On This Day in Typewriter History: The Case for Olympia Typewriters

PART 195

There are few if any typewriter cases to match the one designed by Otto Winter for Olympia SMs made in Wilhelmshaven, West Germany. It's certainly one of my favourites - stylish and very practical.

Winter applied for a patent for the design on this day (December 4) in 1953.

Winter designed many other things for Olympia typewriters, including the top for this SM1 in 1954 (along with Guido Dassler).

Dwayne Fuhlhage's SM 7. See.

Winter also designed the distinctive grille for the SM7 in 1961. He was influenced in this design by the Underwood Golden Touch machines of 1957-58 and Laird Covey's design for the Royal Futura, as well as the SM3 of 1959.

On This Day in Typewriter History: Dodson's Tower Typewriter

PART 194

Captain Joseph Wadsworth secrets the

Connecticut charter in Sam Wyllys's oak tree

Pennsylvania mechanical engineer Darien Wadsworth Dodson was a direct descendant of Captain Joseph Wadsworth, the Connecticut "charter oak" patriot who once threatened to “make the sun shine through” a New York royal governor.

One gets a sense that Dodson’s typewriter inventions were also full of holes.  Certainly none of his machines was ever made, and historian Michael Adler declared at least one of them as “impractical”. Although I did perhaps prematurely and unfairly once describe Dodson as “the most persistently unsuccessful typewriter inventor ever”, it nonetheless does appear that he was wasting his own time and that of others. A clue to this sort of indulgence may be found in the fact that one of Dodson’s cousins married John Millard Emery, an examiner at the US Patents Office in Washington.

These designs were, it must be admitted, a very young man’s fancy. Dodson was just 19 when he first applied for a patent and a mere 23 when he applied for his first typewriter patent.

The typewriter patent we are looking at today, issued on this day (December 3) in 1889, is a prime example of Dodson’s often immature and extremist work. If the reader is trying to make head or tail of it, I should quote Dodson’s description: “My improved typewriting machine consists, essentially, of a suitable framework, a revoluble turret, one or more revoluble typewheels mounted on said turret at a distance from its centre, a series of type or wheel starters constructed and arranged to start revolving the said revoluble type or wheels, finger-keys and connections operating said starters, devices suitable for continuing for the proper time the rotation of said type or wheels and for stopping them, a paper-carriage, and carriage-feeding apparatus.”

This patent was a development of one Dodson had been issued with five years earlier. He later moved on to something more conventional – a beast with striking similarities to the 1904 Kanzler.

Frank Notten's Kanzler. See.

Dodson said of this 1890 design, “This invention relates to that class of typewriters (recently invented by me) in which the typewheels have independent orbital and axial rotary movements, and in which the mode of printing the character is by rolling the type therefor on the material to be printed, while said typewheel has both of said movements.”

This machine also had a non-QWERTY keyboard:

Darien Wadsworth Dodson was born at Town Line, Pennsylvania, on November 14, 1860. He was part of a family which, through Epaphfras Wadsworth, had moved from Connecticut to Pennsylvania in 1794, to set up a forge and blacksmith's shop in Wilkes-Barre.

After taking a long break from attempts to invent a typewriter, in 1909 Dodson was contracted by the American Type-Bar Machine Company and assigned to this company various of his inventions, for dies, for character bars, and for a machine to form characters.

The New York City-based American Type-Bar Machine Company had a charter issued and was incorporated in 1894. Its president was Chauncey Marshall and its objectives were “acquiring and developing certain inventions and improvements pertaining to the art of printing, manufacturing, selling, type-bar machines".

Dodson was still being granted patents in 1923, aged 63, when he was living in Dorranceton, Pennsylvania, and had invented “hydraulic rams”. He died in 1940, aged 79.

I should perhaps explain my reference to Dodson’s relative, the bold Captain Wadsworth. In 1693 William of Orange conferred on New York governor Benjamin Fletcher the power of command over the militia of Connecticut, in direct contravention of the colony’s 1662 charter of government, received from Charles II. Fletcher went to Hartford, on October 26, 1693, armed with a royal commission he wished read to Wadsworth’s militiamen.  

Wadsworth drowned out the declaration by ordering his troops to beat their drums, telling Fletcher, “If I am interrupted again I will make the sun shine through you in a minute.”

Almost exactly six years earlier the same Captain Wadsworth had gained lasting fame at the expense of another royal governor. On October 31, 1687, New England royal governor Sir Edmond Andrus, appointed by James III, attempted to carry out the king’s instructions to retrieve the Connecticut charter and embrace Connecticut under his control. Wadsworth extinguished the candles at a meeting between Andrus and local officials at the Moses Butler tavern in Hartford, grabbed the charter and hid it in an oak tree at the property of Samuel Wyllys.

Wadsworth secrets the charter

In 1715 Wadsworth was rewarded for the “charter oak” incident, for “securing the duplicate charter of this Colony in a very troublesome season when our constitution was struck at, and in safely keeping and preserving the same ever since to this day”. This was described as possibly “the first act of civil disobedience against the Crown by the Colonies”.

Caveat Emptor: Typewriters on eBay

To the best of my knowledge, typewriter buyers on Australian eBay have yet to be subjected to scams comparable to two which have been tried in the US this year. These two stings involved typewriters valued up around $15,000, which of course we don't see in this country.

