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Sholes' Vision

February 24, 2015, 4:28 am
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Christopher Latham Sholes certainly had vision. After all, he gave us the typewriter. Yet in the northern summer of 1878, he wrote a letter on his prototype portable typewriter to James Densmore's brother Amos, saying the typewriter enterprise he had started in 1867 would be dead by 1883. "The trouble [with it] is just where I have always placed it - to wit: that the machine, taking everything into account, is not a labor-saving machine. The public doesn't need it - doesn't want it. It doesn't sell itself ... If you recollect, I gave 5 years for the enterprize to play out in. It will in less time."
Sholes thought he was dying and wouldn't even see the end of the enterprise. But as to his forecast about the typewriter's longevity, he was of course dead wrong. One hundred and thirty-seven years later, the typewriter is still being made.
Only a few months before writing this exceedingly pessimistic letter to Amos Densmore, Sholes believed he was "big with prophecy". And indeed he was.
In July 1877 Sholes' lungs began to bleed. After a serious relapse that September, he decided to escape another Milwaukee winter and join his son Clarence Gordon "Cass" Sholes (1845-1926) in Colorado. In November he spent a few weeks recuperating at the foot of Pikes Peak in Manitou.
Sholes returned to Manitou Springs in February 1878, in time to celebrate his 59th birthday there. He resigned from the Milwaukee board of public works, hoping and praying what little money that came in from the typewriter enterprise would be enough to keep him going.
He stayed on in Colorado through the spring, his mind following a chain of thought that had started with the news of the invention of Thomas Edison's phonograph.
Sholes saw a future in which newspapers would be obsolete. Daily news would be recorded on tinfoil cylinders and then reproduced on a clockwork mechanism in every home. "While the family breakfasted or dined, the children and the older folk alike would become well informed in spite of themselves. The correspondence and records of business offices would be served by the same mechanical magic, and so the typewriter would be eliminated along with the printing press."
Sound familiar? Yes, Sholes might have been very wrong about the typewriter and its ability to survive beyond 1883. But in the spring of 1878, in Manitou Springs, he envisaged 2015, with a clarity that matched the crisp Colorado air around him.  
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Typewriters in the News

February 27, 2015, 6:32 pm
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Thank goodness
for the typewriter
Ben Macintyre is a British author and historian who writes a regular column for The Times of London. His columns range in subject matter from current affairs to historical controversies. This column appeared in The Times (paywall) on Friday and was republished by The Australian in Sydney:
Thanks to the digital age
we’re all losing our memory
The Russian Federal Guard Service, the body given the task of protecting the country’s top officials, recently invested in 20 old-fashioned portable typewriters. These were to be used to ensure that documents of a particularly sensitive nature would not be written electronically and stored digitally, but typed out by hand and then filed away. The message was clear and as old as writing itself: if you want to preserve something, write it on paper and then put it somewhere safe.
The digital age was supposed to render obsolete the traditional ways of preserving the past. Everything written, recorded, filmed or photographed could now be safeguarded forever at the push of a button. No more filing, storage or dusty archives: the present would be captured and the past curated by the machines themselves. Increased computer power and ever-expanding digital storage would ensure infinite memory-retention, an end to forgetting.
The reality has proved very different. Digital memory has proven fragile, evanescent and only too easy to lose. Technology has moved on so fast that the tools used to access stored material have become obsolete: CD-ROMs degrade, tapes crumble, hard disks fall apart; the laser disk and the floppy disk have gone, soon to be followed, no doubt, by the USB and memory card. I have half a novel, written 20 years ago on what was then a cutting edge Amstrad and “saved” on a 3 1/2-inch disk. I will never know how unreadable it really is, because I now have no way to read it [ditto here, also on an Amstrad. RM].
As the Internet pioneer Vint Cerf warned recently, the disappearance of hardware needed to read old media means we are “nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become a digital black hole”. In 1986, the BBC Domesday project set out to record the economic, social and cultural state of Britain on 12-inch videodiscs. Today, those disks cannot be read, unlike the Domesday Book itself, written 1000 years earlier.
The Internet will carry more data this year than was created in the entire 20th century - some 330 petabytes, or enough capacity to transfer every character of every book ever published 20 times over - but our descendants may be unable to read it.
Quite apart from the technical inaccessibility of the past, the assumption of digital permanence has eroded the habit of archival hoarding. Earlier generations wrote letters, diaries, postcards and notes, on paper, stored them, and forgot them. Who archives their emails, let alone texts, tweets, or posts?We blithely assume that these are being preserved somewhere, when most are simply evaporating into the ether. The old-fashioned photo album has given way to the digital photo-file - as prone to sudden wipe-out and technical obsolescence as every other “saved” electronic artefact. The images of your grandparents may be better preserved than those of your grandchildren.
What looks like never-ending growth on the Internet is really a form of endless decay. The average lifespan of a web page is 44 days. Pages are constantly being updated, overwritten, shifted or left to expire in the process known as “reference rot”. We may lecture our children that anything posted on the net will be there forever, but in fact it’s true of very little on this strange, unstable, ephemeral medium.
A web page link that leads only to a “page not found” message encapsulates the transitory nature of digital data: solid information that has shifted into nothingness, with no clue to where it has gone.
Historians looking back on our time will face a mighty challenge, with a patchy digital record and a culture lulled into believing that the past is being preserved every time the save button is pressed.
Bizarrely, despite the vastly larger flood of daily information, we may end up knowing more about the beginning of the 20th century than we will know about the start of the 21st.
The world is waking up to the danger of collective memory loss. Cerf has called for the creation of “digital vellum”, technology that can take a digital snapshot, at the time of storage, of all the processes needed to read it at later date. The British Library now routinely gathers information from millions of public websites as well as tweets and Facebook entries, to create a constant, rolling record of the digital present. The American Library of Congress is archiving the whole of Twitter.
Immediately after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France set out to gather the rolling digital story and the web response - media reportage, public reaction, blogs, Twitter, online commentary - to create a genuine digital archive of the moment.
A similar shift in attitude towards digital preservation is needed in the wider culture. Psychological studies show that people who gather evidence of their own lives are happier and more self-confident.
Just as our grandparents hoarded the physical evidence of their worlds, so we should print out the photographs, preserve the emails, write, cut, paste, and print the stories, memories and relics of our own lives and times, and put them all in the attic.
Thankfully, as the Russians know, a machine has already been invented that can solve the problem of digital impermanence: the typewriter.
Throwing the
typewriter at it
American broadband and telecommunications company, a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Verizon Communications is so mad at new net-neutrality rules, they’re throwing the whole typewriter at it. In a press release issued after the US Federal Communications Commission narrowly passed new rules prohibiting broadband providers from throttling legal content or charging for fast lanes, Verizon used a 1930s-style typewriter font to complain about it. Verizon said the rules on broadband Internet “were written in the era of the stream locomotive and the telegraph” and are “badly antiquated”.
Stone the crows!
Not sure why American actor and director Ezra Stone (1917-1994) is in the news, but it's a nice image that was issued last week. Stone had a long career on the stage, in films, radio and television, mostly as a director. His most notable role as an actor was that of the awkwardly mischievous teenager Henry Aldrich in the radio comedy hit, The Aldrich Family, for most of its 14-year run.
The typewriter: symbol
of a more thoughtful way of life
The Los Angeles Times has warmly reviewed Australian author-illustrator Karla Strambini’s 2013 book The Extraordinary Mr Qwerty: In a world of "Frozen" dolls and Lego Minecraft, how can a mere book - one without a movie tie-in - compete for a young child’s attention? Those who hope to best the lure of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle merchandise would do well to select a title with beautiful illustrations, one that offers the chance of a whimsical experience. The Extraordinary Mr Qwerty might qualify.
Melbourne's Strambini
It also reviews The Lonely Typewriter by Peter Ackerman and illustrated by Max Dalton (they first collaborated on 2010’s The Lonely Phone Booth). This book follows a boy named Pablo with a homework deadline and a computer on the blink. He is introduced to his grandmother’s typewriter, a machine with a storied history that involves the Civil Rights movement but is covered in cobwebs. Pablo is bemused by the contraption, accepts the challenge of mastering its use and bangs out a paper. When he turns it in, his teacher can’t help but notice that it was typed. Pablo is quite proud of his new skill: “It doesn’t need a screen or electricity or anything! … We had it stuck up in the attic, but now I’m going to keep it in my room with me.”
The Lonely Typewriter is directed at children ages 6 to 9, but it’s quite possible their parents - or grandparents - will be the ones to linger over its pages. The first illustration in the book is a beautiful diagram of a manual typewriter. It might prompt memories of a pre-digital high school typing class, an era of term papers that actually required a bit of forethought because it was so time-consuming to correct them. A computer allows the words to flow, almost spontaneously. Fixing, changing, revising … over and over … is a given. A typewriter, on the other hand, is a symbol of a more thoughtful - and often more frustrating - way of life.
Is there a moral here? Is there any circumstance in which we would willingly use a typewriter, other than a power outage? Is the end result so much more interesting that we would willingly return to the pre-computer age? You already know the answer to that. A ride in a horse-and-buggy is charming, but it’s unlikely to inspire many of us to ditch the Prius and build a stable. And that’s kind of a pity.
NYC cop shop
typewriter ban?
The New York Post reports: The clackety clack of cops banging out reports behind station-house desks could be gone for good if a lawmaker can get enough votes to ban typewriters in the New York Police Department. Councilman Daniel Dromm (Democrat-Queens) plans to introduce a bill that would phase out police typewriters by 2016. “There’s no a reason a police officer can’t type up a report and put it into a computer,” he said. “I think it’s common sense that we move away from typewriters.” Dromm came up with his ban plan after a constituent complained that cops lost a criminal report she made about being assaulted. The report had been transcribed on a typewriter and only one copy was made. But that’s not the only problem the old machines pose. Instead of being able to fill out a sound permit form online for an outdoor party, people are still forced to visit their local precinct, have it entered on to a form, in triplicate, the old-fashioned way. “Every time I go into a police precinct, I see typewriters,” Dromm said. “I believe they all still use them because they all have the same forms.”
Prison typewriter blues
A prison inmate serving three life sentences for first-degree murder convictions in 1968 has filed a complaint alleging two officials at the Gus Harrison Correctional Facility in Madison Township illegally took his Smith-Corona Office 2000 memory typewriter. He claims the officials took his typewriter by claiming it became contraband when a third party paid a $214 repair bill when it was sent out to be fixed in 2013. There is no regulation that specifically prohibited his sister from directly paying the company that repaired the machine, he stated in his suit. He is seeking compensation for the typewriter and repair costs. And he is claiming $3900 in punitive damages against the prison property room officer and a counsellor who upheld the contraband determination.
Oh, Oliver!
Oh, San Antonio!
"Learn more about the typewriter", said San Antonio, Texas, TV channel KSAT. KSAT would do well to start learning something itself. 
"The typewriter was invented in the 1860s and quickly became a machine many professionals used in offices. The machine works by means of keyboard-operated types striking a ribbon to transfer ink on to a piece a paper. Bye the end of the 1980s, word processors and computers had mostly displaced typewriters, but some can still be found. In India, as of the 2010s,  the typewriter is still prominent."
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It's Far From Over

