Ugly Duckling Typewriter - Almost

Yes, it's missing the two plastic connecting parts from the front, both of which were smashed in transit three years ago and have now mysteriously disappeared.

It wasn’t last Wednesday's 66th anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel that got me started - actually, I hadn't thought about that until Saturday, when I was checking out other "on this day" events which coincided with my friend's 60th birthday.

No, it was an exchange between Michael Clemens and Peter Baker ("notagain") on Google+ on Friday that did it. 

Started, that is, on a project I had been putting off for three years: the painting and reassembly of this Hebrew-language Hermes 2000.

I could get used to the carriage moving from right to left, but the unusual movement of the carriage lever really threw me.

To be honest, I had stumbled across the box containing an inordinate number of parts from the Hermes 2000 (19 in all!*) a few weeks previously, while searching in the shed for something else entirely. That's the usual story, I know, and in this case I was hunting for a spare parts Atlas, as Richard Polt needed a feed roller for his Elgin Collegiate. I finished up taking apart my Rexina, but Richard had found a suitable feed roller on a Royalite.

Anyway, I was down in the shed in my "working gear", on my knees digging through a pile of typewriter cases and boxes, when I felt (or rather heard) an avalanche coming on. Not wishing to cop another nasty gash on the head, I quickly jumped to my feet and reached above my head to hold the tumbling boxes in place. As I did so, the piece of twine holding up my "trackie dacks" (as they're called in Australia) snapped and my trousers fell down. Fortunately, there was no-one else about at the time, so, as I have promised Richard and Georg Sommeregger, no more racy pictures on this blog. Still, I was reminded of Stan Cross's famous cartoon in Smith's Weekly on July 29, 1933:

 “For gorsake, stop laughing: this is serious!” 

So, to get back to more serious matters: the Hermes 2000. I brought the box of many parts upstairs, steeling myself as I did so for the massive undertaking ahead. But for three weeks, looking at the large number of parts meant I still couldn't bring myself to tackle the task.
(*The 19 parts: back section, 2 side sections, 2 front sections [top and bottom of keyboard], 2 plastic pieces joining the sides and back section, 2 platen knobs, space bar, 2 ribbon spool surrounds, 2 ribbon spool mounts, segment piece, paper plate, 2 paper guides [top and bottom of platen], ribbon spools cover. There should have been 21 parts, as I realised when I came to reassemble the machine, but the two front joining parts had gone.)

Then on Friday I was copied in on Michael's reply to Peter about a Hebrew language-Hermes Rocket in an online auction. Michael wrote, "I'm sure there are other makes and models out there, but it seems like the only ones I ever see with Hebrew keyboards are Hermes Rockets. Did Hermes have a corner on this market? If my history is right, the era of these machine is roughly the same as the foundation of Israel as a state. Maybe they were thinking about settlement, the need for portability, or something else?"
This was the spark that ignited action. I wanted to show Michael and Peter my Hebrew Hermes 2000, but it had been sitting maskless for three years, occasionally used for a demonstration of the right to left carriage movement, yet still crying out to be reassembled.

This rather filthy Hermes 2000 appeared on Australian eBay tonight. I use this image merely to highlight the two missing parts from my Hebrew Hermes 2000.

It's history is this: I had won it on Australia eBay in early 2011, but it was sent from Victoria in just its case, with no protection around typewriter or the case, and it arrived smashed. The two plastic pieces joining the front section to the sides were broken into bits, and with whatever impact the typewriter had received, these two parts had been forced up into the side sections, buckling them. There were large paint chips all over.
I immediately took the machine apart. I was able to straighten the side sections pretty well, and my plan was to glue the two joining parts back together. Whether I actually got to doing that I cannot now recall. It was also my plan to spray paint the typewriter a pale blue colour and use what might have been construed as some rather provocative decals.

As things turned out, the combined primer-top coat spray paint I used was a much different colour, more like the turquoise of the Olivetti Lettera 44, I think. But I like the look so much I have kept it in this shade. I only came across the decals I had made for it today, anyway (while searching for the front joints) - they are dark blue and wouldn't have stood out on this deeper colour. I've avoided any potential ructions by not using them.
Given the ugly, smashed state this typewriter was in when I received it, it struck me that it was now like Hans Christian Andersen's Ugly Duckling, turned into a beautiful turquoise swan. But not quite - it's still missing two vital parts, which somehow I have managed to completely mislay.
It was only after I had painted the 19 parts and started to reassemble the typewriter on Saturday that I realised the front joints were missing. I have spent two whole days looking for them, without success. It's a mystery as to why they were not in the box with all the other parts. I certainly wouldn't have thrown them out.

