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The Affectation of Using Typewriters

July 30, 2014, 11:49 pm
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affectation
afɛkˈteɪʃ(ə)n/
noun:
. behaviour, speech, or writing that is pretentious and designed to impress.
. a studied display of real or pretended feeling.
M. Emmet Walsh at a Royal Arrow portable typewriter, as 'The Writer' in Calvary.
"Hi all. I've been interested in securing some sort of typewriter for myself for a few years now, just don't really know where to look. I also have no clue what I'm looking for. I just want the ol' time, key-punching experience on my escritoire. There's nothing romantic about tapping it out on a MacBook keyboard, I'm sure most of you'll hear me on that."
"You need to decide if you want a manual for street cred, or an electric one that can actually be used."
"Though I know a lot of people who would disagree, there's nothing romantic about suffering with a typewriter (and you will suffer) when better technology exists. Using a typewriter is more of an affectation at this point, unless you grew up typing on them and it's a natural thing for you. Just having one to have one is cute, but it will end up being a dusty knick-knack on your escritoire a month after you get it, I'd bet money on that."
"When old people die the family will sometimes sell the old useless artifacts and that will usually include a typewriter or two."
"Here in Portland I saw at least a dozen at yard or garage sales, and even one or two at some of the more hipster-friendly thrift shops. I wanted one a few years back before I moved out here because I was reading about Hunter Thompson dragging his all around the country chasing after the Beats ... but then I used one and hated the experience the whole time. Well, not the WHOLE time. But most of it."
"As a bumbling fool when it comes to techno-stuff, I like typing something & it not disappearing if I hit the wrong key ... or lose a disc or whatever. I started writing on a typewriter about 15 years ago, and I still do quite a few first drafts that way. But I do the 2nd drafts on a computer, as the ease, in terms of editing, can't be overstated. I also like typing letters on the old beast. Servicing it can be tricky and expensive (if it's broken), and you can't find new ribbons at Wal*Mart ... but I don't mind the inconvenience."
"I have one that weighs about four metric tonnes, but aside from her big booty I do love the way she spreads it on the page. Of course, as others have said, she can be a real pain in the arse at times. For example when six hammers (is that what you call 'em?) stick together, or when you have to hit that troublesome key 10 times to get the ink clear, only to end up with a messy blob. I find using a typer makes the writing process more physical (if you have an old beast like me), but in the end I always go back to my Mac as she may not be as much fun, but she is easy. Mine came from a church sale. The old dears said to me 'It doesn't have the Internet young man'. It turns out, after trying to connect it to my wireless, they were right."
"A typewriter? What! That would be like buying a vinyl when you could pick up the MP3 version of the same album! Geez!"
"I was in a lame anti-technology phase for awhile and I thought that learning to use a typewriter would somehow lend me some kind of authenticity. Of course, it doesn't work that way. But I let the hip romance of nostalgia sway me, and I bought a few. They are incredibly annoying if you're accustomed to a computer, but in and of themselves they work fine."
-Bukowski.net forum exchange, late December 2009
"I know some will see using a typewriter as pure writerly affectation but I would argue that, while I fit the hipster stereotype in some ways (the thick glasses, the coffee drinking, the book cover T-shirts) my typewriters are more than the ultimate hipster accessory."
- Dan Powell, Reverting to Type
I’ve gone back  to typewriting. On my typewriter. I know, I know. This affectation has puzzled friends and given my wife a rattling in the ears. But I keep finding new reasons to pursue it."
- William Sutton, author of the Campbell Lawless Victorian Mysteries,
on his Razon's portable, one month ago.
"Hipsters, however, are apparently too young to realise what a pain manual typewriters really were. But then, hipsters never met an affectation too ridiculous to misappropriate. They’ve now embraced typewriters, bless their hearts. - Anon.
"There was a guy I knew in college who used to live in the apartment above me. He wore Ascot ties, smoked a pipe, and wrote all his school papers on an ancient typewriter instead of a computer. The typewriter reverberated through his metal desk into the ceiling of my bedroom causing a constant WHAPPITY WHAPPITY WHAP to echo through my room whenever he was writing. The day I went up to his place to ask him to please accept my offer of felt pads to put under the legs of his desk, he answered the door in a smoking jacket holding a brandy snifter. I wanted to punch him in the face. Every time I see a young dude smoking a pipe in public, I assume it's secretly my typewriter guy wearing a disguise, and I want to punch him in the face."- Anon.
"Why would you bring a typewriter to a coffee shop? Seriously, you actually lugged an inconvenient object like that to look cool? Idiots."- Anon.
"There’s a certain charm in the idea that one of the most successful post-modern novelists [Paul Auster] holds fast to such anachronistic methods  ... For people above a certain age — Auster was born in 1947 — the act of writing is ideally accompanied by the clacking of the typewriter keys, the bell that sounds at the end of the line, the click-crash of the lever being pushed  as the roller shifts across and up. Nevertheless, there’s also a large part of affectation in remaining faithful to these old technologies — affectation that spills over into the correspondence [with J.M.Coetzee] itself."- Mitchell Abidor
"I'm in the typewriter-for-first-drafts gang. I use a Remington Quiet Riter and I have an old Underwood around here somewhere. I suppose there is a bit of affectation to it, but I really do think I write better on an old manual typewriter. I don't get as distracted, I don't self-edit as much, and I sure as hell enjoy the process more." - Anon
In my post on the brilliant Irish movie Calvary, I referred to The Priest describing The Writer's use of a Royal Arrow portable typewriter in the isolated County Sligo hamlet of Easkey (population 240) as an "affectation". The exiled American replies to this comment by saying his whole life has been an affectation.
The conversation is a warm-hearted one, despite the fact The Priest has come to deliver an old pistol, which The Writer has requested so he can shot himself. And it would seem that no ill-intent was meant by The Priest's casual observation on the use of typewriters. Indeed, as The Priest leaves The Writer's cottage, he offers a fulsome compliment on the M. Emmet Walsh character's writing ability.
There can be no doubt about John Michael McDonagh's assertion here, one that a real scriptwriter can afford to put forward. Using a typewriter does not a writer make; pretending otherwise, to one's self or to others, is affectation, pure and simple. Anyone going through the mere motions of typewriting, and thereby calling themselves a writer, is just kidding themselves. It's the typewritten that counts, not the typewriter.
For all that, the Calvary exchange got me thinking, perhaps for the first time, about this suggestion that some people today do use typewriters as no more than an affectation. A bit ironic, really, since when the typewriter was introduced in 1874, some people considered it was affectatious to type a personal letter instead of handwriting it.
From Law in an Era of Smart Technology, by Susan Brenner (2007)
"Ah to be sure though Father Lavelle, I'm writtin' the great American novel in Sligo in a cursive font, and that ain't affectatious at all, at all ..."
Initially, it was difficult for me to get my head around the notion of pretentious typing, or owning typewriters in order to create the impression of being a writer. 
But then I began to sense, from various requests and encounters, that perhaps such things are more prevalent than I might previously have thought. If there is a consensus to be had from the quotations above, it would be that "hipsters" with typewriters are generally thought to be inclined toward affectation.
Personally I believe I belong to that category outlined in the Bukowski.net exchange as one who "grew up typing on them and it's a natural thing ..."
Still, when I first bought a vintage portable typewriter, an Imperial Good Companion at a bric-a-brac shop in Moruya some 14 years ago, my sole intention was to put it on display and not use it. It just looked too good on display and too good to use.
Around 1499 typewriters later, I can safely say that only two - a Torpedo 18 and an Underwood Universal (from an auction in Chicago) - have come into my possession looking so perfect, in such pristine condition, seemingly untouched and unused, that I have been afraid to ever type with them. They have all been displayed, and the other 1498 have all been used. Some more than others, some because they were better to type with than others. Some don't look perfect, but are great to use nonetheless. The more one types, the more one understands typewriters and their foibles, and learns to appreciate them for what joys they all offer.
As I got into my serious collecting, I was guided along the way by Sydney politician Richard Amery.
Richard had a pronounced influence on me and my attitude toward owning and using typewriters in the 21st Century. Richard could be classed as much more a user than a collector, though his collection runs to more than 120 typewriters. More to the point, there is not a single trace of affectation about him. Though he has family connections with Barnsley in South Yorkshire, Richard is quintessentially Australian: laconic, laid back, as honest as the day is long and totally devoid of bull***t. The suggestion that he would seen as affectatious in having and using typewriters in his parliamentary office, his electoral office or at his home, would seem as ridiculous to him as Barnsley repeating its 1912 FA Cup final triumph over West Bromwich Albion.
To be honest, I don't think I've ever encountered anyone, at least not in person, who uses a typewriter as an affectation, so the idea remains pretty foreign to me, too. What I have encountered, and found decidedly distasteful, are people who express an interest in typewriters, but whose only real interest is in acquiring them to sell at a sizeable profit.
Online encounters with would-be buyers is a different matter. When I am approached by someone who wants a typewriter with a cursive font, and only a cursive font (no other type of typewriter will do) I do find myself wondering. Maybe it's just my prejudice against the cursive font, but it simply doesn't add up for me.
If you handed in a copy written with a cursive font to an editor or Linotype operator, you'd have been told go back and rewrite it on a 'proper' typewriter.
I do try to respond as positively and helpfully as I can to the vast majority of the requests I receive. However, when someone writes asking for typewriters that are specifically: "1. A Olivetti 22 in pink with italic font; 2. A Smith-Corona with vertical scripts font; 3. A Royal with the spencerian font" (I'm not making any of this up, someone really has asked me for help in finding these typewriters) I draw the line. What would other Typospherians make of such a request? My guess is that such bizarre orders are taken first, then typewriters are somehow found to meet them.
But, overwhelmingly, I am left asking myself: What the hell is the Spencerian font??? (Don't answer, I can actually hand write in Spencerian Penmanship. I'm just wondering whether any typewriter has ever been made with a Spencerian font.) Seriously, is this person for real, or just having me on?
A typewriter using Spencerian letters is, I suppose, possible. Just look at these specialised type slugs, some so deep and wide they are cut to fit in beside one another:
One thing I do know for sure. This person is not into typewriters, she's into the affectation of typewriters. And I'm really not interested in going there.
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Typewriters For Sale