February 28, 2015, 7:59 pm
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If memory serves me right - and on the subject of the Sport of Kings, it's some furlongs from being infallible - it was Richard Polt who first pointed out there is a champion racehorse in Jamaica called Typewriter. (In the mid-1970s there was also an American thoroughbred called Typewriter, by Donut King out of Via Bendita.)
Indeed, just last week Typewriter was unanimously voted Jamaica's 2014 Horse of the Year, beating off Potcheen (which takes its name from smokin' Irish moonshine, Poitín) and Perfect Neighbour. Not sure how Typewriter got its name, but it's by Western Classic out of Doc's Paladin, and is part-owned by a lady called Valentine. Typewriter was also voted champion stayer.
Mention of staying brings me to footage of a horse race at the New York Racing Association's Aqueduct Racetrack in Queen's, NYC, which I stumbled across on the Irish Press Facebook page yesterday. I'm no expert of racing, but this performance SO put me in mind of typewriters ...

I think the evidence suggests the run of typewriters is Far From Over! Typewriters have hung in there, while overtaken by electrics and wedges and word processors and whatever, but they might still finish up in front.
W.C.Heinz with his Remington portable typewriter
On the subject of horse racing in Jamaica, I am reminded of the wonderful tribute paid to the great New York sportswriter W.C.Heinz by ESPN's Gare Joyce when Heinz died, aged 93, in a Bennington, Vermont, nursing home, almost exactly seven years ago.
Joyce pointed out that Heinz was covering a race meeting in Jamaica in July 1949 when he wrote for the New York Sun one of the all-time classic pieces of sports journalism, Death of a Racehorse. Of course, this was not Jamaica in the West Indies, where Typewriter runs, but another Queen's, NYC, racetrack. Ten years after Heinz wrote his famous piece, this Jamaica racetrack was redeveloped as a housing project. Rochdale Village now stands there.
Joyce said, "The impact on sportswriting of W.C. Heinz cannot be overestimated." His 1949 story about a horse called Air Lift "would have left only a hoofprint on the heart of his owner when he broke down if W.C. Heinz had not witnessed it from a seat behind a typewriter on press row at a racetrack in Jamaica." Joyce described the story as "a classic piece of literature. Not sports literature, mind you. No, a short story that would stand up with those knocked out by the acknowledged American master of the form, Ernest Hemingway."
"Death of a Racehorse is not even a 1000 words long, but any abridged version insults it. Heinz kept it short, what turned out to be a favor to a couple of generations of sportswriters who tried to memorize it over the years. And in keeping it short, Heinz probably made it easier for a couple of his other longer stories to appear alongside it in the Best American Sports Writing of the Century, a collection edited by David Halberstam. Heinz was the only writer that Halberstam rated as deserving three entries in the anthology."
Joyce said Heinz's story, written in less than an hour, "one draft, on a manual typewriter, in the rain" was "as close to perfection as sportswriting could be".
Joyce made a forceful argument for a posthumous Red Smith Award for Heinz. I must confess my own first sports writing award, in 1979, was for a story about horse racing, although in my case it was harness racing and, happily, a horse didn't die. But I like to think it was written, if unconsciously, in the style of Heinz, and with an awareness of what the horse goes through, perhaps unwittingly, for the sake of the unfeeling punter. My story was about a match race between Pure Steel and Satinover, and it's timely for me to recall it, on the eve of the Interdominion in Sydney, a once great sporting event to which few in Australia now pay much attention, such are the vagaries of the sporting and punting public.
Red Smith covering the Floyd Patterson-Ingemar Johansson world heavyweight title fight on an Olivetti Lettera 22 in Miami in March 1961.
Finally, mention of Red Smith brings me to this lovely "Mulligan's Stew" column, headed Typewriter Thoroughbred: Best of Breed and written by the Associated Press's Hugh Mulligan in February 1982:

Thirty odd years on, try finding a sports columnist who can write like that today. Or even a match in writing about sports writing.
Red Smith switches to an Olympia SF to cover the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston fight beside Jimmy Breslin on a Royal in Maine in May 1965 


*Robert Messenger will present "Fans With Typewriters: A History of Sports Writing" at the University of the Third Age in Hughes, Canberra, on March 11.
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Booking Hero uses Consul 222.1 Semi-Portable Typewriter to write Great Dutch Novel

March 2, 2015, 1:09 am
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Further evidence that it's Far From Over for the typewriter and that the manual portable is on the way back comes in the Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam Booking.com Booking Hero commercial released last month. The ad was made by production company MJZ and directed by Dante Ariola.
It's a great promotion for the typewriter, as a man's most cherished dreams come to reality after he stays at a hostel he found on Booking.com.
And that includes getting to use a Czechoslovakian-made Consul 222.1 semi-portable typewriter in a log cabin to write the great (Dutch? Czech? American?) novel.
Oddly, however, the storyline for the commercial doesn't even mention the typewriter!
It says: "One man's life changed when he stayed at a hostel he found on Booking.com. The last night he spent there turned into the first day of the rest of his life. An unforgettable journey soon began as he got engaged at a romantic chateau, got married, had children and led a life of exploration. Later in his life, while staying at a log cabin, he writes [ON A TYPEWRITER, FOR GOODNESS SAKE!!!] the story that was living inside of him. That story becomes a masterpiece and the book release is announced at a Tokyo five-star hotel. As he celebrates with his wife and children at a tropical paradise by going hang gliding, he takes in the full life he's been living. When you get your booking right, life can get as extraordinary as this one."
AS LONG AS YOU REMEMBER TO TAKE YOUR PORTABLE TYPEWRITER!

