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Hey Little Sister! Tessy Portable Typewriter Stands Up to Big Sis Contessa

August 19, 2013, 8:06 pm
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The Tipp-Ex holder came glued to the left side of the typewriter.
Compare the German-made Tessy wth the same vintage, same colour Adler Contessa DeLuxe:
Here is the Nakajima-made Adler Tessy “De Luxe”, which, unlike the original German-made version, is quite common in Australia and many other countries. Note the font used for the model name is the same as the original Tessy.

Below is an Adler Tippa 1, an extremely common machine, at least in this country. It also, of course, appears frequently as the Triumph Tippa.

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Paul Artem Braginetz and the Poetry of Portable Typewriter Design

August 20, 2013, 8:37 pm
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The 10th anniversary of the death, at the age of 82, of mid-1950s Underwood portable typewriter designer Paul Artem Braginetz has just passed. So it is timely to revisit his wonderful design work, and in particular to consider whether his retirement-age poetry - with its themes of natural beauty - provide an insight into his thinking on portable typewriter design.

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Vale Elmore Leonard (1925-2013)

August 21, 2013, 9:47 pm
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US novelist and screenwriter Elmore Leonard at his Olympia SG3 typewriter, with wife Christine Kent, in Detroit, 1992
ETCetera editor Alan Seaver yesterday drew my attention to the death of Elmore Leonard. I was deeply saddened to hear this, as I am a greater admirer of Leonard's writing.
Martin Amis told Leonard at a Writers' Guild event in Beverly Hills in 1978, "Your prose makes Raymond Chandler look clumsy." Who would argue?
Elmore John Leonard Jr was born in New Orleans on October 11, 1925. He died on Tuesday, aged 87, at his home in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. He had suffered a stroke on July 29.
Leonard's earliest published novels, in the 1950s, were Westerns, but he went on to specialise in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures. Among his best-known works are Get Shorty  and Rum Punch (adapted for the movie Jackie Brown). The 1967 film Hombre starring Paul Newman was an adaptation of Leonard's novel of the same name. 
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The Colour of Writing: Writers and Their Typewriters

August 22, 2013, 7:13 pm
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George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).
Remington Noiseless.
Mary McCarthy (1912-1989)
Remington No 3.
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
Corona 3.

US author Philip Wylie(1902-1971). Noiseless.
(I think with this post I may have provided one at the top [Abbey] and one at the bottom [Wylie] of Richard Polt's list of Writers and their Typewriters here.)
English novelist Kingsley Amis (1922 - 1995) at his home in London, 1985. Adler.
Belgian writer François Weyergans (1941-) in the room where he completed his 2005 novel Trois jours chez ma mère, a former luxury store lent by a friend. Olympia SF.
Fiat heiress and writer Susanna (Sunny) Agnelli (1922-2009), January 1978. Smith-Corona.
US novelist and musician Myla Goldberg (1971-) March 2000. Underwood.
US writer Edward Abbey (1927-1989) in his fire tower home in Arizona.
Czech writer Michal Viewegh (1962), 2006. 
Italian writer Alda Merini (1931-2009), 1980. Olivetti Lettera 25, right.
Welsh dramatist Emlyn Williams (1905-1987).
Italian journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci (1930-2006) in the study of her house in Lamole, Chianti, June 1979. Olivetti Lettera 22.
French writer Benoite Groult (1920-), April 1993. It looks like a Brother.
Moscow-born French writer Iegor Gran (born Yegor Siniavski Andreyevich) (1964-), 2002. Half an Olivetti?
English historical novelist Antonia Fraser (1932-), May 1985. Olivetti Praxis 48.
(I made an exception in this case, most other typewriters are manuals)
British author Francis Wyndham (1924-), March 1988. Hermes Baby or Olivetti Lettera 82.
English playwright Jack Rosenthal (1931 - 2004). Olympia SM9.
French poet and writer Robert Sabatier (1923-2012) in Paris, October, 1987. Hermes 3000.
French journalist and writer Lucien Bodard (1914-1998). Robotron.
Austrian writer Peter Handke (1942-). Olympia Traveller.
French novelist Pierre Rey (1930-2006) in Los Angeles. Smith-Corona.
US author Belva Plain (1915-2010), November 1989 at her home in New Jersey. Olympia SM9.
Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (1944-), 1990.
Spanish writer Juan José Millás (1946-).  Olivetti Lexikon 80.
English novelist Margaret Drabble (1939-) with husband, biographer Michael Holroyd (1935-), June 1988.
French writer Christine Féret-Fleury (1961-), February 1999. Underwood 5.
French cinema historian and writer Jean Tulard (1933-),  October, 1999.
(He also used an Underwood 315, turquoise top)
French writer Ghislain De Diesbach (1931-), France in May, 1991. Robotron.
British writer J. G. Ballard (1930 - 2009),  March 1989.
American writer and humorist Ian Frazier (1951-), 1986. Olympia Traveller.
James Lee Burke (1936-), 1996.
French author Hervé Bazin (1911-1996), Rouen, July 1988. Underwood.
French writer Jacques-Pierre Amette (1943-), 2003. Underwood. 
US musicologist Robbins Landon (1926-2009), Salzbourg, Austria, December 1990. Olivetti 82.
French novelist Léo Malet Malet (1909-1996), 1990.
US writer Russell Baker (1925-) 1980.
Atlanta journalist and publisher Ralph McGill (1898-1969), 1968.
US journalist Karen DeYoung (1950-) uses an Olivetti Lettera 32 for protection on landing at a military airstrip, Nicaragua  1978.
French scriptwriter Michel Alexandre.
Tom Wolfe (1931-), 1997.
British author Frederick Forsyth (1938-), 1970. Empire Aristocrat.
Author T.C. Boyle (1948-), Los Angeles, July 5, 1990. Olivetti Studio 44.
Elmore Leonard (1925-2013). Olivetti Lettera DL.
Hunter S.Thompson (1937-2005), Aspen, Colarado, March 1987. IBM Selectric.
Helen Gurley Brown (1922-2012) in her apartment on Central Park West, New York, January 1979.
Ian Fleming (1908-1964). Triumph.
Woody Allen (1935-) in his Fifth Avenue apartment, New York, 1979.
British composer Lionel Bart (1930-1999). Olivetti Studio 44.
Irving Wallace (1916-1990) in his office at home in Brentwood Park, California, 1969. Underwood.
English journalist and author Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990). Olympia SM9.
Sports writer Red Smith (1905-1982), left, and columnist Jimmy Breslin (1930-) cover the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston world heavyweight boxing title fight in Lewiston, Maine, 1965.
Museum dedicated to Chilean poet and writer Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) Atlantis. Underwood 3.
House of Italian writer Alberto Moravia (1907-1990),  Rome. Olivetti 82. 
William Faulkner (1897-1962). Underwood 4 at his home, Rowan Oak, Oxford, Mississippi. 
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Odd Things Typists Do