August 3, 2014, 7:09 am
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These won't be listed on eBay. No PayPal account, payment by bank deposit:
Oliver Courier - $100. Cream with green keys. Imported from England. Has case.
Erika 5 (later version) - $150. Very unusual bilingual Klaczko keyboard (Bulgarian-English). For details and history of this machine, see here  and here.
Royal portable - $150. Shiny black. Types very well.
Erika 5 (first version) - $150. Imported from Germany. This is the same model as my brilliant Bijou four-bank, but has a QWERTZ keyboard.
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War, Women and Typewriters

August 3, 2014, 7:49 pm
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Balmain, Sydney-born Millicent Irene Henley (1887-) at a Remington typewriter in London at the outbreak of World War One. Miss Henley, the eldest daughter of Australian politician and building contractor Sir Thomas Henley, was working in the office of the Australian Comforts Fund shipping and transport department.
Britain declared war on Germany on this day, August 4, in 1914. Australia and New Zealand, not once consulted by the "Mother Country" about events in Europe leading to the conflict, were automatically dragged into the madness of a global massacre, one which would claim more than 16 million lives. The day after Britain became involved, the first shots fired in anger by British Empire forces in World War One were fired in Australia, by the Royal Australian Garrison Artillery at Fort Nepean in Victoria. The German merchant ship Pfalz, a 6557-ton steamer operated by Norddeutscher Lloyd, was heading out of Port Phillip Bay at 12.10am when news of Britain's declaration reached the fort, with orders to "stop her or sink her". Battery shots from one of the fort's six-inch Mk VII guns crossed the bows of the Pfalz, forcing the ship to surrender. After its arrest, the Pfalz was requisitioned for the Royal Australian Navy and refitted as a troop ship, the HMT Boorara. In 1919, it was used to repatriate Australian troops from England.
Renamed the Boorara.
Among the first Australians to became more directly involved in the war, in Europe, were women - typists, nurses and nurses with typewriters.
Thomas Henley is on the left of this photo, Millicent on the right.
Millicent Irene Henley's father, Thomas Henley (1860-1935), was born in England migrated to Sydney in 1884. He bought and developed land at Balmain, Petersham, Five Dock and Drummoyne and owned the Drummoyne, West Balmain and Leichhardt Steam Ferry Company. He was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1904 until his death (he promoted the development of Canberra in 1924).
Tom Henley
Soon after the outbreak of war, Tom Henley and his eldest daughter Millicent went to Egypt, Henley as commissioner for the Citizens' War Chest Fund. The pair organised the distribution of comforts from Alexandria, Marseilles and Le Havre and London. Millicent's brother Harold Leslie Henley (born 1893) was killed in action in France in 1916. Another of Henley's sons, Herbert Sydney Henley (1889-1966) became a member of the NSW Legislative Council from 1937-64.
In London in May 1919, typists in the War Diaries subsection of the Australian War Records Section work on the precis of diaries kept by soldiers and nurses in World War One. The precis was necessary to facilitate the work of historians and reduce the handling of original diaries. 
The Photographic Records and Classification Subsection of the Australian War Records Section prepare prints, copy and file negatives, and classify and index photographs. Note the large metal case for a Royal Standard 5 typewriter (being used by Second Corporal Sydney Harold Heathwood, 3rd Machine Gun Battalion, centre) on a shelf at left.
Back in Melbourne, Australia, these women typed up the information gathered in Europe and the Middle East at the Australian Defence Department Base Records office.
Mary Ann Benallack (1876-1937)
One of the first Australian nurses to experience first-hand the horrors of World War One was Mary Ann Benallack, of Colac in Victoria. After three years on the Western Front, in 1917 Mary found good use for a typewriter, to write her recollections of her experiences behind the British lines.
Mary had actually travelled to Europe on a world cruise in 1914, never suspecting when she left Australia that she would soon became caught up in the slaughter. She had just arrived in London when war was declared.
She could not return to Australia to join the Australian Nursing Corps, so enlisted with the Queen Alexandra Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve and left for the Continent as part of a contingent of volunteer army nurses on November 14, 1914.
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Mary Benallack's marvellous article, as it appeared in her hometown newspaper, the Colac Herald, on December 3, 1917. Here is the story, which was also published in the Glasgow Weekly News:
Colac Nurse at the Front
A THRILLING STORY
Sister Mary Benallack, of the Queen Alexandra Imperial Military Nursing Service, who has been on duty behind the lines in France since November 1914, is a sister of Mrs T.W. Johnstone, of Colac. Whilst in London, where she was suffering from the effects of wounds and shell shock, she graphically described some of her experiences in the war zone in the following article which appeared in the “Glasgow Weekly News””:
Before referring to my own little adventures in that grim area of titanic combat - termed the Western Front - I desire to avail myself of the privilege of adding my tribute of admiration for the dauntless valour and splendid fortitude of the men now fighting on defence of righteousness and justice. The courage of the heroic lads of the Empire in the field is only matched by their calm, unmurmuring endurance under physical pain in the hospitals. I write of that which I know. For nearly three years I have had the honour lending the sick, the wounded, and the dying, and, looking back I cannot recall a single instance of a British warrior whose agony made him regret that he donned the uniform or whose glazing eyes showed a trace of fear as he approached the dark valley of the shadow of death.
A MEMORABLE DAY
My most exciting day in France - from a strictly personal viewpoint - was Sunday, 22nd July, 1917, for it was then that I obtained a practical lesson of what it means to be wounded.
It happened in this fashion. I was on board a barge which had been converted into a hospital. The flotilla comprised four of these barges, which were proceeding along a canal “somewhere in France” for the purpose of bringing back wounded men from the Front.
About eight o’clock on that lovely summer morning we reached a small town fully a dozen miles to the rear of the firing line. The bells were ringing for church service, and but for the booming of guns in the distance one would have found it difficult to believe that the scene of the world’s most fearful conflict was near at hand. There were three other nurses besides myself on board, and after breakfast we went up on deck to enjoy the fresh air, and probably, to pass under review the Sunday attire of the French women of the provincial town. That, alas, was not a difficult task. The great majority of the women in France are in mourning.
The four of us - representing England, Scotland, Ireland and Australia - were seated on one of the hatches chatting away about nothing in particular when the peacefulness of the picture was rudely shattered by the arrival in a neighbouring field of a great German howitzer shell.
One of the town’s officials informed us of the character of the unwelcome visitor, and added that the place had frequently been under the fire of the Kaiser’s most powerful guns. “They are trying to smash up that foundry,” he said, “but they haven’t registered a hit so far.”
During the next two hours over a score of monster shells landed in and about the town and the bombardment had the disturbing effect of making one ponder over the uncertainty of life.
Shortly after ten o’clock the unforgettable event occurred. A shell collided with a potato field bordering the canal and at a point not more than twenty yards distant from our barge.
The concussion treated us in a most undignified manner. We were hurled off the hatch and thrown violently to the deck. “What next?” was the question that flashed through my brain as I struck the boards. I had not long to wait for an answer. The atmosphere suddenly became filled with earth and stones – and potatoes! My recollections of what took place within the next few seconds is of the vaguest description. In fact, there are blanks in the film.
FRIGHTENED THE DOCTOR