See post about my Consul 222.1 here.
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Bath Ruth's Ghostwriter

March 3, 2015, 6:26 am
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This shot of Bath Ruth talking to his ghostwriter was organised by Ruth's agent Christy Walsh and taken in New York in 1922.
Walter Christy Walsh, born in St Louis on December 2, 1891, is considered baseball's first agent. In 1912 he played the part of a gravedigger in an amateur production of Hamlet, providing an omen for his future. A would-be sports cartoonist, Walsh formed a highly successful syndicate of ghostwriters for baseball’s most celebrated players, cementing the term “ghostwriter” in the vocabulary in the process. Among Ruth's early ghostwriters was the great Westbrook Pegler, but Ruth's most famous ghostwriter was Ford Christopher Frick, later baseball's third commissioner.
One of Walsh’s most heralded PR feats was to get a team of doctors to administer tests to Ruth to determine whether Ruth possessed any extra physical or psychological advantages.  The results were reported in a Popular Science Monthly article - "Why Babe Ruth is Greatest Home-Run Hitter" - and picked up by The New York Times. 
After working as a reporter and part-time cartoonist in Los Angeles, and in advertising for Maxwell-Chalmers automobiles, Walsh saw an opportunity for ghostwriting. He began by ghostwriting for World War I air ace Eddie Rickenbacker, describing the 1921 Indianapolis 500 and earning a half share in $874. In 1921 Walsh staked out the Ansonia Hotel, where Ruth and his wife were staying, and got the chance to stand in for a beer-boy to deliver grog to Ruth’s room.
In his 40-page 1937 memoir Adios to Ghosts, Walsh described how he produced "a badly wrinkled contract in the form of a short, informal letter and without question, he inscribes 'George Herman Ruth' in the correct spot and I go in search of a ghost to do the writing". Walsh's team of stars and ghostwriters quickly grew - to 34 in the case of the reporters, who included Damon Runyon (below).
Baseballer Walter Johnson was pursued by Walsh into the Pullman’s washroom of a train station in New Haven, Connecticut, to sign up for the syndicate. The syndicate, wrote Walsh, was "founded as a matter of dire necessity by an out-of-a-job cartoonist, started on a shoestring; and in 1937, after having weathered 16 October classics in the ball parks of seven major league cities, voluntarily shuffled off its World's Series coil." 
Shirley Povich, above, wrote a column in the Washington Post describing Ruth’s failed plans to cover the 1924 World Series. "My neighbour in the press box, according to the seating plan,  was to be, of all people, Babe Ruth. He had signed on to cover the World Series for the Christy Walsh Syndicate. That sort of thing was commonplace for the game’s big stars. They would be provided a press box seat, along with a ghostwriter and a telegraph operator, and never set their pen to paper. But minutes before the game, the word had come over the wires that Ruth had suffered an appendicitis and had been rushed to Emergency Hospital.  His ghostwriter also dismissed himself for the day. When Christy Walsh arrived and was told about Ruth’s absence, and why, he bellowed quickly, 'Get me an operator!' Walsh took Ruth’s seat and began to dictate: 'Washington DC, October 1, by Babe Ruth, paragraph, quote.  As I lie here, in Washington’s Emergency Hospital, as a native New Yorker my heart is with the Giants, but as an American Leaguer, it is my duty to root for the Senators.' And so it went."
Walsh was sports director for the 1939-40 World’s Fair in New York City. He died on December 29, 1955, in North Hollywood.
Ford C. Frick was commissioner of baseball from 1951-65, having been elected unanimously to replace Happy Chandler by the 16 club owners on September 20, 1951, after Cincinnati Reds president Warren Giles withdrew from the contest. Frick had served 17 years as National League president, where he was succeeded by Giles.
Born on December 19, 1894, in Wawaka, Indiana, Frick attended high school in Rome City and DePauw University in Green Castle, graduating in 1915. In the fall of 1916, Frick joined the Colorado High School faculty as an English teacher. He also began working for the Colorado Springs Gazette and soon gave up teaching to concentrate on newspaper work. In 1918 he became supervisor of training in the rehabilitation division of the War Department for four states - Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming. In early 1919, he worked for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver before returning to Colorado Springs to open an advertising agency and write an editorial column for the Colorado Springs Telegraph. Frick went east in 1922 to join the sports staff of the New York American. In August 1923, he moved to the Evening Journal. While employed there, he covered the Yankees and joined Walsh's team to became a ghostwriter for Ruth, writing everything from newspaper articles to books, including Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball.
During his National League presidency he was instrumental in saving the Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Boston franchises from bankruptcy and also helped place the Cincinnati and Pittsburgh clubs on firmer financial footing. In 1947 Frick threatened to ban players on the St Louis Cardinals who had proposed to sit out in response to Jackie Robinson’s debut in the National League. “If you do this you are through, and I don’t care if it wrecks the league for 10 years,” Frick told the strikers. “You cannot do this, because this is America.” Frick retired in November 1965 and died on April 10, 1978, aged 83.

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Announcing a Grandchild

March 4, 2015, 2:38 pm
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My son Danny and his wife Emily were finally able last evening to officially announce an upcoming addition to the family, after a series of ultrasound and blood tests showed everything is coming up roses. Emily and Danny came up with a very novel way to make the announcement, to the delight of their many friends and to family members. I've already found the temerity to suggest that, if it's a boy, they should call him Remington Royal Hansen-Writing Ball-Messenger!
Meanwhile, my bonny grandson in England is now more than a year old, and already frequenting bars!:
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Making Blood-Splattered Words Dance Off a Typewriter

