PART 230
On this day (January 9) in 1912, one hundred and one years ago today, the great John Henry Barr was granted a patent for the Smith Premier No 10. Barr wrote the design had "for its principal object to provide an improved type action for a
frontstrike or 'visible' typewriter. I have provided a type action in which
the touch on the keys is soft or easy at the first part of the stroke and in
which the typebar moves to the printing point with a continuously accelerated
velocity. The type action is also of such a nature that when any typebar
returns to normal position it is locked against rebound from the type rest. A
further object of my invention is to provide a construction which enables a
large number of type actions to be assembled in a machine of standard size
without conflict."
1 comment:
What a coincidence! There's just one of these machines on sale in Mexico. It belonged to a collector, which means it's in reasonably complete order (not sure if it works), and the seller is announcing it as "...extremely old... double keyboard... must date from before the time they invented uppercase letters" (shifting).
I bet he thinks the machine dates from the Middle Ages or something like that, and the asking price is according to that belief.
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