Thinking I might have inadvertently put them in boxes of spare parts I gave to John Lavery ("McTaggart's Typewriter Workshop") in Brisbane in early March, or later in Wellington, I called John tonight. As it transpires, John also has a Hermes 2000 which was smashed in transit - in exactly the same way, with the front parts broken and buckled. But he thinks he can salvage the front joints and will post them to me, so I can complete this Ugly Duckling project.
As I have mentioned before, major hunts such as this have some very positive sides, and as always I am both surprised and delighted by the things I was able to turn up - while NOT finding what I was actually looking for. One of those things was the front case clasp from his Neckermann Brilliant S that I promised to send Richard Polt last October!
I only wish I had found it before sending him some zine magazines, which he has since received.

Now I just have to find the two screws that go with it. But, rest assured, this two-day search has resulted in me getting much better organised at long last, by putting screws and washers and the like in one box, and spare parts in another. So great progress has indeed been made! 

On This Day in Typewriter History: The Burroughs Typewriter, Not Burroughs' Typewriter

PART 175

For sale now at Branford House Antiques

It has to be one, based on the fairly obvious evidence, one of the most photogenic typewriters ever made. And for that we must thank Dwight Prentice Rowland and his design from on this day in 1932.

Certainly the Burroughs company thought it was pretty swish. "The Burroughs Typewriter is a beautiful machine," it wrote. "If you were to buy a typewriter for appearance alone, your choice would be the Burroughs.” It "creates a desirable atmosphere of modern-ness which is stimulating to employee and attractive to customer. Then too, exterior appearance is very often an index of built-in quality."

Burroughs was wrong on that last point. Yet while it was far from being a great typing typewriter (read Will Davis), it still seems to appeal to many people. Why?

Well, one hint may be that it’s on a T-shirt and advertised as the William S.Burroughs typewriter. The seller might have got away with that claim if he or she hadn’t added the word “Beatnik”. After all, it is, in one sense, the William S.Burroughs typewriter … it's just not THAT William S.Burroughs’ typewriter.

It’s also on coffee mugs, bowls and cylinders (what the … ?). But in these cases I suppose it could be said, at best, that there is an implication rather than an outright claim of association with the "Beatnik" William S.Burroughs. One might buy such an item believing it is emblazoned with the Burroughs typewriter and not that Burroughs’ typewriter.

There’s even a website at which the Burroughs typewriter is said to be a Burroughs adding machine! What have we come to when a blogger can’t tell a typewriter from an adding machine? The Adosphere?

Reminds me of when the Ziners in Melbourne decided to succeed the typewriter with the photocopier as a machine to lionise at their festival this year. When I passed the word on to Richard Polt, he wryly remarked, “I Am Photocopier? Doesn’t have the same ring.”

But getting back to the Burroughs …

Yes, folks, there is the Burroughs typewriter and then there are the Burroughs typewriters. Believe it or not, there are people out who do think they are one and the same. One will find images of the Burroughs typewriter on the Internet alongside a claim that it is the typewriter which belonged to the American Beat Generation writer William Seward Burroughs II (1914-1997).

WSB II and Antares Parva

But WSB II had a general preference for much smaller typewriters. He was known to use a range of portables, from a Hermes Rocket to a Antares  Parva, with Facits, Remingtons and (Jack Kerouac’s) Underwoods in between. As Richard Polt has pointed out at Writers and Their Typewriters on his The Classic Typewriter Page, Burroughs – like Tennessee Williams and Brendan Behan – was more in the habit of pawning typewriters than owning them.

WSB II and Hermes Rocket

Admittedly Burroughs was also once photographed in the presence of Joe Strummer and an Olympia SG1. But to the best of my knowledge, Burroughs never used a Burroughs.

I guess WSB II was crazy enough to put a large gold decal of his surname on the paper plate of a black standard-size typewriter, but in this instance it wasn’t the case. The Burroughs typewriter was the work of the company founded by the writer’s grand-daddy, William Seward Burroughs I (1857-1898), and I doubt if WSB II ever laid claim to having had a hand in it, even over a Naked Lunch.