March 6, 2015, 9:03 pm
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Until I read a comment from Richard Polt on my post about it being Far From Over for typewriters, I thought I knew a lot about Ernest Hemingway and a fair it about Red Smith (below, this time with an Olympia standard).
I was familiar with the quotation about "sitting at a typewriter and opening a vein", but had never felt inclined to question whether the widely accepted wisdom was right, that it came from Hemingway. It seems I was far from alone in this, and I note that, having commented on Richard's comment, Taylor Harbin is now contemplating a change the sub-head on his Oblivion Sphere blog.
It turns out Red Smith didn't actually write this line, but spoke it after being "dragooned" into speaking to New York Herald Tribune advertising salesmen:
These pages are from Robert Schmuhl's introduction to his book Making Word Dance: Reflections on Red Smith, Journalism and Writing (for which the prologue was written by Red's son Terence Smith):
Schmuhl also wrote:
The truth about the "bleeding" quotation was (at least partially) uncovered in a blog called The Kill Zone: Insider Perspectives from Top Thriller and Mystery Writers in November 2012. In a post called "The Perils of Internet Information" by James Scott Bell, the author wrote:
"Recently, I’ve seen another bastardised quotation zapping around the Internet. It’s a quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway. As a Hemingway-phile, I was quite interested. The quote goes like this: 'There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.' I was immediately suspicious. Something was rotten in the state of Bartlett, for it was the great sports writer Red Smith who said, 'There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and just open a vein.' (There are some variations on this, but the source is clear.)"
Bell then linked to Wikipedia, which says, "Smith is one plausible source for the quotation, 'Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.' In 1946, sportswriter Paul Gallico wrote, 'It is only when you open your veins and bleed on to the page a little that you establish contact with your reader.' In 1949, columnist Walter Winchell wrote, 'Red Smith was asked if turning out a daily column wasn't quite a chore ... "Why, no", dead-panned Red. "You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed."'
Bell went on: "This quote, in fact, became the basis of a book on writing, Just Open a Vein, edited by William Brohaugh (Writer’s Digest Books, 1987). The Red Smith quote, with attribution, was printed right on the cover. So how did these words get into Ernest Hemingway’s mouth, and thence to the wide world of the Internet?
"A TV writer did it, that’s how! As I investigated this further, I came across an Entertainment Weekly article from May 28, 2012, by Ken Tucker. It was a review of an HBO movie about Hemingway and his third wife, Martha Gellhorn. Tucker writes: 'There’s a lot of dialogue that sounds as studied as Hemingway must have intended it to sound as he declaimed it (“Let me tell you about writers — the best ones are all liars”) and stuff that’s almost certainly cobbled together from various sources. (I was particularly amused when a negative review of the movie today in The New York Timesmade a point of ridiculing one Hemingway line - “There’s nothing to writing, Gellhorn - all you do is sit down to your typewriter and bleed” - but failed to realise it most likely derived from a New York Times sportswriter Red Smith’s wry dictum, “Writing it easy; all you have to do is open a vein and bleed.”).'"
Clive Owen as Hemingway
Bell went on: "So there you have it. It seemed like a good line to give to Hemingway in a biopic. But there’s another problem with having him say this (besides the fact that he never said it). The problem is he never would have said it! 
"Because Hemingway drafted in longhand, and he drafted standing up! He stood because of injuries sustained during his service in World War I. It was easier on him to be on his feet.
"He usually only got to a maximum of 500 words in a single day, because he was famously trying to write 'one true sentence' followed by another, and so on. (NOTE: There’s a famous author photo of Hemingway at a typewriter for the back cover of For Whom the Bell Tolls. But this was a staged photo to emphasise the Hemingway field reporter mythos).
"So let’s be clear, when doing the hard work (the 'bleeding') of a first draft, Hemingway:
"Did not sit.
"Did not use a typewriter."
Sorry, Mr Bell, but Hemingway DID sit and he DID use a typewriter. These are NOT staged photos:
Anyway, back to Red Smith:
Smith, in pink shirt, interviews Muhammad Al in Manila in 1975
Note the quotation under the images above.
I love this tribute, from Frank Boggs, published on January 18, 1982, eight days after Smith died:
Red Smith:
the greatest typewriter player
of our time
Red Smith was the only sports writer in history whom the rest of us also saw as an accomplished musician.
He played the typewriter. It sang so beautifully, even though he used nothing more than the forefinger of each hand. He would sit in the hullabaloo of a World Series or Kentucky Derby or Super Bowl pressbox and write his column. When he would finish, and we would see him put his musical instrument back into the typewriter case, we knew he had just completed another masterful job of putting the dictionary's words into better order than Webster.
Walter Wellesley Smith died Friday. He was 76. He had been writing four sports columns a week for the New York Times, but in the last column he wrote he said his output was being reduced to three.
For most of his life, and for all of mine and probably yours, Red Smith was acknowledged as the best sports columnist ever. His lead was considered so great that nobody finished second.
Last July, when the Los Angeles Times did a study of sports columnists, Smith was quoted on today's writing breed. "Some of these amateur psychologists on the sports pages bore me. Some columnists today give me the distinct impression that they actively dislike sports. They should have a decent regard for their field. I like to see them laugh now and then. Sports are good fun. We should view them with a light heart."
Unlike the pages we write for, newspapers do not list rosters of sports writers. But Red Smith was a small man, about 5-8 I would think.
Weight around 150. I first met him about 20 years ago and wondered when his hair had been red. His face was a little reddish, but his hair was white.
He was the sort who stood back in a crowd. He listened much more than he talked. His manners were as impeccable as his writing. He was a thoroughbred gentleman.
It was when he wrote that he stood out in the crowd.
When he was interviewed a few years back for Jerome Holztman's book, No Cheering in the Press Box, Smith said: "I like to report on the scene around me, on the little piece of the world as I see it, as it is in my time. And I like to do it in a way that gives the reader a little pleasure, a little entertainment.
I've always had the notion that people go to spectator sports to have fun and then they grab the paper to read about it and have fun again."
And he also said, "The guy I admire most in the world is a good reporter, and I'd like to be called that. I'd like to be considered good and honest and reasonably accurate."
I am sure we never imagined Red Smith would not be with us, or that at next week's Super Bowl he would not be present, so that all of us who are taller could look up to him. Because he was good and honest and accurate.
And the greatest musician of our time. 
Red Smith as a baby, far right:
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International Women's Day

March 8, 2015, 7:29 pm
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Sholes & Glidden, photo taken 1905
Remington, 1898
Oliver No 2? 1897?
Edna May as Lilian Leigh in a 1903 production of the musical The School Girl. She is using two different typewriters, the lower one a Yost No 4. Is the top one a Burns? Or a Smith Premier No 2? And what about the one below?
Sophia Loren with an Olivetti Lettera 22, 1963

A well-groomed female journalist covering the League of Nations conference in Geneva in 1933 with a Remington Model 1 portable.


Elizabeth Hawes, American dress designer, with a Noiseless portable, 1942
Remington portables, New York City, 1958
Irish writer Mary Lavin with Royal portable, Dublin, 1966

Illustration by Leo Burnett, 1937


Francoise Sagan with Hermes Baby, April 1957
Secretary,  1910
British author Mary Hocking with an Imperial Good Companion, 1970
Agatha Christie at work with her Remington Home portable in her Devonshire home, Greenway House, 1946
Audrey Hepburn with an Olympia in the film Paris - When It Sizzles, 1964
Marguerite Higgins of the New York Herald-Tribune with an Erika Model 9 in South Korea, 1950
Short story writer Sally Benson, New York City, 1940
Reina Maria Rodriguez with an Olympia in Havana, 1995
An nervous-looking entrant in the 1929 Paris speed typing championship
Facit stand at an office equipment exhibition in Paris, 1958
US Senator Mary Chase Smith with a Royalite, 1963
Smith-Corona flattop
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International Women's Day II: When The Bosses Typed for the Secretaries

March 9, 2015, 5:59 am
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In its March 9, 1959, edition, LIFE magazine covered an unusual event which "turned the tables", as it were. It was the "Bosses Typing Contest" at the Denver Chapter of the National Secretaries' Association's 11th annual "executive's night" dinner party, given by 215 members for their bosses at the Brown Palace Hotel. This series of photographs was taken for LIFE by Hikaru Carl Iwasaki. Secretaries dictated letters to five executives (who had won "door prizes"), and the bosses had 10 minutes to attempt to transcribe the letters on Underwood Golden Touch Documentor electric typewriters. "Why don't we sit on their laps?" asked Robert Downing, who still got to collect the winner's prize, despite his sexist remark.
And the winner is, Robert Downing ...
Monte Carroll
Edwin Nielson
Harry Lazier
William Powers
Winner Robert Downing
Downing gets a pat on the pate from his secretary "boss" Jan Knoop
Presentation by Denver chapter president Jo Madden
Another typewriter-related photo by Iwasaki, from 1945, shows US Army corporal Minoru Yoshida of Honolulu, hospitalised at the Dibble General Hospital, Menlo Park, California, talking with Mrs Jack Epstein, a member of the public relations staff of the hospital.
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Fans With Typewriters - A Talk on the History of Sportswriting 1815-2015

March 11, 2015, 4:34 am
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My sports history presentation "Fans With Typewriters: A History of Sportswriting 1815-2015" took place today the University of the Third Age in Hughes, Canberra, and there was a packed auditorium. I took along 15 typewriters, as well as a spare Blickensderfer case, to help make my points, and came home with 16 portables (with the promise of the gift of another to come).
"We'd have had a Sholes-designed portable typewriter in the 1870s if it wasn't for Remington"
Demonstrating the weight difference in Blickensderfer cases.
A very special thanks to Peter Weil for providing me with so many great images to illustrate the talk, including pictorial evidence of early outdoor use of the Blickensderfer.
With course coordinator, political scientist and writer John Warhurst, left.
Turn of the century, above, 50 years later, below
For many years I searched in vain for the famous Corona 3-Dempsey-Firpo advert. Did it exist, or was it just a good story? In frustration, eventually I mocked up my own. Real or not, it had the desired effect.
"It would never have happened if I'd been using a Corona 3!"
15 American sportswriters
Jack London
Ernest Hemingway
Grantland Rice
Westbrook Pegler
Damon Runyon
Ring Lardner
Paul Gallico
Red Smith
Heywood Broun
Irwin Shaw
Norman Mailer
George Plimpton
Gay Talese
Tom Wolfe
Hunter S. Thompson
15 Australian sportswriters
William Josiah Sumner Hammersley (1826-1886)
Nathaniel Gould (1857-1919)
William Francis Corbett (1857-1923)
John Worrall (1861-1937)
Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson (1864-1941)
Reginald William Ernest Wilmot (1869-1949) 
Claude Gordon Corbett (1885-1944)
Alban George "Johnny" Moyes (1893-1963)
Edward Hugh Buggy (1896-1974)
Raymond John Robinson (1905-1982) 
John Henry Webb Fingleton (1908-1981)  
Percy James Beames (1911-2004)
Dallas George Stivens (1911-1997)
Henry Alfred Gordon (1925-2015
Peter Muir McFarline (1944-2002)
15 sportswriters from other countries
Sir John Frederick Neville Cardus (1888-1975) Britain
Cyril Lionel Robert James (1901-1989) Trinidad
Raymond Charles Robertson-Glasgow (1901-1965) Britain
Denzil Stanley Batchelor (1906-1969) Britain
Alexander Gaskell Pickard (1913-2006) New Zealand
Sir Terence Power McLean (1913- 2004) New Zealand 
Leslie Thomas John Arlott (1914-1991) Britain
Peter Wilson (-1983) Britian 
Alan John Ross (1922 2001) Britian
Denis Lalanne (1926-) France
Ian Wooldridge (1932-2007) Britain
Hugh McIlvanney (1934-) Britain 
Neil Allen, Britain
Neil Wilson, Britain
Ramachandra Guha (1958-) India
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Death Row and the Typewriter

