecast which was fed to all three networks through a 140 mile link. An estimated 35 million viewers saw the telecast, but most “never at any time had a plausible image of whatever it was that the camera was aimed at.” Instead, they received “an ever-changing series of geometrical designs, alternating with something that looked like showers of confetti.” The New York Herald Tribune said the test produced an “odd result: a revolutionary method of mass communication had blurred, rather than clarified, the impression of a revolutionary weapon of warfare.”

Some of the media were given high-density goggles to view the burst, while others were told to turn away and shield their eyes.

Federal Civil Defence Administrator Millard Caldwell declared, “A bomb of this kilo-ton force would have claimed one-half million casualties in New York from blast, fire and radiation effects.”
From 1951 through 1958, the US conducted 120 tests at the Nevada Test Site. Such were the toys and joys of the Cold War ...

On the Other End of the Line, with Typewriter

2012-02-16T12:49:00.000+11:00

The other day I posted on secretaries, copytakers and other female typists who filled such vital roles in the functioning of business and the government.
In particular, I lamented the loss of copytakers from newspapers and news agencies, featuring a BBC copytaker typing a news report she was taking down over the telephone.

Well, here is who might have been on the other end of the line: United Press International's legendary White House correspondent Merriman Smith.
Smith is phoning through a story from the Lowry Air Force Base, Colorado, on September 27, 1955, about a heart attack suffered by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Behind Smith is Polly Witte of United Press's Denver bureau.

Albert Merriman Smith (born Savannah, Georgia, on February 10, 1913) was a wire service reporter who notably serving as White House correspondent for UPI and its predecessor, UP.
Smith covered US presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard Nixon and originated the practise of closing presidential news conferences with "Thank you, Mr President." This was the title of his 1946 book, written during his coverage of the Harry Truman administration.

The honour, accorded the senior wire service reporter present at presidential news conferences, became more popularly known when it was continued by Smith's UPI colleague Helen Thomas.
In 1964, Smith won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He first used the term “grassy knoll” regarding the assassination.

Smith was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967. He shot himself at his home in Washington on April 13, 1970.
Here is Smith at his typewriter in the Press Room in San Clemente.

Bijou On The Nile: Part XI, The Penultimate Part

2012-02-15T15:11:00.000+11:00

PART XI

THE PENULTIMATE PART

Typed on the actual Bijou

NEXT:

Part XII, The Conclusion

When all will be revealed, I promise!

Help! Caligraph Typewriter Repair

2012-02-15T14:07:00.002+11:00

Richard Polt is a very wise young man. When I announced I'd bought a Caligraph, Richard commented: "Notice the silly mainspring - that long spring wound around the shaft that runs from front to back on the bottom of this machine. Silly because this arrangement requires very high tension on the spring to keep the carriage moving. Often these springs break on Caligraphs. Just a word to the wise."
Sure enough, my Caligraph arrived from Melbourne this morning and the mainspring was broken, about 3 inches from the front end. I hasten to add the seller had been honest enough to point this out, so it came as no shock.

I have managed to remove the broken-off piece of coil.

I am wondering now whether it would be possible to attach the remaining coil to the screw at the top of the rod. It does stretch that far, but would I be putting too much tension into it? Obviously I'd have to make a small hook at the end of the remaining coil, similar to the one at the other end. Welding doesn't seem a viable proposition: I doubt if a welded join on so thin a coil would be strong enough hold the tension.
But I also suspect the spring will have to be rewound. Is anyone able to advise on this? Thanking you in advance, if you are.

The Lucky Typewriter Country

2012-02-15T02:09:00.001+11:00

Here I sit, on a cool, wet summer’s evening, cozy and comfy, as Richard Polt might say. I’m in one quite large chair, surrounded by gorgeous typewriters – all I’m missing is the Reverend McCann’s log fire.

Yet instead of feeling cozy, why am I slightly uncomfortable?
Well, quite apart from having a pain in the back of the hand to match Archer’s (from typing too much about Archer; actually it’s an old rugby injury), I’m getting twinges of guilt.