For instance, I was informed by one of the doctors that I gave him the fright of his life. It appears that I was completely buried beneath the debris created by the bursting of the shell. Subconsciously I must have fought and struggled against this premature burial, for the medical man informed me that my head suddenly emerged from the mass.
“And you were a pretty sight, I assure you,” he said. “Your face was covered with blood, and just at that stage you wouldn’t have run the ghost of a chance in a beauty show. I didn’t know you at first. It was only when you spoke that I became sure of your identity.”
“What did I say, doctor? “That was the funny part of the business,” he laughingly replied. “You looked round you dazedly, and then remarked  - “ We are all right, aren’t we? Is anybody hurt?”
Later in hospital I learned that I had got the worst of the deal. My real features were concealed behind a discouraging mask of cuts, bruises, and abrasions, whilst I suffered rather severely from shell shock.
One man in the barge next to ours was struck by a bit of shrapnel as he lay in bed down below and a few of the nurses on that same barge met with quite a number of hair-raising adventures while crawling about beneath the beds in search of shelter.
The cook on our barge, who escaped without a scratch, afterwards quoted the old proverb, which announces something about its being “an ill wind that blows nobody good”. The reason for his joy was the discovery of a quantity of potatoes on the deck of the barge, sufficient to supply the whole outfit for fully a week.
And I still cherish the opinion that it was a potato that presented me with one of the most radiant black eyes that ever adorned a human countenance. Verily, I looked a most disreputable creature.
MISTAKEN FOR A MAN
Just how many yards of bandages they wrapped around my devoted head I shall never know. One thing is certain - they tied me up so voluminously that at one stage of my journey I was actually mistaken for a man!
It was after leaving the Channel steamer at Dover that this horrible “tragedy” occurred. Hundreds of wounded Tommies had crossed in the same boat with men, and also a number of sick nurses.
I was a stretcher case, neatly enfolded in the regulation blanket, and my head and hair concealed from view beneath the aforementioned bandages. My destination was London, while the wounded soldiers were en route for Bournemouth.
Dusk was falling on the stretcher on which I lay rested on the Dover platform. My stretcher was on the right flank of those of the sick sisters, and next to those of the Tommies.
In due course two stretcher bearers suddenly materialised, and without speaking a word they carried me into the ambulance train and deposited me in a lower berth. My mind was not particularly active at the moment. I was feeling faint and tired with the journey and my injuries, and longing for the peace and rest of a hospital bed.
Then it gradually dawned upon me that there was an extraordinarily large number of male voices sounding in the carriage. I failed to understand why there should be so many male orderlies to look after a few sick nurses, and I decided to investigate. Raising myself on my elbow, I glanced around with the solitary eye that had been left uncovered and was still capable of active service. On the other side of the carriage I beheld to my great astonishment several wounded Tommies. They glanced in my direction and one of them smiled and said, “Well, old fellow, and how are you getting along? That’s a fine bunch of linen they’ve tied round your cranium.”
Merciful goodness! The bold warriors regarded me as being of the male gender. This was a serious matter indeed, and when an orderly passed along the corridor I hailed him and asked, “Are you sure I am on the right train for London?”
I shall always remember the look of amazement that crept over the features of that orderly. He recognised my voice as being that of a women and he was not the only one in the carriage to do so. The Tommy who had referred to my “bunch of linen” sat up in his cot and gasped, “That fellow over there must be a woman, boys. At least, he’s got a woman’s voice.” Immediately I became the cynosure of all eyes. Every man who was able sat up and had a look at me, and the fellow in the cot above almost tumbled out in his anxiety to catch sight of the novelty - a woman returning from the war zone with a very dilapidated head.
Fortunately the train had not started and I was hurriedly removed from my cot and carried over to my proper quarters in the midst of the wounded sisters. And, would you believe it, they had never missed me! But when they learned of my mischance they teased my most unmercifully, the chief and most unfounded allegation being that even when wounded I could not keep away from the boys.
GAY GORDON’S PHILOSOPHY
One of my most poignant memories centres round the death of a handsome young Glasgow lad, a member of the Gordons. I shall call him Jack MacDonald, although that was not his real name. Jack was brought to us at Wimereux in the summer of 1916, and it was apparent form the first that his hours on earth were numbered.
“I have not long to live,” he said to me as I stood by the side of his cot.
“You are very ill” was the reply I made, adding “but one should never despair of recovery.”
“But there’s no hope for me, nurse, and I know it,” continued the wounded soldier. “I am not afraid of death. There is peace and rest in the grave.”
I was at a loss for words, and remained silent. I had seen many men die but had never stood by the deathbed of one who spoke so stoically of his passing into the Great Beyond.
From his speech I judged him to be a man of considerable education and this impression was strengthened when he said “Like Lucretius, I believe in the everlasting death. And it is that belief which has helped me to do my duty as a soldier.”
This confession of faith took me by surprise. I was aware that many soldiers gave but little thought to religion, being content to leave their future state in the hands of a just Omnipotence. But never before had I heard a dying man express in words that death was the end of all  things. I tried to persuade him not to talk any more, so that he might conserve his strength.
“I want to talk as long as I am able,” MacDonald declared. “I want to tell you of the hope that has sustained me to play the man in moments of grave danger, when otherwise my courage might have faltered.”
“PEACE IS THERE BELOW”
I decided to humour the poor lad, and the following is a summary of what - with occasional pauses - he told me: 
“Shortly after joining the army I became the servant of an officer, and it was while acting in this capacity that I renewed my acquaintance with the writings of Lucretius. This officer had two little paper covered volumes of “The Bibelot”, an American publication. The contents consisted of a translation of Lucretius on “Life and Death” in the metre of Omar Khayyám, the author being W.H. Mallock. I obtained permission to read the poem, and it comforted me. It removed from my mind any lurking fear I ever had of death. I wrote down some of the verse in my notebook, but I remember them even now. Listen, nurse, and I will repeat the verse I love best of all.”
And then in a voice that trembled a little Jack MacDonald recited the following lines:
Oh forms of fear, oh sights and sounds of woe!
Thy shadowy road down which we all must go
Leads not to these, but from them. Hell is here,
Here in the broad day. Peace is there below.
Jack MacDonald passed away that night. He took me by the hand and whispered, “Goodbye. It is growing dark - so dark.”
From his notebook I copied the verse which I have quoted. Jack was a philosopher and his philosophy, right or wrong, stood him in good stead. He died the death of a hero, and can any man travel into the unknown with a finer deed to his credit?
Three years in France! So dark with sorrow and suffering, and at times illumined with a glory unknown in the days of peace. I shall be going back soon, and I am pleased to go. But I trust that the end of the strife may not be far distant, and that the happy day may dawn when the brave and noble sons of the British Empire shall return to their homes with the light of a great and decisive victory shining in their eyes.
Matron Mary Benallack in 1934, seated centre, with staff at the Derrinook Private Hospital in Colac.
Mary returned to Australia and in 1918-19, during the worldwide flu epidemic that claimed the lives of almost 12,000 Australians, she set up and ran an emergency hospital at the Colac Showgrounds. She became matron of a private hospital in Colac, Derrinook.
Mary died in East Melbourne on May 19, 1937, aged 61.