August 24, 2013, 4:49 am
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ARE WRESTLERS REAL TYPISTS?
(To paraphrase Westbrook Pegler)
In 1935 former world wrestling champion George Hackenschmidt, the "Russian Lion", took his beefy mitts off the throats of rivals and applied them to the keyboard of a typewriter. He became a "scientific author, writing treatises in London".
The caption for this photo said, "Perhaps the strangest choice of career ever made by a world champion athlete has been made by Hackenschmidt, the exponent of brawn. He has just been discovered in a London office completing a scientific work on the effects of the human cells on the brain. He believes his work, which is to be published this year, will revolutionise the study of psychology."
Georg Karl Julius Hackenschmidt was born in Dorpat (Tartu), Estonia, on August 1, 1877. A 5ft 9½in, 204lb brick outhouse with 19in biceps, a 22in neck and a 52in chest, he was the first freestyle heavyweight wrestling champion of the world. His feats of strength were astounding. He lifted a small horse off the ground and lifted 276 pounds overhead with one hand. He could reach out and grasp a 335-pound barbell, pull it to his chest from off the floor, and bench press it overhead, bridging on his neck. In 1902 he jumped 100 times over a table with his feet tied together. He was considered both the strongest and the best-developed man in the world. Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed, “If I wasn’t president of the United States, I would like to be George Hackenschmidt.” 
Having lost two of 3000 wrestling bouts, Hackenschmidt retired to pursue his interests in philosophy, physical culture and gardening. A cultured man who spoke seven languages, he was a close friend of Harry Houdini and George Bernard Shaw. He wrote several books, including Fitness and Your Self (1937), Consciousness and Character: True Definitions of Entity, Individuality, Personality, Nonentity (1937), The Way To Live In Health and Physical Fitness (1941), and The Three Memories and Forgetfulness: What They Are and What Their True Significance is in Human Life.
Throughout his life Hackenschmidt paid strict attention to his diet. In later life he consumed huge quantities of fruit, nuts and raw vegetables, as well as drinking 11 pints of milk a day. He also remained physically fit. At 56 he could jump over a 4ft 6in high board 10 times. Even through his mid-80s he would jump 50 times over a chair once a week, bench press 150 pounds and run seven miles in 45 minutes. He died in London on February 19, 1968, aged 90.
THE TYPEBAR ALSO RISES
(To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway)
Four days after her 16th birthday, Madrid typist Juanita de la Cruz became one of Spain's first female bullfighters. Born in Madrid on February 12, 1917, she fought her first calf on June 24, 1932, in Leon, and presented professionally in Córdoba on February 16, 1933.  She debuted in the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas in Madrid  on April 2, 1936. However, Franco forbid women from bullfighting on foot and Cruz left Spain in 1938 to fight in Mexico City. She continued her career in Central America until 1947, making her last appearance in Bogotá after 700 bullfights. She died of heart problems in Madrid on May 18, 1981, aged 64.
Two American women, Bette Ford and Patricia McCormick, also fought bulls in Mexico. It was not until the 1996 that a woman, Cristina Sánchez, became a full matador, but she retired three years later, citing enduring sexism from fans and her peers in the ring. Mari Paz Vega, who earned her status as a matador in 1997, was the first woman to earn that honour in a bullring in Spain. The finest torera was Conchita Cintrón, the daughter of an American mother and a Puerto Rican father who was brought up in Lima, Peru. She starred in Mexico and then took Spain by storm in 1945, before retiring from the ring in 1949.
 