Compared to what it would be like to live in some other places, I consider myself well situated. And here I am bemoaning the rising cost of typewriters in Australia. I should be ashamed of myself.
Let me try to explain:
Tonight it was revealed Canberra has moved up from 47th to 34th place among the world’s most expensive cities to live. But I still consider myself better off than many.

This placing on the "expensive cities" list, it turns out, is based on the super healthy Australia dollar. Which means it's possible to look at it from an entirely different angle: If one is buying items from overseas, items which aren't produced in this country, the cost of living could be said to be cheaper.

And what would I buy from overseas? That's right: typewriters.
Australia’s other mainland capital cities are all in the world's Top 20 most expensive cities, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest findings. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth all rank ahead of London, New York, Rome, Los Angeles, Berlin and Hong Kong. Sydney is 7th, Melbourne 8th, Perth 13th, Brisbane 14th and Adelaide 18th.

The report’s editor, Jon Copestake, pointed out that the cost of a loaf of bread in Sydney had almost doubled in the past 10 years, while petrol had risen threefold. The survey compared the price of more than 400 items - including food, clothing, rent, transport, utility bills and recreational costs.
But, incredibly, not typewriters! Which means what Copestake wasn't able to say is that the cost of typewriters has quadrupled in eight years. Which, it could further be reasoned, means the value of typewriter has quadrupled (and that might explain why so many people are buying typewriters in Australia right now).

Copestake blamed the strong Australian dollar. “Exchange rates have been the greatest influence for the Australian cost of living, with the Australian dollar seeing its value to the US dollar double in a decade.”
The days of $5 typewriters at Canberra’s recycling centres and op-ships have long since gone. Yet this vastly improved exchange rate - 100 per cent higher - means we can buy typewriters from the US and Europe at far better prices (including shipping) than ever before.
So based on Copestake’s exchange rate theory, when one factors in typewriter purchases, Australian capitals should, by rights, be slipping down the list of expensive cities.

Take, by way of contrast, the situation with my good friends in Switzerland: Georg, Adwoa and Florian. Because the Swiss franc has emerged as a haven currency amid the eurozone crisis, currency-related cost pressures are applying. For the first time in 20 years, Zurich outranks Tokyo as the world’s most expensive city. Switzerland, like Australia, has two cities in the Top 10.
Meanwhile, Moody’s has placed negative outlooks on France, Britain and Austria.

We used to call this, with our fine sense of irony, “The Lucky Country”. Now, in all honesty, we should call it “The Lucky Typewriter Country”. Roll on $US1.10 to the $A1 ...
Convoluted reasoning? Maybe, but it should make perfectly good sense to a typewriter collector. Stay positive in this global financial crisis, that's what I say!

Bijou On The Nile: Part X

2012-02-15T00:23:00.002+11:00

PART X

Typed on a Barr portable

Bijou On The Nile: Part IX

2012-02-14T13:59:00.000+11:00

PART IX

Written on a Royal Safari,

rather untidily I hasten to add

For anyone still interested in this story,

there are links to Parts I to VI at Part VII

Bijou On The Nile: Part VIII

2012-02-14T11:47:00.002+11:00

PART VIII

Still being typed on the Bijou

Links to Parts I to VI can be found at Part VII

VIII

Bijou On The Nile: Part VII

2012-02-14T01:48:00.001+11:00

PART VII

Again written on the Bijou

PART I

PART II by Richard Polt

PART III by Ryan Adney

PART IV by Bill MacLane

PART V
PART VI

Happy Valentine's Day, Typewriter Lovers

2012-02-14T00:58:00.002+11:00

One Contented Typist: the Reverend Mr McCann

2012-02-13T23:57:00.001+11:00

Don't you just love it?

The Reverend Edward McCann types beside a wood stove in his logcabin in Minnesota, while his drawers dry on a line across the wall - sometime around the turn of the century.

I know I've written this before, but in this case it seems even more appropriate.

All I want is a room somewhere

Far away from the cold night air

With one enormous chair

(And one enormous typewriter ...)

Oh, wouldn't it be loverly