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Removing the Paper Plate When Repainting an Olivetti Lettera 22

August 4, 2014, 6:23 am
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Follower Mitch Butler is repainting an Olivetti Lettera 22 portable typewriter and wrote asking about removing the paper plate. I probably hadn't helped matters much, because Mitch was looking at my blog post on the "Naked Lettera 22", in which I thoughtlessly replied to a comment by advising someone to use a small Allen key to remove the right-side platen knob in order to take the platen out. This advice, of course, applies to the Lettera 32, not the 22.
Mitch's machine, showing the two nuts holding the platen knob in place.
On the 22 the knob is gripped on to the platen rod by two nuts, which are impossible to shift. This will explain why Olivetti mechanics, when offering to repaint machines while servicing Lettera 22s, only ever repainted the mask and ribbon spools cover, never the paper plate. So often one will see a pistachio green Lettera 22, repainted from the original taupe, but still with a taupe-coloured paper plate.
Mitch wanted to remove the platen to take out and paint the paper plate, but this is not alone extremely difficult, it is also unnecessary. This is how I would go about it:
 Leave your nuts alone!
Unscrew the margin-set rail from the platen end plates.
This releases the back section, including the guide, paper supports and paper bail, to which the paper plate is screwed.
Upon unscrewing this back section, with the paper plate still attached, you will find it is held by a spring, hooked to the back section and at the other end almost underneath the platen. 
After unhooking it, take great care to position this spring in such a way that you can easily access it later, otherwise it may drop down under the platen. The spring is vital to the correct positioning and functioning of the paper plate and back section, and you will need to reattach it to the hook (above) when replacing the repainted paper plate and the back section. 
Unscrew the paper plate from the back section.
Very gently push off the name plate from the two holes at the back of the paper plate. Slowly push something pointed into each hole, a bit at a time, to release the name plate very evenly, ensuring you do not bend it. 
Once the paper plate is repainted, everything goes back together again very easily - with the possible exception of the spring, which can be fiddly. Take special care not to stretch it when reattaching it to the hook at the bottom of the back section. The name plate needs two tiny dabs of glue at each end to hold it in place. Make sure the new paint is well and truly dry before doing this, otherwise the glue will soften the paint.
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Andy Rooney, his Toshiba and his 17 Underwood 5 Typewriters

August 5, 2014, 7:04 am
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From My War, by Andy Rooney (1995):
Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney (January 14, 1919-November 4, 2011) was an American radio and television writer. He was best known for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney", a part of the CBS News program 60 Minutes, from 1978 to 2011. His final regular appearance on 60 Minutes aired on October 2, 2011. He died one month later, on November 4, 2011, at age 92.
Why Computers Are Screwed Up
It's A Good Thing Bill Gates Didn't Invent Television
Andy Rooney - November 13, 2003
One day about 10 years ago, the door to my office opened and in walked Bill Gates. I knew his name but really didn't know much about him.
He seemed like a nice guy, and he's done more good things with his money than most billionaires, but that's as far as I want to go being kind to Bill Gates.
Someone screwed up the way computers work and I blame it on him. People like to think that loveable old Andy Rooney still uses this 1920 Underwood typewriter.
Well, sorry to disappoint you, but he doesn't. I wrote eight books on that and thousands of television scripts, but I've written on a computer for several years now.
It's a great tool for a writer - but maddening.
Actually, I've written on a lot of computers. I had one typewriter for 50 years, but I've bought seven computers in six years. I suppose that's why Bill Gates is rich and Underwood is out of business.
They make computers so you have to buy a new one whenever there's a full moon. If my Underwood had been a computer, I'd have had to buy a new one every time I needed a new ribbon because Bill Gates would have designed new ribbons so they didn't fit last year's typewriter.
The thing you press to turn on the power on some of my old computers is in a different place on each one of them. You reach around in back to turn on one computer. One is on the left side. And another one is on the top, on the right.
Bill Gates got off on the wrong foot the first time he decided to turn off his computer. Do you simply press a button that says OFF when you want to turn it off? You do not. The first thing he has us do to stop is to press START.
Makes sense, doesn't it?
Next, it asks SHUT DOWN?
Then it says WHAT DO YOU WANT IT TO DO? Well, didn't I just tell you what I want it to do? It isn't finished either. It asks SHUT DOWN THE COMPUTER? What the hell else do you think I want to shut down? The bedroom window?   
Computers aren't nice to us. My typewriter never threatened me with a prison sentence by saying I have performed an illegal operation.
When I want to write something, the computer demands a password. In all the years I wrote on my typewriter, it never asked for a password, and no one ever stole anything I wrote either.
All I can say is it's a good thing Bill Gates didn't invent television. If it took as long to start up a television set as it takes to start up a computer, you'd need two hours to watch 60 Minutes.
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International Typewriter Collectors' Convention

August 5, 2014, 6:46 pm
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Had the Typewriter Fates been a little kinder to me this year, right now I'd be in Milwaukee for the International Typewriter Collectors' Convention. The convention opens tomorrow and continues until Sunday. The city has been selected primarily as the home of the Dietz Collection at the Milwaukee Public Museum.
It's a shame I couldn't make it, but. as Ned Kelly once said, such is life. I had to make a decision last year between attending Herman Price's gathering at the Chestnut Ridge Typewriter Museum in Fairmont, West Virginia, or waiting the best part of a year and attending the Milwaukee gathering. I couldn't get to both, and I couldn't wait. Of course, I was thrilled to be at Herman's marvellous event. Still, for a while there I did hold on to some slim hope that I might be able to get to Milwaukee as well. It didn't work out that way.
If I had I made it to Milwaukee, I would have loved catching up with such wonderful people as Richard Polt, Peter Weil, Martin Howard, Herman Price, Martin Rice, Michael Brown, Mike Campbell, Jim Rauen and Dennis Clark. But also in Milwaukee are people I have yet to meet, such as Tony Casillo, the outstanding German historian Berthold Kerschbaumer, Cologne auctioneer Uwe Breker, Jack Knarr, ETCetera editor Ed Neuert, Robert Blickensderfer and the legendary Flavio Mantelli. For me, at least, this chance might not come again.
At the 2000 Philadelphia convention: Back Row: Tony Casillo, Uwe Breker, Mike Brown, John Ziegenhagen, Peter Weil, Jack Knarr, Ray Thomas, Martin Howard, Mike Campbell, Bruce Boyd, Jan Beck, Hoby Van Deusen, Chuck Dilts. Middle Row: Rich Cincotta, Paul Robert, Fernando Costa, Susan Howard, Jann Dorothy, Lin Lewis, Rick Spadaro. Front: John Lewis, Don Hoke, Angie Jimenez, Dave Lewis, Jason Brown. Leaning: Jay Respler.
Back: Don Sutherland, Dennis Clark, Bob Moran, Jack Tanner, Berkeley Rice, Larry Wilhelm, Chet Robinson, Remy Rubin, Fred Angus, Ken Gladstone, Rob Blickensderfer, Lou Schindler. Middle Row: Herman Price, Bill Kortsch, Darlene Lewis, Luisa Lopez Gomez, Jill Moran, Nancy Van Deusen, Valerie Gladstone. Front: Robert Nelson, Ron Ronzio, Jim Rauen, Francisco Diaz, James Siena.
The Milwaukee convention, the first of its kind in 14 years (the last, in Philadelphia in 2000, was attended by Australian Bob Moran), has been largely the work of New Yorker Gabriel Burbano. I did get to meet Gab at Herman's gathering last October:
Gabriel Burbano demonstrates his typewriter ribbon testing "gizmo" at Herman Price's gathering, as Martin Rice and Richard Polt look on.
Gab with Michael Brown
Among the presentations to be made in Milwaukee is one from Richard Polt on his book The Typewriter Insurgency: A Field Manual for the Typewritten Revolution. Richard's book looks at the creative new uses of typewriters in the 21st century and provides advice on selecting, using, and caring for machines.
Peter Weil will talk on Keys to the Office: Typewriters and Women; Mike Campbell on Rubber Tech, on rubber resources for the restoration and maintenance of vintage typewriters, including replacement rubber feet and roller recovery; and Thomas Fehring, a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, will discuss Milwaukee's typewriter heritage.
There is to be a manual typewriter Fastest Typist Contest, which will use copy from a 1924 speed typing competition. I wonder if Jack Knarr has entered? If he has, I'd be backing him - based on past form!
Jack Knarr demonstrates his typing skills for Jett Morton, Herman Price, Peter Weil and Devin Thompson. Looks like there is a Kofa and an Underwood 10 among this lot.
Gigi Clark will present A Touch of Class: Learning about Teaching Typewriters, in which she will share her discoveries and in-depth research of teaching typewriters, the 1930s machines that helped children learn how to type. This talk will feature the Corona animal keyboard portable:
To my good friends in Milwaukee this weekend, I will be thinking of you ...
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Python Typewriters and the Oz Theatre