SHE SPURNED THE TYPING POOL
Twenty-one-year-old London typist Agnes Nicks, of Highgate, in 1929 swam 39 miles in the Thames to set a world freshwater endurance swimming record. She swam from Teddington Lock to Waterloo Bridge and back again to Twickenham Ferry in 12 hours 53 minutes (through two full tides and two hours in dead water between tides). She swam nearly three miles further than Eileen Lee, who had held the record since 1916. 
A member of the Excelsior club, Hicks had the previous Boxing Day swam from Tottenham Bridge to London Bridge in 26-degree water. Six other girls refused to enter the water because of the wintery conditions. 
IT TAKES MUSCLE TO TYPE
Birdie Reeve was a world speed typing champion at age 16. Born in Chicago on January 16, 1907, she reached speeds of more than 200 words, or 800 letters, a minute, with a typing method devised by her father Thomas Reeve. In 1923 she set a world record of 29,000 strokes an hour using two fingers on each hand, spread out in a V formation.
She was billed in vaudeville acts as the “world’s fastest typist” and would finish her performances by putting a piece of tin in her typewriter and imitating a drum roll or the clackety-clack of a train picking up speed. Reeve was also a brilliantly gifted chess player. She later owned and operated a stenography business in Hyde Park, Chicago. She died on May 31, 1996.
Director Edwin Carewe (seated) enlisted the services of  Birdie Reeve to help him get the script for The Lady Who Lied ready on time. The film's stars, Virginia Valli and Lewis Stone, watch on.
GIVING TYPING THE BIRD
American author and dramatist Gene Fowler enjoyed having his pet parrot Chester as company when he typed a screenplay in Novemver 1937. (Coincidentally, the ad below is for Chesterfields). Fowler was born Eugene Devlan in Denver on March 8, 1890. Fowler's career had a false start in taxidermy, which he later claimed gave him a permanent distaste for red meat. After a year at the University of Colorado, he took a job with The Denver Post. His assignments included an interview with frontiersman and Wild West Show promoter Buffalo Bill Cody. Fowler established his trademark impertinence by questioning Cody about his many love affairs. Subsequently Fowler worked for the New York Daily Mirror and became newspaper syndication manager for King Features. During his years in Hollywood, Fowler was close to such celebrities as John Barrymore and W.C. Fields. One of his sons, Gene Fowler Jr (1917–1998) became a prominent Hollywood film editor whose work included It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Hang 'Em High. Fowler senior died in Los Angeles, California, on July 2, 1960.
BETWEEN A TYPEWRITER AND A HARD PLACE

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A Remington SJ Typewriter for Christmas

August 25, 2013, 3:42 am
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Plan early and maybe you'll secure one of these typewriters for Christmas. There has been a glut of Glasgow-made Remington SJ standard-size typewriters on Australian eBay lately, so much so there has to be a chance one of them may have been made at the Hillington factory at Christmas 1957. If the serial number is in the SJ 430,000-437,000 range, it will have been made at the Scottish plant (above) in the month of December that year.
One of my Remington SJs (above) sold on eBay a week ago.
My various posts on Glasgow-made Remington Rand typewriters (1949-63) led Scottish-born historian, Mary Doland, of Bairnsdale in Eastern Victoria, to contact me and offer me two wonderful photographs taken in the Hillington factory.
The one at the top of this post shows Mary's father, Jack O'Brien, foreground left, working on the production line. Like famous soccer manager Sir Alex Ferguson, Jack was a shop steward at the factory. The workers needed such solid men to represent them: Mary confirms that Remington Rand were appalling labour managers.
The O'Briens lived in the Cowcaddens in Glasgow but Mary came to Australia 41 years ago.
The union put on Christmas parties for the workers' children and here is Mary herself, "the little girl in the dark ringlets and party dress, standing on her seat in the middle of the picture. Right behind my right arm is my brother Jim, and next along after Jim is my brother Jack.  I think I was about five-years-old, and that would make it Christmas 1955 or 1956.
"Dad lost his job there when [Remington] went to Holland [where the workers were paid less].  There were about 1000 lay-offs I think.  They were a horrible company. I wish [Dad] was here to tell you how this abysmal American company treated their workers."
Mary is now an indigenous partnership facilitator with Gippsland Strategy and Partnerships, Department of Environment and Primary Industries.
I listed an SJ in perfect working condition on eBay after someone in Brisbane sold one for $44 under the false pretenses that it was a 1908 Remington 10 in "as new condition". Here is the rip-off item:
Here is a real 1908 Remington 10.
You may be able to spot one or two differences (OK, so it's not in "as new" condition):
Interestingly enough, a REAL Remington 10 (admittedly in very tatty condition) was last week offered for sale on Australian eBay and, not surprisingly, passed in at $120:
Anyway, dishonesty obviously pays, because - as Richard Polt suggested might happen - my SJ was an absolute "steal" at $30. Mind you, I did better than these two sellers - the top one (in similar condition to mine) didn't even get a bid at a mere $19.99 and the bottom one was similarly passed in, at $9.99:
So there are bargains out there (well, the top one at $20 is, anyway) and if you're lucky you might find an SJ assembled by Jack O'Brien in Glasgow at Christmas 1957. If so, here is an instruction sheet to guide you:


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Burgundy Urania Portable Typewriter: 'The Stable'

August 25, 2013, 5:53 pm
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I find it interesting that Clemens Müller advertised this 1935 model as "The Stable" - presumably reflecting its stability on the writing surface, something I have always felt is an important consideration. I can indeed vouch for the fact the Urania portable sits very stable.