March 12, 2015, 4:10 am
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This is a story about capital punishment,
the possibilities of rehabilitation,
of mercy, clemency and of forgiveness
Ebony magazine, November 1962
Paul Crump served 39 years in Cook County Jail but was spared from the electric chair when he gained international notoriety and parole after writing the novel Burn, Killer, Burn! on a Remington SJ manual standard typewriter. It added 40 years to his life. The typewriter was acquired through a prison newspaper campaign launched by Crump's friend and then fellow prisoner, the Spanish Civil War veteran and legendary Chicago painter, poet and one-armed pianist Edward Ross Balchowsky (below, 1916-89). Ed helped Crump with his early writings.
Every man has got something to give,
And if a man can change,
then a man should live.
- Lines from Paul Crump by Phil Ochs
(see full lyrics below)
Crump, below, had 15 dates with the electric chair in Cook County Jail.
Five years ago I had no hesitation in agreeing to help a Sydney couple whose son had been locked up for life in a Thai jail on charges of drug trafficking. The young man wanted a portable typewriter so he could start a Technical and Further Education (TAFE) course. Enormous difficulties in convincing the Thai authorities to allow the Olivetti Lettera 32 into the jail were eventually overcome. Even then jailers tried to put the Olivetti out of commission. The Lettera 32 withstood this harsh treatment, and one was left hoping the typewriter might provide a valuable step forward on the road to rehabilitation, and perhaps one day to a life beyond those jail walls. Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan may not be so lucky.
Sukumaran has made a personal plea for mercy to Indonesian President Joko Widodo, painting a portrait of Widodo and signing it with the words "People can change". I wonder if he knows the story of Paul Crump? Or of the song by Phil Ochs? Sukumaran led an art studio for his fellow prisoners during his time in Kerobokan prison on Bali and was awarded an associate degree in fine arts by Curtin University in Western Australia. At Kerobokan he also taught English, computer, graphic design and philosophy classes to fellow prisoners. The prison governor described Sukumaran and Chan as model prisoners and testified in court that they should not be executed because of the positive influence they had in jail. Chan also organised courses, led the English-language church service and was a mentor to many. He claimed God said to him, "Andrew, I have set you free from the inside out, I have given you life!"
Andrew Chan, left, and Myuran Sukumaran
Our American friends would almost certainly be unaware of this, but the story which has dominated Australian television and online news in the past few months concerns the impending execution in Indonesia of two Australian men caught attempting to smuggle heroin into Australia from the Indonesian island of Bali in April 2005. In Indonesia, crimes against laws relating to the production, transit, importation and possession of psychotropic drugs and narcotics are punishable by death. Andrew Chan, 31, and Myuran Sukumaran, 33, were the alleged ringleaders of the so-called "Bali Nine", a group of young Australians who were arrested at Ngurah Rai International Airport and the Melasti Hotel in Kuta and charged with planning to smuggle 18lb of heroin out of Indonesia.
Chan and Sukumaran are at the Nusakambangan Island prison, along with five other foreigners condemned to execution by firing squad. The others are Rodrigo Gularte, a Brazilian who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with psychotic features, Frenchman Serge Atlaoui, Nigerians Raheem Agbaje Salami and Silvester Obiekwe Nwolise and Filipina Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso. In January, Indonesia executed a Dutchman, Ang Kiem Soei, another Brazilian, Marco Archer Cardoso Moreira, a Nigerian, Daniel Enemuo, a Malawian, Namaona Denis, an Indonesian woman, Rani Andriani, and a Vietnamese woman, Tran Bich Hanh.
In the main, news coverage in Australia does not tend to reflect it, but it would seem the country is evenly divided on the impending executions of Chan and Sukumaran. A special snap SMS Roy Morgan Poll in late January, commissioned by the current affairs program of a national radio broadcaster, showed a slender majority (52 per cent) believed Australians convicted of drug trafficking in another country and sentenced to death should be executed. A much larger majority (62 per cent) said the Australian Government should not do more to stop the executions. It might fairly be supposed the poll reflected the regard many Australians hold for Indonesia's sovereign right to enact its own laws and carry out sentencing passed down by its open courts. Indonesia is, after all, a republic which is, in some important ways, more advanced than Australia: it has its own democratically elected head of state, with no symbol of a former ruler on its flag.
In another sense, the Morgan poll also reflected the fact that those compassionate Australians vehemently opposing the executions of Chan and Sukumaran have not been aided in their efforts to achieve clemency by a clumsy, bumbling Australian Government, one which seems to be constantly stumbling from one political faux pas to the next. (After knighting the Duke of Edinburgh, the latest embarrassment from our Prime Minister is his call on the funding of "lifestyle choices" of Aboriginals living in outback areas). Heavy-handed threats to Indonesia, especially in regard to aid, have been met by counter-blustering, such as a vow that Australia faces a "tsunami of asylum seekers" on incoming refugee boats. None of which does Chan and Sukumaran any good whatsoever. The truly sad part is that, if Chan and Sukumaran are granted clemency, this Government will claim the credit, when it will have only come about through Indonesian benevolence, not from any Australian pressure. With its bravado, the Australian Government is trying to win back public favour (another Morgan poll showed Tony Abbott is the preferred governing party leader by a mere 14 per cent) - which is another thing entirely from actually trying to save the lives of Chan and Sukumaran.
Ebony magazine, July 1962
The hope of Indonesian mercy brings me to another case in which a man sat on Death Row - and was saved, one could say, by a typewriter, a Remington SJ manual standard.
When Paul Orville Crump died of pneumonia and lung cancer at the Chester Mental Health Center in Chicago on October 11, 2002, he had served 39 of his 72 years in prison for killing a security guard in the armed robbery of a Chicago meatpacking plant in March 1953. But he had had 40 years added to his life, largely through his novel Burn, Killer, Burn!
Crump, born in Chicago on April 2, 1930, was in June 1953 sentenced to die in the electric chair. He had 15 execution dates before the sentence was changed to 119 years by Governor Otto Kerner on August 1, 1962, just 35 hours before Crump was scheduled to be killed. He was paroled in 1993 but struggled to adapt to freedom, and with the alcohol and mental illness issues that would compel his sister Gwendolyn Jones to get an order of protection against him.
While serving his long sentence, Crump, inspired by a visit from the writer Nelson Algren, above, began reading classic literature and wrote his novel, about a murderer who commits suicide rather than be executed. It was published in 1962.
Those who backed Crump's efforts for parole, including authors James Baldwin and Gwendolyn Brooks (below), the Reverend Billy Graham and the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, viewed the book as proof that he had been rehabilitated.
Crump was also the subject of a documentary [The People versus Paul Crump] by William Friedkin.
In 1960 Friedkin had been invited to a party by cultural maven Lois Solomon (later Lois Weisberg, Chicago cultural affairs commissioner), who had heard about Crump from Balchowsky's friend, the writer Felix Jacques Singer (1928-). Singer, author of 1959's These Seventeen: Sixteen Stories and One Essay, was a social campaigner who took the Freedom Ride from Montgomery to Jackson in 1961.
Friedkin, back then a man strongly opposed to the death penalty, was introduced to Father Robert Serfling, the Death Row chaplain at the Cook County Jail. "I asked him had he ever met anyone on Death Row whom he thought was innocent," Friedkin said. "He told me about Paul Crump." In the seven years of awaiting his execution, Crump had become a model prisoner and, in the opinion of the warden, Jack Johnson, fully rehabilitated. "Johnson had executed at least two people by then and he didn’t want to execute Crump," Friedkin said. (See an interview with Friedkin here).
Friedkin, right, on the set of The French Connection
Four years ago, writing about "The forgotten case of Paul Crump"in the Chicago Tribune, David Weiner raised fresh doubts about Crump's guilt. 
"Before William Friedkin became famous for directing The French Connection and The Exorcist, he was a television director for WTTW in Chicago. In 1962, Friedkin made a movie about Paul Crump, a Cook County Jail inmate scheduled to be executed in the jail's electric chair."
Weiner didn't mention the fine details, which are that Crump had confessed and was convicted of killing father-of-five Theodore P. Zukowski, 43, the chief guard who tried to stop an attempted $20,500 robbery at the Libby, McNeil & Libby Food Products offices at the Chicago Union stockyards on March 20, 1953. Crump said he shot Zukowski with a .38 calibre revolver he took from another guard. Crump was one of four of the five suspects arrested on March 25 (the fifth, Hudson Tillman, 19, had turned state's evidence, leading to the other arrests). The actual proceeds of the robbery, $2900, was quickly recovered. On June 19, Crump, by then 23, was sentenced by a Criminal Court jury to death in the electric chair, the execution date being set for November 14 by presiding case judge Frank R. Leonard in August, when Tillman was given 15 years. David Taylor, 24, his brother Eugene, 22, and Harold Riggins, 22, were each sentenced to 199 years jail. An alleged escape attempt by Crump was foiled in late October.
Weiner went on: "During his trial, Crump claimed he was tortured into confessing he had committed the crime [that is, the killing of Zukowski]. After his conviction and being sent to the jail, Crump became a "model prisoner" - even writing a book, Burn, Killer, Burn! - and many people called for Crump's sentence to be commuted.
"Friedkin was hired to make a documentary about Crump that was to air on what was then known as WBKB, Channel 7 TV, the night before Crump's execution. Because of the controversy surrounding Crump, his allegations of torture and his subsequent rehabilitation, Jim Wagner, Friedkin's lighting director, alleged that the movie was screened for then-Mayor Richard J. Daley and the State Street Council, whose members were major sponsors of WBKB's programming. Even though the film was narrated by Joel Daly, the station's then-leading news anchor, and was considered accurate and factual, the scenes depicting Crump's alleged torture caused such an uproar WBKB was forced to pull the film. As producer of the film, WBKB had allegedly confiscated all copies of it. But Friedkin hopped on a plane to Springfield and showed a 'bootleg' copy to then-Governor Otto Kerner*. Less than an hour after viewing the film, Kerner commuted Crump's sentence to 199 years in prison.
"The film was never aired* and it was assumed all copies were destroyed. No one wanted to bring to light the allegations of police torture and the damage it would cause to the city. Remember - this was before the Civil Rights movement came to a highly segregated Chicago - and Chicago's African American community was years away from having a meaningful say in the running of the city. The racism implicit in Crump's 1953 torture - even if true - would cast an onerous cloud over the city's image.
"Now, some 50 years later, a cop - former Chicago Police Lieutenant Jon Burge - is on trial for lying about torturing prisoners and the dark side of our city is finally being brought to light for all to see. Democrat Michael Dukakis lost the 1988 presidential election over a fumbling answer on capital punishment. He tried to 'intellectualize' his way around the question instead of showing true emotion. Just like the way Americans judged Dukakis, we also have to judge Jon Burge."
*The People versus Paul Crump was screened and was the Golden Gate Award Winner for Film as Communication at the 1962 San Francisco International Film Festival. A digitally restored version of the film was released by Facets in May last year. Also, it was Red Quinlan, general manager at WBKB, who sent the film to Kerner, who watched it and sent Friedkin a letter. "Which I still have," Friedkin said. "He said, 'I was extremely moved by your film … I’ve decided to parole  [Crump] to a life in prison without the possibility of parole.'"
See also Letters to the Editor about this story, 
Ebony magazine, September 1962
The track Paul Crump appears on Phil Ochs' albums The Early Years and A Toast to Those Who Are Gone
In the state of Illinois 'bout nine years ago
A cold blooded killer, he went against the law
He killed a factory guard when his robbery did fail
And they caught him and they threw him into jail
He lay there in his cell, locked up with his hate
Not many men knew of him and less cared for his fate
And he knew no peace of mind when his trial was comin' by
The judge said, "You are guilty you must die"
But Paul Crump is alive today
He's a sittin' in a cell, he's got somethin' to say
Every man has got something to give
And if a man can change, then a man should live
They sent him to Cook County Jail, a jail known far and wide
Where pity was a stranger and brave men often cry
They locked him in the death row to count the days before
To the day they came a knockin' at his door
But another warden came along, Jack Johnson was his name
He knew how prison living could drive a man to shame
He had no need of pistols in a solitary cell
When a word of trust would help him just as well
Now Paul Crump is alive today
He's a sittin' in a cell, he's got somethin' to say
Every man has got something to give
And if a man can change, then a man should live
Between the warden and the convict, a friendship slowly grew
And one learned from the other that a man can live anew
Then the warden called the convict, "You must leave the devil's plan
The time has come for you to be a man"
Then the convict found religion and he started him to learn
He wrote himself a novel called 'Burn, Killer, Burn'
And as his dying day grew near, to the warden he did cry
"You must pull the switch and I must die"
But Paul Crump is alive today
He's a sittin' in a cell, he's got somethin' to say
Every man has got something to give
And if a man can change, then a man should live
It was up to Governor Kerner to keep him from the grave
Was rehabilitation a reason to be saved?
The hour was comin' closer, the word was spread around
A new and better answer must be found
Well, the electric chair was cheated, the convict didn't pay
A new concept of justice was born and raised that day
Now throughout this peaceful land there are others set to die
What better time than now to question why?
But Paul Crump is alive today
He's a sittin' in a cell, he's got somethin' to say
Every man has got something to give
And if a man can change, then a man should live
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Wow! What is it?

