A Nakajima "Hermes"?
Georg Sommeregger's Nakajima Hermes
A Nakajima ALL 550
Richard Amery's Nakajima ALL
As a Pinnock, sold by Currie Furniture Manufacturing in Australia.
As a KMart
After I posted on the Nakajima Hermes 305 a week ago, Georg Sommeregger let me know he was also in possession of a Nakajima Hermes. First Georg sent me a link to an image, and I could see straightaway that the model was almost identical to one with which we in Australia are very familiar - usually as a Litton Royal or an Imperial 202.At the time of posting on the Hermes 305, a sister of the Olympia B12, I grabbed the closest Nakajima to hand and took it apart to compare the mechanism. To my surprise, this earlier machine was completely different to the 305.
Yes, I printed out my own Hermes name badge, and stuck in on the front. I imagined as I did so the guy in Sakaki printing and sticking on tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of name badges that said "Royal", "Imperial", "Olympia", "ALL", "Pinnock", "KMart", "Hermes" - you name it, he made it! And all the same machines. What a great job!?
By the way, this Nakajima, which temporarily has the name badge "Hermes" on it, was made for Royal-Imperial International. Given the state of the Royal name badge I took off the case, I might just leave it as a Hermes. What's the difference? It's kind of like making a statement about the ease with which Litton and Nakajima fooled the market into thinking that Sakaki-made Royals, Imperial et al were different typewriters.
As an additional aside, I noticed in the link Georg sent me (which is where the typewriters from the collection of the late Tilman Elster are being sold) that there was another Hermes, a Junior, again with just a bit of a thin sticker on it. It's not a Nakajima, but a Bulgarian Maritsa 30 - a very crappy machine sold in this country as a Pacific 30 and Lemair 30:
1 comment:
So many great typewriter marques, reduced to appearing on inferior machines.
I recently saw a "Torpedo" with a plastic body, clearly made in Japan or (more likely) China. Sigh.
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