August 6, 2014, 11:23 pm
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"You can expect a little comedy, a lot of pathos, a lot of music
and a tiny bit of ancient sex … and maybe some cross dressing."
And so it was Australia's turn ... for something completely different.
Last night Monty Python Live (mostly) - One Down Five To Go had its screening in cinemas across this vast continent, home of the legendary Bruces and their Philosophy Department of the University of Woolloomooloo.
Lyrics and music by Eric Idle,
 from the Monty Python's Flying Circus
 album Matching Tie and Handkerchief
The Bruces are, as all would know well by now, great admirers of  Martin Heidegger, who, they say, was a "boozy beggar" but "could think you under the table". Naturally, as I watched this segment last night, my thoughts wandered many thousands of miles away, to Typospherian Richard Polt, another Heidegger devotee (though not a graduate of the University of Woolloomooloo's Philosophy Department) as he made his way from Cincinnati to Milwaukee through Dayton, Toledo and the outskirts of Chicago.
'Think you under the table'
My misfortune at not being with Richard on this journey was eased somewhat by me being able to watch the Python reunion in London.
I was among the audiences which attended five almost simultaneous sold-out evening screenings in the Dendy Theatre Complex in Canberra (limited encore screenings will follow). That at least one in every 75 people in the entire population of the Australian Capital Territory went to the one complex at more or less the same time on the same night to watch the same show is rather staggering, I think. It says a great deal about the enduring appeal of the Pythons.
Of course, Jasper wore his scarf to the screening.
Bearing this in mind, I suppose I shouldn't have been at all surprised - especially given this bright young chap's excellent tastes in life - to see fellow Canberra Typospherian Jasper Lindell walk into the same session that I attended.
I am delighted to be able to reveal that at least two manual portable typewriters appear in Monty Python Live (mostly) - in a modern setting reprising of the famous "Argument Clinic" sketch, featuring Michael Palin* and John Cleese. One, I think, is an Oliver Courier, the other I couldn't quite pick - maybe a Facit 1620?
*Marty Rice Alert: Palin is the guy who coined the phrase: "Hemingway seems to have had as many typewriters as he had cats"
The show we saw in Australia was from the last night (July 20) of the Python reunion series of concerts at London’s 02 arena. At the start of the screening, someone referred to it as the "Oz theatre", something which, given the Python's renowned fondness for typewriters (and a Blickensderfer 5 in particular), I thought quite apt.
LIFE OF TERRY AND HIS QUEST
FOR THE HOLY GRAIL
This rusty Blickensderfer 5 (with two keytops and a spacebar missing) is, despite its deficiencies, proudly owned by Python team member, comedian Terry Jones, director of Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life. Jones said he"picked [it] up in a secondhand shop. It’s very elegant and sits on the windowsill in my study. It was patented in 1893 and features a rotating typewheel. It’s not very practical because it has a pad that you have to keep inking, but I bought it because my comedy hero, Buster Keaton, used to work on one [which Terry probably found from Richard Polt's Classic Typewriter Page]. He made beautiful silent comedy and that’s what I’ve tried to do in film. When Michael Palin and I started out, we wrote silent films for the TV sketch show Twice a Fortnight; much of our humour was inspired by Keaton."
But Buster's secretary used an Oliver, which will please Marty:
There was a huge demand for tickets for the first of the live performances at the O2, on July 1, with the 15,000 tickets selling out in 43.5 seconds. The Pythons hadn’t performed live since September 26-29, 1980, at the Hollywood Bowl. Their London performances were also the first since the premature death, at age 48, of Graham Chapman in 1989. It was shown in 570 venues in Britain and Ireland and in another 1800 around the world, quickly becoming the third biggest live cinema event of all time in Britain.
The absence of Chapman (he does appear in clips from past shows) gives the concert the subtitle One Down Five To Go. In his opening eulogy at Chapman's funeral service, Cleese said: "Heaven knows what the next hour will bring in Graham’s name. Trousers dropping, blasphemers on pogo sticks, spectacular displays of high-speed farting, synchronised incest. One of the four [other Pythons] is planning to stuff a dead ocelot and a 1922 Remington typewriter up his own arse to the sound of the second movement of Elgar’s cello concerto. And that’s in the first half."
My all-time favourite Python photo: Cleese and Chapman.
Surely choreographed by the Pythons?
One of the more treasured Python skits featured a typewriter being used as if it was a railway train by an author called Neville Shunt (as in Australia-based Neville Shute, author of On the Beach and A Town Like Alice):
Shunt is said to have written a "West End hit" called It All Happened on the 11.20 from Hainault to Redhill via Horsham and Reigate, calling at Carshalton Beeches, Malmesbury, Tooting Bec and Croydon West. An "art critic" remarks, "Some people have made the mistake of seeing Shunt's work as a load of rubbish about railway timetables, but clever people like me, who talk loudly in restaurants, see this as a deliberate ambiguity, a plea for understanding in a mechanised world."
Cleese in the funniest TV show ever made, bar none: Fawlty Towers.
So let's all doff our cloth caps to the Pythons and sing, so loud Richard Polt can hear it in far-off Milwaukee:
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away -
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And René Descartes was a drunken fart.
'I drink, therefore I am.'
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker,
But a bugger when he's pissed.

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The 'Crypto' Underwood Typewriter

August 8, 2014, 12:57 am
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A wartime version of the Underwood Code Machine

On November 26, 1924, Laurance Frye Safford, a 31-year-old United States Navy Lieutenant based at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California, posted his plans for a "special code typewriter" to 336 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. This was the home of John Thomas Underwood, founder and president of the Underwood Typewriter Company of Hartford, Connecticut.
Safford's unpatented design was taken by Underwood to his company's head office at 30 Vesey Street, New York City, where it was shown to one of Underwood's leading engineers, the Washington-based foreign manager for Underwood, Carl Augustus Joerissen (born Ilion, New York, 1871), designer of the Underwood Noiseless standard typewriter. 
On December 10, the Underwood  company wrote to Safford, offering to build him four machines, adapted from the Underwood 5 standard, for $645 ($161.25 each). Its keytops had Roman characters and combinations of letters representing in Morse Japanese kana characters.
This 1924 Underwood typewriter connection between Safford and Joerissen has lead to conspiracy theories which reach all the way to Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I'm not going to go into that here - it's far too involved - but if anyone is interested in reading further on these theories, simply key in "safford+joerissen" in a Google search. In part, the links relate to the still unsolved shooting death of Joerissen's stepson, Chicago art dealer Paul Lamar Joachim (born Washington DC, 1912), a retired US Navy Rear Admiral, on October 22, 1962, exactly 13 months before Kennedy was killed. 
 Laurance Frye Safford
 John Thomas Underwood
Carl Augustus Joerissen
But let's get back to typewriters ...
Underwood had been working on adapting standard typewriters to type in Japanese since 1916, when Brooklyn translator Sukeshige Yanagiwara (born Nagasaki, 1873) patented this design:

Yanagiwara's idea was instantly taken up by Underwood's patent attorney Burnham Coos Stickney (1864-1937):
Soon after, Joerissen patented his typewriter-computer, which he had been working on since 1911. He had earlier developed the Underwood 5's tabulator system and its polychrome (two-colour ribbon) device:
Upon John T.Underwood and Joerissen seeing Safford's plans in late 1924, Stickney immediately rushed back into action with a series of kana keyboard patents:
The typewriters made by Underwood from the Safford plans were known by the manufacturers as the Underwood Code Machine, but became designated by the US Navy on July 24, 1930,  as RIP-5 (Register of Intelligence Publications, fifth in the series). Navy radio circuit operators used them to transcribe Japanese radio communications. The keys were arranged so that, for the lower case character set, the kana keys were located in the same place as the corresponding International Morse letter would be on a regular typewriter. When an operator heard _._. he would just hit the key "C" and the machine would print the kana for NI. 
At the time Safford drew up his plans, in 1924, the US Navy had only two operators who knew Japanese Morse. After the first four Underwood machines were made, and their success had been confirmed, another 36 were built and paid for by the Office of Naval Intelligence. Now operators could often record transmissions faster than Imperial Navy radiomen could draw the kana brush strokes themselves. The Underwoods became "Famous among communications intelligence veterans ... a machine that greatly simplified interception of Japanese transmissions." Intercept operators used the Underwoods in Shanghai as early as 1929. 
Safford,  the "father of U.S. Navy cryptology", was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, on October 22, 1893. On July 8, 1912, he secured an appointment to the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and graduated as an ensign, 15th in the class of 1916, showing an affinity for machines and skills in mathematics and chess.  He began to establish the Naval cryptologic organisation after World War I, and headed this effort more or less constantly until shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
In January 1924 he was called from command of a minesweeper off the China coast to head the "research desk" of the Code and Signal Section within the Office of Naval Communications. In the beginning his sole task was to exploit a Japanese naval codebook that had been filched from the Japanese consulate in New York. Safford recruited Agnes Meyer Driscoll, Joseph Rochefort, Joseph Wenger and others who were to lead the operations through to World War II and into the post-war period. Safford was the first to begin organising the worldwide Naval collection and direction finding effort, so that when the US entered World War II it already had a system of intercept stations.
After a sea tour from 1932-36, Safford began mechanising operations with the addition of IBM equipment. He was directly involved with building cryptographic machines and collaborated with the Army's Frank Rowlett in the invention of the Sigaba, a cipher machine not known to be broken by any country during World War II.
Safford himself developed this machine in 1944, but it was not patented until 2001:
Safford promoted collaboration with the Army on several fronts, and was largely responsible for the Navy entry into a joint effort with the Army on the Japanese diplomatic systems. He recognised the signs of war that appeared in the diplomatic traffic, and tried to get a warning message to Pearl Harbor on December 4, 1941, three days before the attack, but was rebuffed by Admiral Leigh H.Noyes, director of naval communications in Washington. During the war Safford was assistant director of naval communications for cryptographic research and was awarded the Legion of Merit for his cryptographic work.
Safford retired from active duty in 1953. In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill to pay Captain Safford $100,000 for his efforts in devising more than 20 code systems and related cryptographic developments. When proposed by Senator Leverett Saltonstall, the bill called for payment of $150,000. This was cut to $100,000 by Congress. Safford had settled in Washington and died on May 17, 1973, in the Bethesda (Maryland) Naval Hospital, aged 79. 
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Noiselessly Mesmerising: The Story of the Noiseless Typewriter - Part I

August 9, 2014, 7:57 am
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1909-1914
It was a slow and jolty start. The 1916 image above represents the "second coming" of the Noiseless Typewriter Company, which started life in Middletown, Connecticut, in the middle of 1909. Within a year it was laying off workers, and in 1912 declaring it was having to make a "fresh start" amid rumours it was the target of a planned Union Typewriter Trust takeover. The overhauled Noiseless typewriter - originally designed by Wellington Parker Kidder on commssion from Charles Carroll Colby - was launched at a business show in New York City in the middle of 1915, and by 1921 the company was thriving. But just before Christmas that year, the company's main backer and president, William Caryl Ely, of Buffalo, suddenly died, at the age of 65. It was downhill for Noiseless after that, until production at Middletown was taken over by Remington in 1924.
Above, Typewriter Topics, 1909; below 1910
 
Below, 1911
Tomorrow: The Golden Years - 1915-1922
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Noiselessly Mesmerising: The Story of the Noiseless Typewriter - Part II

August 9, 2014, 4:19 pm
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Golden Years: 1915-1920
The journey to sales success and financial security began to speed up for the Noiseless Typewriter Company with its third rebirth in 1915. The photo story above, from 1917, reflects a vigorous push into promotion and advertising which greatly boosted the fortunes of the Noiseless.
This 1915 Typewriter Topics item signalled the arrival of a "new improved model" of the Noiseless at a Business Show in New York City in the middle of that year.
By 1916 the Noiseless was yet again ready to take on the world's typewriter marketplaces. Heading the hefty marketing of the machine was Waterbury-born mechanical instructor Edward Jerome Sheehan (1882-1937). Sheehan had previously worked for the Union Typewriter Trust, Underwood and Royal:
1916
1917
1918-19
1919-20
1920
Tomorrow: The Beginning of the End - 1921-24
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Flying a Corona 3 Portable Typewriter over Enemy Lines

August 9, 2014, 6:19 pm
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While we mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, it is interesting to note that the first typewriter used in an aircraft over enemy lines in that conflict was, of course, the Corona 3 folding portable:
A young Lewis Freeman
Presumably this Typewriter Topics advert was based on Freeman's feat.
The Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" was one of a series of "JN" biplanes built by the Curtiss Aeroplane Company of Hammondsport, New York, later the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company. It was originally produced as a training aircraft for the US Army and became the "backbone of American post-war [civil] aviation." The Curtiss JN-4 is possibly North America's most famous World War I aircraft. It was widely used during the war to train beginning pilots, with an estimated 95 per cent of all trainees having flown a JN-4.
 A Jenny up a tree
Lewis Ransome Freeman was born at Genoa Junction, Wisconsin on October 4, 1878. He was an American explorer, journalist and war correspondent who wrote 21 books chronicling his many travels, as well as numerous articles. Freeman moved with his family to Pasadena, California, as a boy. He attended Stanford University, where he earned letters in football, baseball, tennis and track, and graduated in 1898. Remarkably, while a student at Stanford, he also served as coach of the University of Southern California's football team in 1897.
After graduating from Stanford, Freeman spent the years 1899-1912 traveling throughout the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands, although in his various returns to Pasadena he continued his athletic endeavours, winning the 1903 Ojai Valley tennis tournament in both men's singles and doubles.
Lewis Freeman's passport photo, 1915
Lewis Freeman's passport photo, 1916
In 1905 he served as a war correspondent in the Russo-Japanese War. During World War I he was a correspondent with the British, French, and Italian armies from 1915 to 1917, and he became a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1917-18. He was a correspondent attached to the Grand Fleet late in the war, and was a staff member for the Inter-Allied Naval Armistice Commission which traveled to Germany in 1918.
After the war, Freeman focused on writing, turning out nine books between 1918 and 1922, and another each year through to 1928. In 1925 he was a special correspondent with the US Navy Pacific Fleet on its cruise to Australasia. In 1930-31 Freeman was part of an airplane and motorboat expedition to Central and South America, and in 1933 he embarked on a series of airplane flights exploring the coasts and interior of South America.
Typospherians who love to cycle will be interested to know that in 1935 Freeman road coast to coast on a bicycle, starting from Los Angeles to Vancouver, then from Vancouver to Montreal, and ending riding from Montreal to New York City, a total of more than 3500 miles.
In 1936 he took part in cruises to the Juan Fernández Islands and Tierra del Fuego, as well as an expedition to the headwaters of the Amazon and Ecuador. In 1938 he undertook an expedition to the highlands of southern Mexico and Guatemala. In 1939 he took part in a cruise to the Galápagos Islands and the west coast of Colombia, and in 1941 he explored Bolivia, Peru and Brazil.
He retired to Pasadena in 1955, and died there on November 6, 1960, at age 82. His books included: Many Fronts (1918), Stories of the Ships (1919), Sea Hounds (1919), To Kiel in the Hercules (1919), In the Tracks of the Trades: The Account of a Fourteen Thousand Mile Yachting Cruise to the Hawaiis, Marquesas, Societies, Samoas and Fijis (1920), Hell's Hatches (1921), Down the Columbia (1921), Down the Yellowstone (1922), When Cassi Blooms (1922), The Colorado River - Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (1923), Down the Grand Canyon (1924), On the Roof of the Rockies (1925), By Water Ways to Gotham (1926), Waterways of Westward Wandering (1927), The Nearing North (1928), Afloat and Aflight in the Caribbean (1932), South America - Airwise and Otherwise (1933), Marquesan Nocturne (1936), Discovering South America (1937), Many Rivers (1937), Brazil, Land of Tomorrow (1942)
1937 advert
From The USC Trojans Football Encyclopedia by Richard J. Shmelter
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How the Union Typewriter Trust's tentacles reached Australia