March 13, 2015, 5:25 am
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The latest Auction Team Breker newsletter arrived from Cologne today and my eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw the one typewriter listed. "A terrific piece of artwork in full working condition," declares Team Breker. It's called a "unique acryl-design" Remington No 7, and is made from original machine parts. It's coming up at a specialty auction on May 30. I will be most curious to see what it fetches. It certainly makes the see-through Swintec wedges look a bit ordinary! Somehow I don't think this Aleksandr Kuskov "Time Machine" from Kiev will type ...
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Getting There: Restoring a 1922 Remington 12 Standard Typewriter - Day One

March 13, 2015, 9:43 pm
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This is one of eight typewriters given to me in the past two days. The gift was one of three machines which came from Wagga Wagga ("the place of many crows"). It's a late 1922 Remington 12 standard (serial number LA23481) which has obviously seen much better days. OK, a Remington 12 is not that much to crow about, but it doesn't deserve to look this shabby. Not when it can be restored to full working condition, and made to look splendid. It will just take a few days. 
First thing to do was remove the Gorin Billing and Tabulating Attachment. I'm not interested in billing or tabulation systems, I would never use them, the Gorin attachment was in by far the worst state of anything on the typewriter, and it was going to make my restoration job far, far more difficult if I left in on. So off it came.
In about an hour's work today I stripped off everything else I will remove before starting on dealing with the rust and repairing the paintwork. That's tomorrow's task. So far so good. Day three will probably involve reassembly and repairing the drawband - and some typing. Then I'll be crowing! 
DAY ONE
BEFORE
AFTER STEP ONE
AFTER STEP TWO
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Almost There: Restoring a 1922 Remington 12 Standard Typewriter - Day Three

March 15, 2015, 8:43 pm
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NOW
Monday PM
After steps three to about 33!
THEN
Saturday PM, 48 hours ago
Still some touch-up work to do yet. But the typewriter has been fully reassembled and is now working. The drawband has been reattached. In fiddling with the drawband and mainspring, the escapement rack dropped off. I've never dealt with an escapement rack like this one before. I've reattached it, but the carriage is skipping, so I'll play around with it some more, and make some adjustments to see if I can fix it. Some of the keys are still a bit stiff, but none of the typebars were moving at all when I got this machine, so progress has been made. An awful lot of work has gone into this project in the past two days, and I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think it's all been worth it (touch wood nothing goes wrong from here on in). I especially like the way the keytops have cleaned up, with the rim rust gone and the tops now dirt-free. Next thing will be to wind some ribbon on and try for a typecast with it. 
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The Irish Typewriter Table that gave its name to one of Literature's Greatest Characters