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Fragments of a Typewritten Young Life

August 27, 2013, 4:15 am
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I went to my storage unit in Fyshwick today looking for something else - some small typewriters - and instead found some small typewritten fragments of a young life.
In 1965, aged 17, I was in my last year at high school and writing a weekly magazine for my mates on the Underwood Universal portable my father had given me in 1957 (I drew the cartoons, too!):
The magazine was considered good enough to be put in the school library:
In April 1966, just after my 18th birthday, my sister married and moved with her husband from Greymouth to Auckland.
I missed her, but by the time I wrote this letter to her in August (on my then still brand-new Olivetti Lettera 32), someone else was filling the gap in my life:
They say the first love is the one great love of your life. This was most certainly the case with me:
It lasted a lot longer than a month or so. Reading this letter today really moved me, especially the story of the letters Margot wrote to me back then in French, which I had to get a colleague to translate - much to everyone's amusement ( I won't go into details):


In 1969, aged 21, I moved from New Zealand to Sydney, Australia, and found a new love, Frances Avis Houlihan, a ballet dancer:
I bought myself a Smith-Corona electric portable, and Fran and I used it to write poetry to one another.
I'll only show you one of my immature efforts (Fran's are much better, but a little closer to the bone):

In late 1972, aged 24, I moved to Ireland, yet again armed with an Olivetti Lettera 32:
Me, far right, at Okara Park, Whangarei, New Zealand, May 1976, covering an Ireland rugby team tour match with Ned Van Esbeck and the late Sean Diffley.
From 1975, every chance I got I went to Spain, following in Hemingway's footsteps, from Madrid to the Costa del Sol:
Mijas, 1977

Fremantle, Western Australia, 1979
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Beaucourt (Japy) Script Portable Typewriter: A Revamp

August 28, 2013, 2:11 am
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The Late Manson Whitlock - Typewriter Maestro: A Pictorial Tribute

August 28, 2013, 4:20 pm
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John Lambert in New Haven, Connecticut, has just let me know about the sad passing of Manson Whitlock, at the age of 96. John directed me to a story in the New Haven Registerhere.
As soon as I can, I will publish some of John's stories about his experiences with Manson. In the meantime, here is a pictorial tribute. These photos were taken just over a year ago:
















































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Vale Manson Hale Whitlock (1917-2013) - Master Typewriter Man

August 29, 2013, 5:39 am
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MANSON HALE WHITLOCK
Born Bethany, Connecticut,
February 21, 1917;
Died Bethany, Connecticut,
August 28, 2013, aged 96
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Research, photos,
photocopying and scans
by his friend, typewriter collector
JOHN R. LAMBERT,
of New Haven, Connecticut

Operating from a bicycle shop, Manson Whitlock's father, Clifford Everett Hale Whitlock, started the family bookshop business in New Haven in 1900, aged just 15, and in 1910 branched out to sell and rent typewriters. 
1910
1911
In 1912 he acquired the New Haven franchise for Oliver typewriters. The Yale Daily News Pictorial Supplement in 1928 said:
Yesterday John Lambert learned that his friend and typewriter repairer Manson Whitlock had died, aged 96. The news came not long after John had stopped by the Whitlock home in rural Bethany, Connecticut, at the request of Manson's son, Bill. Bill had asked John to pick up a couple of still-unrepaired small typewriters that Mr Whitlock had only last month confidently expected to fix, "just as soon as he could escape the convalescent home".
"Yet," wrote John, "he looked so small and frail". When John returned from Maine on Tuesday, he found a telephone message from Mr Whitlock's grandson Dale, saying that he and his uncle and cleaned out the York Street, New Haven, office and had brought his grandfather home and hired a hospice nurse.  "I'm so sorry I did not get one more chance to say goodbye," wrote John, "as the times I had visited Mr Whitlock at 'the Willows' he had seemed in good spirits, determined and resolved to return to his shop."
One of the last jobs Mr Whitlock did for John was to convert his prized 1952 'dunkel rot' [dark red]  Gossen Tippa from a German keyboard to QWERTY. "My Tippa insisted that it was an English QWERTY model trapped in a German QWERTZ configuration, so I was just trying to facilitate its liberation and fulfillment. I left it with Mr Whitlock on a Friday. I received a telephone message from Mr Whitlock the following Monday to say that it was ready. He told me he had gone in on Sunday to do the job because he would be uninterrupted. The tab? $30.
"But I'm sure you understand that the cost is not the attraction; I'd pay admission just to be in Mr Whitlock's presence.
"He told me he doesn't particularly like doing this sort of work but he said he'd do it for me.
"Many keys stuck and the slug on the 'a' key did not leave any impression at all, even though I could hear solid contact with the platen. Mr Whitlock took the typebar into his aged hands and applied some pressure to bend the typebar. Momentarily, I was horrified and then, almost instantaneously, I thought, 'I'm watching a master who knows just what is needed to cure the typewriter's ills.' Almost magically, an 'a' appeared on the sheet of paper I'd left in the machine. I left it with Mr Whitlock for major cleaning and the second 'QWERTZ-ectomy', or German-to-English makeover, and now it's my mini-jewel.
"Mr Whitlock always reminds me that the large typewriters were the easiest to type on and the best quality because compromises had to be made to make small typewriters.
"He inspires me and I just love him."
Above is what John called the "odd" tool Mr Whitlock used when replaced typeslugs.
One of the first jobs John had Mr Whitlock do was on his "barely pre-70s version of the Olympia SM9 ... perhaps about as good as they ever got. I know many people on the web praise the SM9, but more important to me was the high praise it received from Mr Whitlock. When I first took my SM9 De Luxe in for maintenance, Mr Whitlock's first comment was that it was 'among the best ever made' (although he added that, generally, the Olympia desktop model are superior machines to the heavy portables and that the heavy portables are superior to the light ones).
"I know Mr Whitlock has never used the Internet or a computer and doesn't intend to, so I know his opinion is not influenced by anything anyone has ever said on the Internet; it's based purely on his 80 years of experience repairing  typewriters. I am not seeking the 'holy grail' of the finest typewriter ever - one of the best is fine with me." 
Later John had Mr Whitlock fix John's blue and gray 1962 Torpedo 18B. The margin stops did not work, but Mr Whitlock restored them to function "for an embarrassingly low invoice of $10.75.  He declared it to have a 'nice, snappy action' and, as usual, guaranteed his work against everything except misspelling."
The original book shop, in 1900
Before expanding to selling and renting typewriters, in 1908 Mr Whitlock's father, Clifford Everett Hale Whitlock (born Norwalk, Connecticut, April 14,1885; died Bethany, October 2, 1979) took out a lease on the building that would for most of the next decade house Whitlock's Bookshop.
1916
In 1917 he incorporated the business and moved it into new, larger quarters on Elm Street,  about a block from where Elm becomes Broadway (at York Street). This building burned down on Christmas Eve 1943.
Manson Whitlock was in military service at the time - he enlisted in Fort Devens on January 20, 1942, six weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (listing himself as a typist and stenographer). Manson's brother Reverdy Robert Hale Whitlock (May 27, 1913-April 8, 2011) took over the family business, in a rebuilt store, in the late 1940s. Reverdy, who had attended Yale, became the head of local cultural institutions such as what used to be known as the New Haven Colony Historical Society and the Preservation Trust.  It was Reverdy who pared Whitlock's Bookstore down to a rare books-only store. Manson also collected and restored cars.
Manson's other brothers - Gilbert Hale Whitlock (November 12, 1915-March 22, 2004), Clifford Everett Hale Whitlock Jr (known as Everett, June 28, 1912-September 12, 2003) stayed in nearby rural Bethany, where the Whitlocks had farmland and ran what was known as Whitlock's Book Barn. John Frederick Whitlock (September 17, 1918-August 28, 1996) was a research chemist with Uniroyal in Woodbridge. Another brother, Norman Whitlock (1924-1950) died young. 
The Whitlock family were originally from Wilton in Fairfield County - Manson's grandparents Luther Grumman Whitlock (1852-1893) and Virginia-born Ida V. Hale Whitlock (1854-) had owned and run Whitlock's School. 
Wilton Bulletin, 1941
Manson's aunt Genevieve Hale Whitlock (1875-1903) was a pioneering female journalist:
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1990
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2013