August 10, 2014, 7:52 am
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This photograph appeared in the Sydney Bulletin on September 24, 1898. The caption read, "A camel laden with typewriters on the Goldfields of Westralia [Western Australia] affords picturesque evidence of the push and penetration of the United Typewriter and Supplies Company. It also shows that the Westralian miner has firm conviction of the value of writing love-letters in a style that will not constitute proof in a court of law." 
The United Typewriter and Supplies Company, which established agencies for Caligraph, Yost, Densmore and Smith Premiertypewriters throughout Australia from 1896, was a subsidiary of the notorious Union Writing Machine Company, a secretive United States cartel formed by Remington in the early 1890s.
Densmore imported into Australia by the United Typewriter and Supplies Company, now at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.
The true history of the Union Writing Machine Company, also known as the Union Typewriter Company, remains shrouded in mystery. Little wonder. As late as December 15, 1899, the Wagner Typewriter Company told Judge Emile Henry Lacombe of the United States Circuit Court in New York that the combine was a secret organisation for the reason that it was an "illegal concern" under the Federal Anti-Trust Law  and the statutes of the State of New York, and therefore "had no standing in court". Legal documents held in the Smithsonian Institute Research Information System concerning a typewriter patent infringement dispute between the S.S.White Dental Manufacturing Company, proposed makers of the Brooks typewriter, and the Williams Typewriter Company, include a copy of the 1890 incorporation certificate of the Union Writing Machine Company.  This company was certainly paying taxes in New Jersey in 1892.
Yet the consensus is that the trust was formed in 1893. In Worked Over: The Corporate Sabotage of an American Community (2003) by Dimitra Doukas, the author says "trusts had to be secretive" but that the Ilion Citizen had reported on January 20, 1893, that Remington had formed a trust. "In April of that year all was revealed when the typewriter trust incorporated (in New Jersey) as the Union Typewriter Company ..." In fact, the Union Writing Machine Company had been incorporated as a New York Foreign Business Corporation on January 3, 1893. QWERTY historian Koichi Yasuoka adds, "On March 30, 1893, the Union Typewriter Company, known as the Typewriter Trust, was formed ..."

Was it formed under different names, making it almost impossible to track? It was certainly incorporated in difference places at different times. Its charter was dissolved in New Jersey in 1898. In New York it was allowed to do business as a "foreign corporation".
What is certain is that on July 7, 1894, a subsidiary company called the United Typewriter and Supply Company, headquartered in New York, was incorporated in West Virginia. The aim of this company was to distribute and market Union trust typewriters overseas - including in Australia. Since Remington already had an Australian agency deal in place with the Stotts, these typewriters were the Caligraph, Yost, Densmore, Monarch and Smith Premier.
The Australian network was established in 1896. In Melbourne, Frederick William Zercho had the agency, in Sydney James Edward Cunningham and Dora Elizabeth Armitage, in Brisbane John Speechly Gotch, Reeves & Co in Adelaide and in Perth an Englishman called Horace Summers. 
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Typewriting Politician Retires to Join Typosphere

August 10, 2014, 4:30 pm
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Australia's only typewriting politician, Richard Amery of Sydney, today announced his retirement from politics and his intention to start blogging on typewriters.
Richard is the Labor Party Member of the New South Wales Parliament for Mount Druitt. 
Richard in his Parliamentary Office.
He announced he will retire from State Parliament at the next Election in March 2015, when he will turn 64.
The announcement will bring to an end a career of 32 years in Parliament. During this time, Richard represented the State seat of Riverstone from 1983 to 1991 and Mount Druitt from 1991. He was a member of the Shadow Cabinet from 1988 to 1995, holding the positions of Shadow Minister for Natural Resources, Consumer Affairs, Water Resources, Senior Citizens and Co-operative Societies. Following the election of the Carr Labor Government in 1995, Richard became Minister for Agriculture and at other times also held the position of Minister for Land and Water Conservation and Minister for Corrective Services. Following the defeat of the Labor Government in 2011, Richard served as the Opposition Whip, a position he still holds.
Richard is his Electoral Office
“The question of when I was going to retire has been a consideration for me for a number of years," said Richard. “You don’t get over three decades in Parliament without great support at home, and I have been fortunate to have my wife, Marie, supporting me all the way and bringing up our two children and supporting our extended family, including four grandchildren." 
The New South Wales Branch of the Australian Labor Party has called nominations for the State seat of Mount Druitt, with nominations opening this week.
I feel certain Typospherians will welcome Richard to their fold when he launches his typewriter blog. For more than three years now Richard has been an avid follower of this blog and of the Typospherian blogs on my blog roll.
Richard has used typewriters on a daily basis for more than 40 years and has a collection of almost 150 typewriters, including easily the most complete collection of Imperial Good Companions in this country. A few of his IGCs can be seen here:
Opening the Canberra Museum and Gallery Typewriter Exhibition 2012
Opening the Australian Typewriter Museum 2007
Opening the Corona Typewriter Centenary Exhibition 2009.
Now, what can I blog about?
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Noiselessly Mesmerising: Part III - Anatomy and Typing Actions of Noiseless Typewriters

August 10, 2014, 11:38 pm
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Anatomy of a Noiseless
Noiseless Portable:


 Remington Standard Noiseless:

Typing Actions Compared
Noiseless Portable
Remington Noiseless Portable
Underwood Noiseless Portable
Underwood Noiseless 77 Portable
Remington Model 1 Portable
Australian-built Remington Noiseless Portable


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Typewriting Ladies of Spain

August 12, 2014, 8:04 am
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María Espinosa
Pioneering Spanish feminist María Espinosa de los Monteros y Díaz de Santiago was 22 when in 1897 she was appointed a director of the Yost Typewriter Company's Spanish operations by Yost's European general manager Milton Bartholomew.
Milton Bartholomew
Bartholomew wrote in Pitman's Phonetic Journal on June 13, 1903, "I think I have provided in [Spain] something without previous record in the business of typewriters. I have appointed a woman as director for most of Spain. [She] is a Spanish lady, and one of the smartest businesswomen with whom I have ever tried. [She] speaks English fluently ... and has legal powers ... to sign for the company. [She is] not just a capable director, but also an extremely intelligent vendor ... when attending a competition to demonstrate the advantages of our machine, the other competitors do not want to participate."
María was born in Estepona on May 13, 1875. In 1918 she helped found the National Association of Spanish Women (ANME), of which she was the first president. The organisation called for women's suffrage, access to official and professional positions, equal pay and more education opportunities. María lived her last years in Alicante, where she died on December 17, 1946, aged 71. 
María Moliner
Lexicographer María Juana Moliner Ruiz was born in Paniza, Zaragoza, on March 30, 1900. Her best known work was Diccionario de uso del español, first published in 1966, when she completed work started in 1952.
María obtained a degree in history in 1921 from the University of Zaragoza. In 1946 she was put in charge of the library at the Superior Technical School of Industrial Engineers in Madrid, where she remained until her retirement in 1970. María died in Madrid on January 22, 1981, aged 80.
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Royal Portable Typewriters For Sale

August 12, 2014, 6:34 pm
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These will NOT be listed on eBay. No PayPal, payment by bank deposit. (Steve K, you have a "free shot" at any of these, if you want one.)
$85. This one's going cheap because it needs some work on it. It types halfway across the platen width, then stops, and needs a gentle nudge to get it moving again. If you feel you can fix it, it's a bargain at this price.
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$185. It's one OR the other, I won't sell both. Whoever wants to buy one, gets the pick of colour, red or green. I will withdraw the other from sale when one sells. They are in the same excellent condition and type very well.
$175. Crocodile-skin dark blue finish. Has dark blue case with "Royal" embossed on lid. In excellent condition and types very well.  
$125. Dark brown "woodgrain" finish. Spots on top of right side of ribbon spools cover. Otherwise good condition, types well.
SOLD - $125. Faint marks on paintwork and some evidence of paint chips. Otherwise good condition and types well.
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While I Was Sleeping