March 16, 2015, 8:16 pm
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Dermot Trellis, as depicted in Kurt Palm's movie version of Flann O'Brien's sublime novel At Swim-Two-Birds. Trellis takes his name from a makeshift typewriter table. I've not seen this film, but I guess it's possibly as successful an attempt to translate a complex novel on to celluloid as Joseph Strick's movie version of James Joyce's Ulysses, which I watched transfixed as part of a sexually segregated audience (males one night, females the next) on August 17, 1967.
These paintings of Flann O'Brien were made by his younger brother Micheál Ó Nualláin. The 1917 Underwood 3 O'Brien used may not look it here, but it has a 14-inch wide carriage. 
O'Brien's typewriter can be seen below, with other items (fedora, violin, passport, diary, hand lens and fountain pen) which had belonged to the author, and which since 1997 have formed the O'Brien collection held by the Boston College. The college's Irish Collection at the John J. Burns Library of Rare Books and Special Collections also houses the works of poet William Butler Yeats and playwright Samuel Beckett. The O'Brien collection includes 14,000 pages of typed manuscripts, extensive correspondence (including a 1953 letter from O'Brien to Underwood Business Machines about repairs to his typewriter) and a library of more than 500 books. It contains various personal effects, among them his desk and typewriter and a life-size portrait of the writer painted by his brother Micheál Ó Nualláin, who assembled the collection.
On this, St Patrick's Day, it is opportune to salute arguably the greatest novel ever typewritten, Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds. I know I've never read a finer work of fiction, and doubt I ever will. (Although, it might be pointed out, when The Times Literary Supplementreviewed the book among its "Novels of the Week" the day after St Patrick's Day in 1939, it said, "Mr Flann O’Brien will hardly be surprised if a reviewer is at a loss how to describe this book of his. No doubt it is to be described as fiction, though perhaps nothing would be lost if it is not.”
Novelist, playwright and supreme satirist Flann O'Brien was born Brian O'Nolan (Irish = Ó Nualláin; October 5, 1911-April 1, 1966) and also wrote under the names Myles na gCopaleen, Brother Barnabas, George Knowall, The Great Count O’Blather and John James Doe.
Google used this doodle to mark what would have been Flann O'Brien's 101st birthday, on October 5, 2012. The illustration depicts the saw, hammer and nails presumably used by O'Brien to make his trellis typewriter table. However, the illustration makes the common mistake of assuming O'Brien used a portable typewriter. His typewriter was, in fact, a 1917 Underwood Standard 3 (serial number 178622) with a 14-inch carriage.
The lead character in At Swim-Two-Birds is Dermot Trellis, a grumpy and cynical writer of  Westerns who is the eventual antagonist of the novel, the target for all of the other characters’ vengeance. Trellis was given his name by the author after a table he constructed from the offcuts of a modified trellis that had stood in his family's back garden at 4 Avoca Terrace, Blackrock, Dublin. 
While working during the day as a civil servant, O'Brien wrote the novel on his 1917 Underwood 3 standard typewriter with a 14-inch carriage (serial number 178622) in the bedroom he shared with his younger brother Micheál Ó Nualláin.
O'Brien, born in Strabane, County Tyrone, today stands in his richly deserved position as a key figure in postmodern literature. His many brilliant, outlandishly comic and satirical thrice-weekly columns in The Irish Times and an Irish language novel An Béal Bocht were written under the name Myles na gCopaleen ("Miles of the Ponies"). The columns appeared under the heading "Cruiskeen Lawn", transliterated from the Irish crúiscín lán, "brimming small-jug". But At Swim-Two-Birds is O'Brien's masterpiece of comic story-telling, and one of the most sophisticated examples of metafiction. The novel's title derives from Snámh dá Én (Middle Irish: "Swim-Two-Birds"), a ford on the River Shannon, between Clonmacnoise and Shannonbridge, supposedly visited by the legendary King Sweeney, another character in the novel. The novel was included in TIME magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
O'Brien is seen here in Dublin's Palace Bar in 1942. The Palace, a pub in which I have imbibed pints of Guinness on many an occasion, is now the scene of an annual MylesDay, held on April 1, the anniversary of O'Brien's death. The event in a way mocks Bloomsday, which celebrates the events in Joyce's Ulysses each June 16. Ironically, however, it was O'Brien who, on the 50th anniversary of those events, first organised the now traditional daylong pilgrimage along the Ulysses route.
Recommended: From The Times Literary Supplement, October 5, 2011, David Wheatley's "Reading Flann O’Brien on his centenary". Also the TLS blog by Thea Lenarduzzi, "Here comes the Flann", and David Horspoool's "One for the boys?" from that day. Fragments of a filmed 1964 interview with a drunken O'Brien by my former Irish Press editor Tim Pat Coogan can be seen here.
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The Swedish Densmore Typewriter

March 17, 2015, 6:50 pm
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Finnish typewriter collector, Ville Dromberg of Helsinki, sent me this image of his Halda Model 4, pointing out that, "Unfortunately,  there is not much on the Internet or elsewhere about this machine." See The Typewriter Database entry on this machine here.
I recognised the machine as a Densmore and Ernst Martin confirmed that Halda's "first models ... recalled the Densmore". Adler described them as "patterned after the Densmore". It looks to me like there was more than "patterning" involved, but patent rights, too. The Halda 4 is almost identical to the Densmore 2, with the most obvious differences, judging but these images alone, being the bell on the front and the chrome band around the typebasket, with a brandname plate underneath it.
The Halda Model 4 of 1902 represented the Swedish company's first truly successful venture into typewriter manufacturing. The Model 8 of 1914, which "recalled" the Underwood, was Halda's first "conventional visible upright", says Adler.
The Halda Fickurfabrik AB Svängsta (pocketwatch making) company took its name from its founder, watchmaker Henning Hammarlund, born in Varalöv on December 30, 1857, and a graduate from the Geneva Academy of Horology in 1880. Halda was established in Svängsta by Mörrumsån in Blekinge in the south of Sweden in 1887 and started making typewriters (based on Charles Spiro's Bar-Lock) in 1896. Hammarlund was struck down by poor health in 1918 and by 1920 his company was in liquidation. Hammarlund, below, died in Bastad on April 25, 1922.
After the company went into liquidation, AB Halda Fabriker was formed to maintain typewriter production, but this company went bankrupt in 1927. Halda AB was established, merged with Norden of Denmark in 1935, and three years later was taken over by AB Åtvidabergs Förenede Industrier and converted to a subsidiary under the name Facit-Halda AB. Halda remained the typewriter brand in the ÅtvidabergGroup until 1957, when it switched to Facit.
Meanwhile, back in the good ol' US of A, the Densmore had emerged in 1891 as a serious competitor to Remington, Caligraph, Hammond, Crandall, Yost, Smith Premier and Bar-Lock. But upstrike typewriters were already on the way out, and recognising the inevitability of visible typing, Remington formed the Union Writing Machine Company in March 1893. Caligraph, Yost, Smith Premier and Densmore joined in, along with Monarch, to protect their market share against the visible typing challenges of Oliver and Wagner (later Underwood). 
The pre-1893 version of the Densmore (the No 1) was the design work of Walter Jay Barron, the estranged stepson of James Densmore, and Amos Densmore, brother of James Densmore, with Franz Xaver Wagner adding finishing touches to the mix just before the machine went into production at the Merritt brothers' plant in Springfield, Massachusetts.
After the establishment of the Union Trust, Henry White Merritt (1858-), who had been working for the Smith brothers and was now employed under the wing of the trust, joined Walter Barron in making substantial improvements to the Densmore on behalf of the trust. The first and most notable of these was the revolutionary ballbearing-jointed typebars. Scientific American reported on April 17, 1897:
Don Sutherland made these interesting observations about the Densmore in his The Typewriter Legend:
Sutherland was, however, being misleading in mentioning James Densmore - James was two years dead and had had nothing to do with the design of the machine that bore his surname. And he'd also cut Walter Barron out of his will.
Barron's partner in redesigning the Densmore, Henry White Merritt, was one of four Springfield brothers who all had a hand in the burgeoning typewriter industry in the late 1880s, including producing the Merritt index machine.
The other brothers were Alonzo (1847-), Mortimer George Merritt (1858-1941) and Charles (1861-1889). They were the sons of Samuel Fowler Merritt (1820-95), one of America’s more notable mid-19th century silversmiths. Alonzo became a jeweller while Mortimer and Charles worked as engravers. The family business, Merritt Brothers, were also die-sinkers. Mortimer patented wood type-making and metal type-making for the Remington and Caligraph typewriters. He also designed a typeslug for improved alignment on the Yost.
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The Entomologist's Oliver Portable Typewriter