The Burroughs typewriter was, in fact, the work of a large team of highly qualified and skilled mechanical engineers and a designers working for the Burroughs Adding Machine Company in Detroit in the early to mid-1930s. It was introduced at national business shows in New York and Chicago in 1931 and an electric version, with just the carriage electrified, was added to the line the next year. With each version, as the back of the machine indicates, these patents were still pending.

The designer and team leader was Dwight Prentice Rowland (born Boston, November 22, 1865) and the engineers were Joseph Archerdale Summerlee (born Littleport, England, April 3, 1886); Conrad Cecil Dahl (born Birmingham, Michigan, January 11, 1900); Raymond George Bower (born Bement, Illinois, September 2, 1895); Lyman Granger Saunders (born Detroit, March 1891); Robert Thomas Brockman (born Union, Indiana, December 14, 1864) and the famous, prolific inventor Walter John Pasinski (born Poland, January 1885). There were 12 patents associated with this machine, most the work of Rowland and Dahl.

Rowland and Summerlee

On this day (November 14) in 1932, Rowland and Summerlee applied for a patent for the frame and its unusual method of construction. The carriage was later electrified, by Bower and Pasinski in particular.

Rowland and Dahl

Various typewriter historians have likened parts of the Burroughs design to other contemporary machines, and to earlier Underwood, Remington and Fox standards, as well as Jesse Alexander’s Perfect typewriter (see my earlier post on Alexander).

One of the Davis Burroughs

Will Davis had a thorough if fairly disparaging look at the Burroughs in the December 2006 issue of ETCetera (No 76). Will had had one of his Burroughs typewriters overhauled and noted the machine appeared to be “heavily over-designed”. When one looks at the size of the Burroughs team contributing to its make-up, that seems little wonder.

Rowland and Summerlee, on this day, 1932

But the Burroughs, inspired by predecessors as it may have been, is an original work, it is unique. The company itself said, “[Our] Engineers were given a free hand in designing the Burroughs.  They had no designs to change - no tools to scrap.  They selected only the best features known to typewriter construction.  The result is a typewriter of traditional Burroughs quality, combining advantages never before found in one machine.

Branford House Antiques

“Not only is the Burroughs advanced in design and appearance, but it is constructed throughout of the finest materials.  Parts frequently manipulated by the operator are plated with chromium, adding to beauty and durability.  Rust-proof cadmium plating is used on unexposed parts.  Provisions for adjustments have been built in at important bearing points, a fine example of engineering forethought, eliminating the need for premature repairs, and extending the life of the machine.

                        Branford House Antiques

“Its distinctive silenced construction [was] developed by Burroughs. This quietness of operation has been achieved by Burroughs without sacrificing light, easy key action or the sturdiness and durability of standard construction.

Wim Van Rompuy Collection

“The Burroughs Standard Typewriter is the product of half a century's experience in building office machines requiring the greatest precision of manufacture.  Burroughs is the world's largest and oldest manufacturer of adding, bookkeeping, calculating and billing machines.  The Burroughs factory is therefore equipped, and Burroughs workmen are trained, for precision work.  Precision of manufacture insures smoothness of operation, freedom from mechanical troubles, and long life.”

Burroughs believed the machine’s appearance was in itself a selling point.

“Enclosed on all sides, finished in combination black crystal and enamel, with many parts chromium plated, it speaks quietly but eloquently of fine workmanship, advanced design.” 

Branford House Antiques

The carriage (and its later electrification) was the work of Bower, who also came up with a new, scientifically tested keyboard configuration - one which had a lot going for it, but came far too late to supplant QWERTY.

Burroughs said of the typewriter carriage, “[It] must stand more abuse than any other part of the machine.  The Burroughs carriage is as efficient as 50 years' experience in building heavy-duty machine carriages can make it.  It is strongly built, and so perfectly balanced on its ball-bearing rollers that its movement is remarkably smooth.  And the Burroughs correspondence-size carriage accommodates sheets up to 11 inches wide and provides a 10-inch writing line.  This unusual capacity is convenient for addressing large envelopes or writing on wide paper or forms.

“One of the distinctive features of the Burroughs carriage is the Variable Line Spacer.  This device, which permits accurate, positive fractional spacing of lines, is exactly the same unit that is used on the finest Burroughs accounting machines.”