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Good Grief! Snoopy and His Typewriter

August 29, 2013, 9:24 pm
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I've never made a secret of the appeal that Snoopy and his little blue (or sometimes red) portable typewriter have held for me for more than half a century now. See my post from 2½ years ago, "Happiness is a Warm Typewriter", here.
While Mark Twain might have been the world's most famous typist of the latter part of the 19th Century, and Ernest Hemingway the most famous of the first half of the 2oth Century, the honour definitely belonged to that other great American novelist, Snoopy, from the 1960s onwards.
Is there anyone who doesn't know the opening sentence of a Snoopy novel? How many writers have appeared with their typewriters on first-day covers? Not even Tennessee Williams has been captured this often at a typewriter. Below is but a part of my ever-growing Snoopy and his typewriter collection:
I even appeared on TV wearing a Snoopy and his typewriter tie:


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Smallest Typewriter Collection

August 30, 2013, 2:50 am
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175 tiny typewriters. The owners of this little collection, Mr and Mrs Tynietype, are seen in the first image, sitting on their sofa with their Lab Nip. Mr Tynietype is holding the Blick 5 he calls Tuck.

Below, the world's smallest Blickensderfer 
(held by the world's smallest Blick owner).


The rest of the Tynietype family, the three Misses Tynietype, Grandma Tynietype and the Tynietype cat Nap.








Ernie Pyle Tynietype


















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Typewriter Ribbon Tins and Packets

August 30, 2013, 6:58 pm
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'The Best Offer'& The Smith Premier No 10 Typewriter

September 1, 2013, 12:48 am
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The Best Offer's Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore gives British-born actor Jim Sturgess some pointers on what to convincingly poke at with a stick under a Smith Premier No 10 typewriter, before shooting a scene in the movie.
Geoffrey Rush seems keen on movies which feature fineold typewriters. He was seen using an Oliver in The King's Speech:
The role Jim Sturgess plays (that of Robert) is apparently that of a "riparatutto", a skillful all-round mechanic - "surrounded by old typewriters, mechanical toys and the like." The carriage has been removed from the Smith Premier in this publicity shot:
Typing on a Smith Premier without a carriage aside, I found this movie aptly fitted the Urdu word "goya" - that is, "the suspension of disbelief that can occur, often through good storytelling". One reviewer wasn't prepared to cut the movie some slack and experience a bit of "goya" herself (most reviews are very favourable). She wrote:
"While Rush seems to have some fun devolving from stiff, pompous, starched snob to sweaty old fool in love, Sturgess is just confoundingly miscast or misdirected into a performance so odd that it actually warps our idea of the film's location (never very clear anyway) - wait, are we in Italy, as the buildings suggest, or the East End of London? And would a friendly Lothario with a genius for mechanics be able to make the kind of wage from a shop in which he appears to mostly mend old typewriters for free (and refuse cheques from people) to be able to dine in these improbably fancy restaurants?" (Actually, Rush, as Virgil Oldman, shouts Robert and his girlfriend dinner at this "fancy restaurant" - I thought that bit was pretty obvious!)
At least Sturgess looked a little more competent poking about under the Smith Premier No 10 with a stick (with Tornatore's coaching) than Australian actor Yahoo Serious (I'm serious, that was his name) did when wielding a screwdriver near a typewriter in the 2000 Aussie movie Mr Accident: 
Come to think on it, Yahoo looks a bit more like me when I take the mask off a typewriter!
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Typewriter Update, August 2013

