buying an 80-year-old typewriter today :)

after many months of waiting... i am finally getting the typewriter of my dreams!

it's a royal portable, probably circa 1920s/1930s, in spectacular condition... i'm getting it from blue moon camera and machine in oregon, and they return their machines to tiptop shape before shipping them.

i have an electric one that does me fine but i have wanted a portable forever... i had a bad experience buying one off ebay that said it was in "great condition" but half the keys didn't work! (including the backspace and spacebar )

so yes... here's a pic of it... it's beautiful and i can't wait to use it
woo!

 

looks sweet

 

Looking at your 1920's typewriter, I'm reminded of why my keyboard is set up as it is
(QWERTYUIOP, ASDFGHJKL, ZXCVBNM<>? and so forth). When typewriters had independent striking bars, a fast typist would have these bars jam on him/her if the keys were close together and hit in rapid succession. So the inventors moved the more frequently hit keys well apart to prevent jamming.

What few people miss about both manual and electric typewriters is the noise, and the fact that if you omitted a letter in a word, for example, 'wrd', you had to retype all the adjacent letters in such a way as to squeeze four letters (in the example) into the space for three. Also, eraser dirt tended to foul the internal moving parts, for those who used erasers instead of white-out fluid or white-out overstrike paper.

So, while personal computers do have their problems, their word processors are improvement on the manual typewriters.

If you're really nostalgic, get yourself a slide rule as well, and a rotary dial phone.

 

And a fountain pen. I love fountain pens.

 

I have a few manual typewriters. One from the 50s (Royal), one from the 60s (Sears), and one from the 70s (a Brother, the one I use the most), plus a ton of spare parts, an electric (Smith-Corona) and a electronic typewriter (Brother). Plus the standard computer.

I like some of the old stuff. Made you think stuff out before you typed it, and forced you to learn not to make mistakes.

 

That's pretty awesome...what are you gonna write on it first?

 

Congrats man! Typewriters are cool, I remember I used type up stories on my neighbors typewriter.

I saw your signature, do you make hackey sacks?