August 13, 2014, 8:25 pm
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Dropped at my front door by Diane. Didn't need a thing done to it after 40 years of disuse under a vinyl cover - apart from a quick wipe with a dry rag. Not even a ribbon change. Working very well for a 1934 model. Diane and her husband feared that if I didn't give it a good home, they would soon see its keytops as jewellery at the Canberra Bus Depot markets. I've had a few Royal standards donated in the past couple of months, but what could I say? I'm glad I said "Yes. Please".
Piotr's Smith Premier Noiseless
From Peter's Keystone catalogue
These are just some of the faces I recognise from having been at Herman Price's gathering last October. A big thank you to Herman for his lovely "missing you" message from Milwaukee. I was deeply touched.
It's jumped up by 50,000 since July 18 and by 250,000 since March 25.
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The Fiend With Eight Lives

August 14, 2014, 3:29 pm
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Who goes there?
Charlie the Typewriter Guard Cat earns his keep by working a daily eight-hour shift. Yep, folks, that's a solid 56-hour week of soft toil. He generally clocks on at about 8.30 in the morning, finds a comfortable but concealed spot at a vantage point in a mountain of typewriters, and goes to sleep. At 4.30 he wakes up, knocks off work and wanders downstairs, looking for some fresh air and fresh food.
I've seen the mother-and-son typewriter guard cat combo in the Polt household in Cincinnati, and it's pretty much the same deal. I don't want to give too much away here, but the downstairs typewriters really only get checked out of an evening. You might think that, inside an upstairs room full of typewriters, Charlie is only doing half a job, a floor away from where all the really prized gear is stashed. But, then, to watch Charlie, fired up with a bellyful of 'roo meat, bolt up and down the stairs here, you'd know he's got the whole house covered. He's quick, real quick. A furry Ben Johnson on 'roo 'roids.
Don't you dare move off the typewriter channel!
The sight of Charlie flying up and down the stairs can be reassuring, in more ways than one. When he was new to this neighbourhood, he naturally wanted to explore it, most especially the bushland out the back. One day he limped home, obviously badly injured. The vet assumed he'd been in a cat fight, and prescribed the appropriate drugs. But by favouring his right front paw, Charlie was disguising the real issue, higher on his leg. We never did find out what it was that bit him, but it wasn't a cat. Nor was it a venomous snake, a poison spider, a possum, a large bird, a wombat or a lizard. Whatever it was, it cost him one of his nine lives. And left him with a permanent limp. It's most noticeable at the end of a day's sleep - umm, shift.
The problem we have right now is the weather. The days dawn at about minus four, then the temperature climbs to around 14 degrees at midday, and by four it's freezing again. Charlie doesn't like this pattern at all. So committed is he to his daytime typewriter guarding duties, he won't change his routine to suit the winter season. Just as he's off-duty, and up and about, the ducted heater is on and the doors and windows are closed, the curtains drawn. Locked inside, this once gentle, sleeping Jekyll becomes a fiendish Mr Hyde.
Charlie's beastly behaviour is perhaps understandable. When we found him at an animal shelter, he'd been locked inside a small cage for a year. He'd arrived there as a kitten. By the time he was old enough to be fostered out, he'd developed cat flu. By the time he'd got over that, he was no longer the cute little kitten that people came looking for. When we brought him here, at first he bounded over all the place, joyous in his new-found freedom. But pretty soon he was suffering from agoraphobia, daunted and overwhelmed by ceilings twice as high as anything he'd ever seen before, and walls, 10 times as far apart as those in his old cage. He folded his arms, and his shoulders seemed to shrink in on him, as if he was hugging himself for protection. He took himself to bed and hid himself under a duvet for three days.
What typewriter robbery?
Now that he runs the place, Charlie has no patience for closed doors or windows. He stands outside them, crying. When you open them up, he walks away, satisfied he's made his point. And if he doesn't get the attention he demands, he threatens to jump on shelves and knock off some typewriter ephemera.
Oh, Charlie's a fiend, all right. But, then, I must let the cat out of the bag on one thing - not one typewriter has been stolen in the three years he's been here.

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Noiselessly Mesmerising: The Story of the Noiseless Typewriter - Part IV

August 15, 2014, 7:12 am
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Desperate Times: 1921-24
1922
The sudden death at age 65 of the Noiseless Typewriter Company's main financial backer, William Caryl Ely, in Buffalo on December 14, 1921, marked the beginning of the end for the company. Despite a heady advertising campaign through 1920-22, Noiseless became ripe for the picking in the absence of Ely's astute, long-standing leadership.

William Caryl Ely (1856-1921)
Ely's place as Noiseless president was taken by Canadian Charles William Colby (1867-1955), son of the company founder Charles Carroll Colby (1827-1907).
Three generations of Colbys, C.W. left and C.C. right.
C.W.Colby, right
The younger Colby rose to the position because he had inherited his father's stake in Noiseless. But, unlike his father and Ely, he was no businessman. Nor was he a robust man. In his youth Colby had contracted tuberculosis and was sent to Les Avants near Montreux in Switzerland to recuperate in the mountain air, staying there two years. After his return to Canada, he went on to become a noted historian and author. A history professor, he set up the McGill University history department in Montreal at the turn of the century, in association with Stephen Leacock and C.E. Fryer. He travelled extensively in the years 1920-28, and was unable to devote himself to running a typewriter company. While Colby was overseas, Noiseless ran the advertising line, "No stronger than the weakest link". The company's leadership had, sadly, become its own weakest link.
 
 1920
1922
Tomorrow: The Transition to Remington

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Noiselessly Mesmerising: The Story of the Noiseless Typewriter - Part V

August 15, 2014, 5:26 pm
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Transition to Remington
One thing its new president, Charles William Colby, did try to do for the Noiseless Typewriter Company was to take its case to various US Senate committees and argue vigorously for its purchase by government departments. But these efforts were all in vain, as Colby was quite firmly told that department secretaries thought the three banks of keys on the Noiseless an outmoded design, and a major drawback to sales and use.
In desperation, Colby tried desperate measures - calling his North American branch managers and executives together in Middletown, Connecticut in January 1922 and setting them the lofty target of a 100 per cent increase in sales from 1921. Among the measures Colby used was to turn a banquet into a "Quaker meeting". 
One of Colby's selling points was that the Noiseless was a design-award winning typewriter:
However, sales didn't rise in 1922-23 to the high degree that Colby had hoped for, and on March 3, 1924, the inevitable happened, when Colby signed off on an acquisition by the Remington Typewriter Company of the Noiseless Typewriter Company and its plant in Middletown, Connecticut.
The end of the line for the Noiseless Noiseless. The Remington Noiseless factory below.
The next year, 1925, Remington launched a Noiseless adaptation of its Standard No 6 typewriter. Apart from the size and shape of the machine, the most noticeable changes were four banks of keys and a rubber platen. Gone was the solid, rigid metal platen so critical to the Noiseless's typing action and its reduction of typing sound:
Upon the launch of the Remington Noiseless, Remington immediately attempted to succeed where Colby had failed, and to do so by circumventing US government department purchasing restrictions by seeking to have the Noiseless reclassified ("this new machine is not standard in any sense"). In the short term, at least, it too failed: 
Nonetheless, Remington was fully committed to its latest acquisition and forged on regardless. George Gould Going, for some years the lead design engineer for Noiseless, stayed on at the Middletown factory to work on the adaptation for Remington. Going remained with Remington to design various modifications over the next 11 years - and also, importantly, to produce a portable adaptation, one that was markedly different from the Wellington Parker Kidder-designed Noiseless portable. The change of ownership and the subsequent design changes brought with them a staggering 367 patents! Remington continued to make the Noiseless right through to 1952.
The above photos were taken at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney
The following images were very kindly provided by Piotr Trumpiel in London:
Tomorrow: Remington v Underwood
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