September 2, 2013, 1:22 am
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Spot the cigar: Hemingway, 1944
STUPID TYPEWRITER NOTIONS
One of the silliest pieces about typewritersI have read in the past six months appeared in a New York Post books blog "Page Views" last week. Written by Tausif Noor, it began, "Those who long for the days when Hemingway would eke out novels at his desk with the aid of a cigar and whiskey should flock to Northeastern University, where a collection of typewriters belonging to famous writers is currently on display at the 360 Gallery."
Did Hemingway smoke cigars? No. Did he ever smoke? Yes, briefly - Russian cigarettes during World War I. Was he ever seen smoking - anything - at a typewriter? No.
As for the whiskey, Hemingway may have written about whiskey, but did he drink it? Yes, occasionally, especially while on safari "to take the edge off so I would not be nervous”. Did he ever drink whiskey - or any alcohol - while typing?  No.
Where do people get these ideas? Do they ever bother to check whether Hemingway did write with the aid of cigars and whiskey? Apparently not. More importantly, why is it necessary to try to evoke an image of Hemingway at a typewriter smoking a cigar and drinking whiskey anyway? Why can't he simply type?
Wot? No whiskey?
A far more considered article appeared in Forbes last year, written by Mary Claire Kendall. In it, Hemingway's son Patrick rightly poured scorn on the very silly movie Hemingway & Gellhorn. Kendall quoted the younger Hemingway as saying, “Well, the truth is the one health measure Hemingway did follow was never - never - to smoke in any form. But, it’s interesting to think that they equate an intellectual with a cigar smoker. That’s their limited point of view.” Furthermore, as for Hemingway's drinking, Patrick said, “He certainly wasn’t as big a drunk as Faulkner or Fitzgerald. They were both truly much more alcoholics than Hemingway ever was!” When he was writing, Patrick added, Hemingway would never drink, working, as Charles Scribner III said in Ernest Hemingway: Wrestling with Life, “like a monk in fasting”.
The very same day the Noor piece appeared, Tom Landon answered, in part a question about an IBM Selectric in The Roanoke Times by writing, "And it's hard to imagine Hemingway writing The Old Man and the Sea on anything but a battered 1940s Royal while standing at his upright desk in Havana with a bottle of gin and a cigar beside it."
So now it's gin, not whiskey!? Make up your uneducated minds!
See the battered Royal
But why must Hemingway's typewriters always be "battered"? My impression is that Hemingway took very good care of his typewriters - especially the Royal portables he used in later life.  His first typewriter, the Corona 3 given to him on his 22nd birthday, in 1921, by his future first wife Hadley Richardson, was clearly well cared for, even being taken to a Parisian repairman in February 1922 after being knocked over by his ‘femme de menage’. As Jack Dempsey and Charles Bean well knew, it takes a big bang to damage a Corona 3.
Rusty keys in Soboroff Collection? I think not.
Noor, by the way, ended his item by referring to "each rusty key offering sage council from its previous owner." I really wonder whether any of the typewriters Steve Soboroff has on display at 360 Galley has rusty keys. My bet would be a very firm - "No!"
These assumptions remind me of that silly Jacek Nowak. photo shot to illustrate a feature article about Hollywood screenwriters in Vanity Fair last March:
The hat? Ridiculous. The cigar? Maybe it's a Hemingway leftover. The decanter? No way. The Robotron portable typewriter? Unbelievable! 
Speaking of which (things unbelieveable, that is), does this custom-made crocodile-skin Remington Noiseless portable typewriter, for sale in the US for $7500, strike you as somehow strangely Hemingwayesque? It does me:
ATTACK OF THE DOG
From New York magazine
One of my own former editors, Col Allan, has spent a bit of time in the Northern Territory (he married a Territorian, Sharon Bowditch, daughter of the late hard-drinking NT News editor Jim Bowditch), so he should know a thing of two about crocodile attacks.
I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised by any of the nonsense which appears under the banner of the New York Post and Vanity Fair. The latter is edited by Grayson Carter, who is a friend and admirer of Allan, now editor of the former.
However Allan, long known as "Rupert Murdoch's attack dog", is no admirer or friend of the truth. This coming Saturday we will have a Federal Election in Australia, and Murdoch has let his attack dog off his lead and sent him back to his native country. The purpose was unashamedly (Murdoch or Allan know shame? Never!) to use Murdoch's Australian newspapers to attack Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The resulting, unspeakably horrendous onslaught, laughingly (though a very sick joke) referred to by News Ltd as "journalism", has unquestionably descended to the lowest point in the 210-year history of Australian newspapers.
Disgusting is too gentle a word for what slimebags Murdoch and Allan are doing to the democratic process in Australia.
How the dog has turned. As Lloyd Grove pointed out in his 2007 New York magazine exposé of Allan's antics, in 2003 Rudd, during an official visit to New York, "let Allan lure him to the East Side gentlemen’s club Scores, where he got so blotto he allegedly manhandled the strippers".
ABBOTT 'ELP US!
If Murdoch and Allan get their disgraceful way, by Saturday night we will have a new prime minister, Tony Abbott. I am reminded of the typewritten The South Polar News, written in 1910 during Robert Falcon Scott's second expedition to the South Pole. The Abbott referred to by the word "Abbottelped" was expedition member, Royal Navy Petty Officer George Percy Abbott, after whom Abbott Peak on Ross Island is named: 
The typewriting was apparently done by Scott himself, and the illustrations by Edward 'Uncle Bill' Wilson.
Expedition survivor, assistant zoologist Apsley Cherry-Garrard, is seen here at the typewriter in 1911, during Scott's last expedition:
ROTTEN PEACHES STORY
Peaches, still aged 15, typewrote this letter to her "prince charming", "Daddy" Browning in May 1926. The letter was later introduced into the court record in New York. "Daddy said, 'Sit down and write me a love letter'," Peaches testified, "And so I did."
Perhaps one of the lowest points in US newspaper history came with the sordid Peaches Browning Affair in 1926. Frances Belle Heenan (1910-1956) married New York real estate mogul Edward West "Daddy" Browning (1875–1934) on her 16th birthday - he was 51. The rocky, short-lived marriage became one of the most sensational scandals of the Roaring 20s. "It is often cited in journalism history texts as a sign of the excesses of some newspapers during the era", says Wikipedia. Six months into "wedded bliss", Peaches "tried to obtain a divorce, and the White Plains, New York trial drew intense coverage by New York City tabloid newspapers such as the Daily News, the rival Daily Mirror and the more louche EveningGraphic, which published a notorious composograph of the couple.