The Burroughs company’s glowing description of its typewriter is contained in web pages from Will Davis here  and here. 

Salter Ousts 2700 British Government Typewriters!

ENGLISH KING DECLARES

 'FOREIGN-MADE TYPEWRITERS

HAVE TO GO!'

'Bring in John Bull's machines!'

I have posted extensively in the past on Salter and British Empire typewriters, which were made in West Bromwich, outside Birmingham in England. Yet it now seems there is still much more to learn about exactly when and how Salter became British Typewriters, making British Empire machines.

Eclectisaurus Antiques & Brocante Typewriter Museum, Toronto

Of the British Empire typewriters, the Empire Aristocrat portable (Hermes Baby) is by far the best known and most readily available. Typewriters in this range, which date from the mid-1930s through to possibly as late as the early-1960s, are certainly quite common in this country. Richard Polt acquired one in the US not so long ago.

At one time I was under the impression the Empire-Hermes line of portables started with the Hermes Baby, relabelled by British Typewriters as the Aristocrat.

Then on Australian eBay last week up popped a rather rare earlier model, an Empire Baby De-Luxe, which is in fact the original Hermes portable design, the Featherweight (most noticeably distinguished from the Baby-Rocket by having no flapping ribbon covers). This was also marketed as the Swiss Zephyr.

I have now seen on the internet a few other examples of this earlier Empire-Hermes, including one in the Creston Museum in British Columbia (below).

Indeed, it turns out I had already posted on this very blog on the Empire Baby De-Luxe, at http://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2011/04/empire-aristocrat-typewriter-makes.html

At the time of posting that story, I had inaccurately assumed these Empires were all Aristocrats. In fact, the post is about an Empire Baby De-Luxe. It concerns London Daily Express air correspondent Victor Anthony Ricketts, who took a little Empire Baby De-Luxe on the de Havilland DH88 Comet in which he and Arthur Edmond Clouston smashed 11 world records on round-the-world flights in March 1938.

That it is an unusual version of the Empire had obviously not been appreciated by Australian eBayers when the auction ended on Monday. This listing sold for a mere $15.60, after only three bids. I would have valued it at about 10 times that price.

Anyway, getting back to Salter: A few weeks ago I won on eBay a small book, The Story of a Family Firm 1760-1960, which I'd hoped would answer some of the questions about Salter-British Typewriters. The book is a 200-year anniversary history of Salter written by Mary Bache in 1960. Mary Bache was a member of the extended Salter family: her father, Ernest William Bache, patented in the US typewriter designs for Salter in 1928.

Unfortunately, the book contains very little information about Salter typewriters, except that production of an “all-English model” “persisted” under Salter control from 1895 to 1936. At that point, “this department became a separate company and is now no longer connected with the firm”.

At what point, however, and to what extent, the Rimingtons, John M Rimington (born 1841) and his son George Rimington (born 1873), became involved in all this is not spelt out in Bache’s book. The Rimingtons owned the British branches of Blickensderfer in London and Newcastle, and at some stage after 1922 their company also established, or took over (from W.J.Richardson), British Typewriters. The true nature of the connection between the Rimingtons and the Salters has yet to be uncovered.
But this one intriguing paragraph in Bache’s book, covering a period immediately after World War I, did catch the eye:

The typewriter referred to by Bache is probably this machine, from the Thomas Fuertig Collection and seen on the European Typewriter Project web pages put together by Will Davis and the late Tilman Elster.

Will and Tilman wrote about Salter thus:
“British Typewriters Ltd of West Bromwich, England, had what we might call three production phases in its life. It began with standard typewriters, then began license production of the small Hermes machines in 1935, and later in 1960 was entirely bought out by SCM-Smith Corona and changed production over to the small machines of that line based on the old Zephyr-Skyriter."

Will and Tilman say of the machine in Thomas’s collection, “This standard machine was introduced in 1924, as this company's first offering. These appear not to have been a fantastic success, although the company did survive with it for 10 years before becoming a license-producer of the small, flat Hermes machine which had just appeared and caused a sensation.

“Some sources indicate that this machine was built by British Typewriters Ltd, but other sources - namely, patents - also indicate that George Salter & Co still had a hand in the business … it seems Salter actually developed this front-strike machine.”
It can be safely read in all this that confusion continues to reign …