Just last month a seller called "odellbrendan", in Rigby, Idaho, with no feedback, tried to sell a restored Sholes & Glidden. The starting price was $9 and within days 16 bidders had pushed the auction up over $900. The fake sale was reported to eBay, which appears, for once, to have acted responsibly. The auction seems to have been ended without a sale, happily for all concerned. But apparently the seller then contacted people who had inquired about the item, offering the machine at various prices.

The actual restored Sholes & Glidden had been offered by an experienced eBayer and sold for $14,900 after 25 bids back in January. It had been completely restored in Germany by Hermann Kerz for Bill Kortsch. It's serial number was 3852. In the fake attempted sale, the same images were used, with the same backdrop.

Last May a seller called "aspegrest", in Maryland, tried to sell an extremely rare Cahill Electrical. This "sold" for $218 after 29 bids. Trouble is, the real Cahill had sold for $15,160, after 20 bids, just a month earlier. Somehow, different images were used, and the Cahill was listed as an Underwood No 2, though it was clearly decaled an Electrical. The images carefully cropped out a presentation plaque at the front of the machine, but the spacebar was a dead giveaway (see the identical mark, left). This beautiful machine had been presented to a member of the Cahill family by IBM Communications in March 1976.

Real sale

Fake sale

We seem to have been spared this sort of thing in Australia, most likely because we simply do not have typewriters of this class being listed here. Nonetheless, Australian buyers could easily have been suckered in by the US listings, if it hadn't been for welcome alerts issued to members of the Early Typewriter Collectors' Association.

They are nowhere near being in the same price category, but I still find some trends with typewriter sales on Australia eBay a little disquieting.

For example, two toy typewriters listed last month failed, in my humble opinion, to properly identify the items as toys, and could easily have been mistaken by potential buyers for real typewriters. As it turned out, one sold for $61 and the other for $51, which might indeed be prices people are prepared to pay for toys as collectibles. Since both toys are very readily available on eBay, however, the prices seemed to me to be a bit inflated.

Another trend which has returned in force is that of selling topless typewriters - machines which are missing the ribbon spool cover - and rarely pointing this out in the listing description. One seller did admit, "Also i [sic] think it once had a cover over the middle."

This nondescript Brother typewriter was described as a "Fantastic Machine. Excellent craftsmanship. Even thought [sic] the print is still very readable, if you changed the ribbon to a new one, it would be as if you had just taken this home NEW from the shop and out of the box!!" New? Have a look at the twisted keys. And "new" without a ribbon cover? I think not. Quite rightly, it sold at the starting price of 99c.

I noted that this Silver-Seiko Imperial 200 was listed as "brand new", though the case, as is the wont of these machines, had faded to a greenish shade. "IT SEEMS TO WORK, BUT THEN DOES STICK ABOUT 1/2 WAY ALONG - MAY NEED AN ADJUSTMENT??? IT CARRIES ON WHEN YOU LIFT THE ROLLER A LITTLE." The touch control panel is also missing. It sold for $61.

Someone is asking $250 for this Remington Monarch, and a buyer paid $100 for this Olivetti Lettera 32, even with an exorbitant $42 added on for postage. 

I went to the trouble of contacting the seller of this Underwood Universal, suggesting she might like to photograph it the right way up in its case. It worried me that she might pack it this way, and thus cause damage to the top of the typewriter. The seller thanked me, but ignored my advice. The machine still sold for $81.

A Sun No 2 sold for $455, but the Vari-Typer I mentioned in my last dispatch only attracted one bid at $30. Also, the Alpina "made in Germany by Will Davis and Norbert Schwarz" got two bids and went for $56.

Two efforts were made to sell this Remington at $100. "Photograph does NOT do justice," the seller said. Hopefully - presumably - that was an understatement. "Here is your chance to pick up a beauty at a bargain price!"

There comes a point at which one has to wonder how much effort a seller is prepared to go to convince a buyer to fork over $100 of their hard-earned cash.

A seller wants $99 for this "Old typewriter from dads [sic] shed looks old dont knowmuch about it it is has TABULATER printed on it". 

Here is the image. I guess one image is better than none, which is another recurring trend. But that's it! A blurry postage stamp. See you later, Tabulator!

Unusual Typewriters For Sale

There are a few really unusual typewriters for sale around the world right now.

On Trade Me in New Zealand, this Rex Visible has a starting price of $NZ50, no bids yet and one week to go. The seller says, "Yes, it works ... A bit dusty, but it's all there." It looks like it needs a bit of work done on it, nonetheless.

In Westport, New Zealand, someone is selling an Olivetti Lettera 32 and thermos "set"!
University Archives in Westport, Connecticut, is selling this well-worn Smith-Corona 5TE which, it says, President Dwight Eisenhower gave to his personal secretary. It is asking $2500.  

A plaque on the typewriter says it was given to Helen E.Weaver, Eisenhower's personal secretary at NATO headquarters in Paris from 1951 and his secretary at the White House from 1953-1957, by her White House friends. 

University Archives is still trying to shift a Hemingway Halda for $100,000.

In Holland, Adolf Gerteis's Adler Model 7 has a $10,000 price tag on it. Gerteis is described as "One of the key figures and enablers of the Holocaust."

These beautiful machines, for sale on eBay from Canada to Spain, Germany and Austria, have rightly attracted lots of interest. Oh, for a spare million bucks right now ...:

Typewriter Shoot

Writer Meryl Hancock and photographer Ken Brass visited from Sydney this morning for a photo shoot for a feature story to appear in Australian Country magazine early next year. We grabbed 22 close-at-hand typewriters for the occasion. Happily, Canberra turned on some fine weather.