"The story was soon picked up by the national newspapers, and the couple became well known in US popular culture of the time. Among the notable aspects of the case were Peaches' allegations of odd behaviour by her husband, including the fact that he kept a honking African goose in their bedroom. The phrase 'Don't be a goof', which Daddy allegedly used as an insult to Peaches, came into national vogue, and later turned up in the lyrics of the song On Your Toes by Rodgers and Hart. The judge accepted Daddy's version of the facts, ruling that Peaches had abandoned her husband without cause, and released him from the marriage. Peaches' notoriety gained her a career in vaudeville."
TYPEWRITING UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF LSD
In 1966 a pictorial essay was done in San Francisco of university students under the influence of Lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as acid.
Mention of using LSD in student days reminds me that I chanced upon a short, interesting documentary on the life of Steve Jobs last night. There was much talk of style over substance, which made me think of typewriters. But just five days earlier I had finally succumbed to 21st century technology when my very basic mobile phone dropped dead and I decided to replace it with an iPhone - my first-ever venture into the core of Apple. That same day I happened to be at my storage unit in Fyshwick and came across my very first mobile phone, bought in Brisbane in 1995. It weighs (at 3kg) three times the iPhone!
From a brick to a feather
WRITE SAID FRED
THEN: On an Empire Aristocrat back in The Day of the Jackal days.
Frederick Forsyth had another book, his 20th, published this week. It's called The Kill List. In an interview to promote his work, published in The Hindu Sunday Magazine, Forsyth said he still used a typewriter.
The Kill List features a hunt for a ruthless terrorist code-named The Preacher. He is being hunted by The Tracker, a former US marine. Apart from the considerable resources from the government, The Tracker is also helped by The Hacker to breach some of the most secure systems around the world (I'm not making this stuff up!). 
A few questions and answers from the interview:
Q: Do you rely on the Internet for information? A: No. There are too many inaccuracies. Also there is too much information that takes hours to go through. I prefer person-to-person interactions. I would rather go to an expert and ask what I want. Are the experts accessible? It is surprising how approachable people are if you ask them nicely!
Q: You mentioned, in one of your interviews, that you do not write on the computer. A: I prefer words on paper rather than on the screen. I would rather turn pages than scroll up or down. When I sit in front of my typewriter, I have the story pretty much in my head and then I just type it out. Any corrections, I write neatly with my pen, which the girls at the publisher can easily understand. Call me a dinosaur, but I’d like to see someone hack into mytypewriter! 

MUCH LATER: With wedges.
INTERESTING TYPEWRITER SALES
For me, the most interesting sale of the month was this "ergonomically-designed" Rheinmetall portable, which was sold from Poland through German eBay. 
It attracted worldwide interest and after 33 frantic bids sold for 907 euros, or $1343. 
Leonhard Dingwerth explains about the "thumb switch machine":
The most surprising sale on Australian eBay was this Citizen X3, which sold for a staggering $187.50 after 20 bids:
Conversely, this pink Olympia SM7 only fetched $51 after two bids. Maybe the shipping cost from Mandurah in Western Australia put off some potential buyers:
That the SM7 received so little interest was all the more surprising given this poorly re-painted SM9 fetched a way-over-the-top $93:
I was interested to see that one German seller received 129 euros ($190) and 57 euros ($84) respectively for these two Gorma Kolibris (the bottom one is a Junior):
This green Torpedo Blue Bird sold in Australia for $157.50:
My lingering embarrassment over once having tried this myself was eased slightly today when I saw someone in Victoria is trying to sell 12 typewriters in one lot - but in this case the starting price is a very high $250.
Confusion continues to reign, with a Silver-Seiko Royal 200 originally listed as having been made by Olivetti in Italy ("but that's what the case says") and a Remington Quiet-Riter listed as Japanese made:

MISS TYPEWRITER, AUGUST

Also ran: Suki Waterhouse
Barred by the judges: Carolo Mollino's 1963 "Untitled". Carlo didn't give the image a name, but he initialed the buttocks ...

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The Fender Stratocaster, the Yellow Triumph Spitfire and the Pistachio Olivetti Lettera 22 Portable Typewriter

September 2, 2013, 9:04 pm
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Striking It Rich On A Typewriter

September 3, 2013, 5:46 pm
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The July 31, 1964, edition of LIFE magazine ran this article by Richard Schickel:
(*I do apologise if this is difficult to read, but I'm afraid it's the best I can do. I've had to chop it into sections and bump the images up to try to make it as readable in this form as possible.)


The way to do it: Harold Robbins in 1967
Skipping along: James Michener gets the "Gertrude" prize for Tales of the South Pacific in 1947.
Irving Wallace 1969
Margaret Mitchell
Robert Ruark 1944
Leon Uris
James Michener
Harold Robbins 1978
James Michener
James Michener
Leon Uris 1986
Robert Ruark



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Ionian Club Typewriter Presentation: 'A Favourite of Fortune'

September 4, 2013, 10:53 pm
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I gave a typewriter presentation for the Ionian Club at the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra today. Since the Ionian Club is a "friendship club for women on the move" and is to a large degree made up of businesswomen and female executives, I decided to narrow the talk down to the significant influence of women on the early success of the typewriter. The presentation was titled "A Favourite of Fortune" (see below).
In particular, I focused on Margaret Longley and Mary Orr (above) and their part in making typewritingthe means of widespread financial emancipation for young women in the latter part of the 19th century. In this, I was greatly aided by Peter Weil's excellent PowerPoint presentation, Typewriters and the Cultural Construction of Gender in Industrial Societies.
Courtesy of Peter Weil
Given the difficulties I now face with transporting typewriters, I took along only three (a Remington 2, a Caligraph 2 and a Blickensderfer 5, the last of which I can never resist for presentations) - plus my mock Sholes & Glidden. But these proved more than adequate for the occasion.
The event was a huge success - with, as unusual, the ink-laden Blick the unqualified star of the show.


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One Million Words of Pulp Fiction a Year for 15 Years! Walter Brown Gibson, his Corona Typewriter and The Shadow

September 5, 2013, 5:07 pm
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 I am deeply grateful to Richard Polt
for tracking down this image for me.
*I think this should be "Lamont Cranston"
Walter Brown Gibson was born in Germantown, Philadelphia, on September 12, 1897. He was best known for his work on the pulp fiction character The Shadow. Gibson, under the pen-name Maxwell Grant, wrote more than 300 novel-length Shadow stories, writing up to 10,000 words a day to satisfy public demand during the character's golden age in the 1930s and 1940s. He also authored five of the 12 novels in the Biff Brewster juvenile series of the 1960s (under the pen name Andy Adams). He was married to Litzka R. Gibson, also a writer, and the couple lived in New York state. With Litzka, Gibson co-wrote The Complete Illustrated Book of the Psychic Sciences (1966), a 404-page book which explains how to practise many popular forms of divination and fortune-telling, including astrology, tasseography, graphology and numerology. 
Gibson graduated from Colgate University in 1920 and began working for newspapers in Philadelphia as a reporter and crossword-puzzle writer, specifically for the Philadelphia North American and later The Evening Ledger. In 1928 Gibson was asked by Macfadden Publications to edit True Strange Stories. In 1931, after submitting some crime stories for Detective Story Magazine, he was asked by publishers Street & Smith to produce the first print adventure of The Shadow, who at that stage was merely a voice, the mysterious narrator of the Street & Smith-sponsored Detective Stories radio drama. It was Gibson who created all the mythos and characterisation of The Shadow, including his alter ego of wealthy playboy Lamont Cranston. The popularity of the radio show's narrator inspired Street & Smith to translate the character into print, and Gibson was duly asked to produce 75,000 words for the first quarterly issue of The Shadow pulp magazine. This first Shadow story was published on April 1, 1931, just nine months after the character's appearance on the airwaves. Six months later, The Shadow was headlining a new radio show, and his pulp adventures, launched as a quarterly publication, within months was on a twice-monthly schedule, with Gibson producing the equivalent of 24 novels a year. Described as a "compulsive writer," Gibson is estimated to have written, at his peak output, 1,680,000 words a year and at least 282 of the 325 Shadow novels. As the Shadow character spun off into a daily syndicated comic strip, monthly comic books, movies and parlour games, Gibson went with him, scripting many of those comic book stories and the syndicated newspaper daily, as well as serving as consultant on the very popular Sunday night radio show.Gibson also wrote more than 100 on magic, psychic phenomena, true crime, mysteries, rope knots, yoga, hypnotism and games. He served as a ghost writer for books on magic and spiritualism by Harry Houdini. Gibson wrote the comic books and radio drama Blackstone, the Magic Detective. Gibson also introduced the famous "Chinese linking rings" trick in America, and invented the "Nickels to Dimes" trick that is still sold in magic stores to this day. 
Gibson died in Kingston, New York, on December 6, 1985.
 The artist appears to have mistaken a Royal for a Corona.


"It's called Corona-itis"
"This pink quill will never do ... must get a Corona typewriter!"
 "Ah, coming to the end of another line ..."
 "There's a bloody typo on line four"
"Don't go out typing tonight, dear ..."

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