March 18, 2015, 4:27 pm
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In my intense excitement when given four typewriters by an elderly, downsizing Deakin couple last week, I didn't pay a lot of attention to this Oliver portable (type 4). I am very familiar with this model, and my eyes were pretty much glued to a typewriter I hadn't previously encountered, an L.C.Smith 8 standard in mint condition. I was especially fascinated in the L.C.Smith since it was second-hand even when given to the donor when she was 16, in 1947, and looked like it had been bought first-hand just a month ago. But more on that later ...
The couple were justifiably proud of the condition in which they had stored all of their typewriters, one of which (a Smith-Corona Classic 12) they had lugged back to Australia from New Haven, Connecticut, after buying it there during the donor's stint at Yale. 
When I got home and uncased the three portables in the cache, it slowly began to dawn on me what a beauty I had in this salmon-coloured Oliver.  (It's the same shade, by the way, as Olivetti Lettera 22s quite commonly found in Australia.) The Oliver, too, was brought back to this country, from England, where it was purchased in 1955.
The Deakin couple had overlooked to mention it, but I soon discovered the Oliver has two special keys. These two keytops are flat, whereas the other keytops have the usual fingertip "bucket" dip:
Further research showed these Greek alphabet characters - Gamma, Mu, Delta and Pi - are commonly used by entomologists in equations in their papers:
But perhaps the best find of all was this photo from the National Archives, taken in the Department of Entomology at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) here in Canberra in 1960. It shows the Oliver's previous owner, Alestion Ross Gilby, at his workplace, with the Oliver portable in its case in the background:
Mr Gilby is now 88, but still looking as bright and alert as he did when this picture was taken 54 years ago.
The typewriter was assembled in the British Oliver's Victory Works at 80 Gloucester Road in Croydon, London, from parts made in Switzerland. In this case, "British made" means the same thing as "Australian made" when applied to Remington portables assembled in Sydney from parts made in the US. This "type 4" Oliver is also often seen as a Patria. The old assembly plant is now a storage building:
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The German Imperial

March 19, 2015, 6:14 pm
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... which, sadly, I don't have in my collection anyway. Is there one in any collection? This was the first typewriter called an Imperial, and was made by Leipzig sewing machine manufacturer Karl Heinrich Kochendörfer in 1900.
Which is very obviously a conventional-sized carriage version of the far more common Adler Universal 200:
The Imperial 90 and the Adler Universal range 200-390-400 were made by Adler in Frankfurt in what was then West Germany, while Imperial and the Nuremberg-headquartered Triumph-Adler (T-A) were under the control of Litton Industries.
The production of Imperial standards in England ended when Litton closed both of its British plants, in Leicester and Hull, in early 1975. Litton's ownership of T-A had only been finally approved by the United States Federal Trades Commission seven months earlier. Meanwhile, Imperial portables were being made in Japan and Portugal, while T-A's standard and portable manufacturing continued in West Germany.
Although from 1975 the T-A and Imperial standards were made under the one roof, the serial numbers seem unrelated - #30318307 (body and conventional carriage) on the Imperial 90 and #9733-589 (carriage, -720 on the body) of this Adler Universal 200. (These numbers extend beyond those on the Typewriter Database: slightly on the Adler, which goes up to 1973, and vastly on the Imperial, which only goes up to the Model 80 in 1973). Nor are they related to the sequence of numbers which embrace Imperial standards from the Model 60 to the Model 80. Strangely, what also differs is that on the Imperial the switches to remove the carriage move back, and on the Adler they move forward. Otherwise the mechanics are identical.
Until last Saturday I didn't know an Imperial 90 even existed, let alone that an Imperial standard was made in Germany - that is, one with the brandname of the Imperial Typewriter Company founded by Hidalgo Moya in Leicester, England, in 1908.
Before being given this Imperial 90, I had been under the mistaken impression that the line of standards from the once proudly British Imperial company extended to the Imperial 80:
I was given this Imperial 80 among a haul of 25 typewriters donated last year (the so-called "booty"). It is English-made, but, given its vintage, I would hazard an educated guess that it was manufactured in Hull - between 1968-70 (series I) and 1970-73 (series II) - not Leicester. The last Leicester-made Imperial standard was probably the Model 70 (one of which also came with the "booty"). Leicester concentrated on standard production from the Model 66 (1954) on to the end of the Model 70 line:
The Imperial 70 (1962-68), which added the capacity for carbon ribbon use, broke the mold for Imperial standards which stretched back to the company's first conventional typewriter, the Arthur Bott Pateman-designed Model 50 of 1926. The Model 66 (1954-67) was the last truly "demountable"Imperial, in that the carriage could be easily removed as well as the keyboard and typebasket as a separate unit. On the 70 and the 90, the carriage comes off, but not so on the 80.
After some months of remaining convinced the 80 was the last Imperial standard, imagine my surprise on Saturday to find there was a later model - and one made in Germany. From my earliest days of collecting, I had been aware of a semi-portable, the Imperial 34, made by Robotron in East Germany in 1977, but knew that this had nothing to do with the British company - or with Litton Industries for that matter. It's probably much more familiar as an Erika, but was also marketed in Britain as a Boots, and elsewhere as an Optima:
The sequence of events leading to me acquiring the Imperial 90 - and realising for the first time that such a model even existed - was unusual. First, some weeks ago, a Canberra lady contacted me and offered her Imperial Good Companion 7 portable (one of six I've been given in the past year - why did I once think these were scarce?) and an Olympic Electronic Compact. A few days after I had collected these machines, a lady called from Wagga Wagga and said she'd been speaking to her cousin in Canberra and asked if I'd also take her typewriters off her hands. We arranged to met on Saturday while this lady was on her way through Canberra to the Coast. She told me she had an old Remington (the one I restored last weekend), an Olivetti portable and an Imperial"with a wide carriage". When I went to pick up the typewriters, this lady took the cover off the Imperial and I thought to myself straightaway - "she's made some silly mistake, this is an Adler, not an Imperial". But, I wondered, how on earth could anyone read "Imperial" for "Adler"? Then, of course, I took a closer look and discovered it was an Imperial!
 Imperial 90
 Imperial 80
Imperial 70
The beginning of the end for typewriter companies such as Imperial came with the decision by Royal McBee stockholders in New York on December 4, 1964, to merge with Litton. In the following years Litton went on to take over Imperial and Triumph-Adler, the latter a $51 million acquisition in early 1969 aimed at “bolstering its Royal typewriter division”. The German takeover was completed in July 1974 and Litton closed Imperial's Leicester and Hull factories in 1975, after losses of $10 million in two years. So the Imperial 90 was almost certainly made in Germany after 1975.
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My (Oz Rebuilt?) L.C.Smith 8 Typewriter

March 21, 2015, 2:22 pm
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One thing I should state from the outset: if this is, as I very much suspect it is, a pre-1936 typewriter rebuilt in Australia in 1947, the people who rebuilt it did a damned fine job of it.
From the Smith-Corona News, 50th Anniversary Issue, January 27, 1953
Back on May 30, 2011, when I posted on the remarkable L.C.Smith & Bros No 1 No 1 (see item above), Richard Polt commented that the "L.C.Smith is a great typewriter". That was sufficient endorsement for me to store away a mental 'Post-it': "One day, must type on L.C.Smith - in good condition". I must confess, however, that in the intervening four years the note got lost in the anterior cingulate. What's more, in the circumstances, the chances of me ever typing on an L.C.Smith in good condition had greatly diminished. So I never really gave the idea a second thought. That is, until last week, when embroidery expert, violinist, librarian and national orienteering champion Marjorie Alison Gilby (née James; above left, 1974; above right 2013), coming up to 85, gave me her incredibly well-preserved and intriguing Model 8.
Intriguing for a few reasons, but largely because I cannot accurately date this machine. Yes, I know I wrote in my typecast with my L.C.Smith that I had found its serial number, but I was mistaken; instead, I had just assumed, because it was a Model 8 sold second-hand in 1947, that it was made in the 1920s. I still think that's the case, but cannot be certain. One thing we can be certain about: it was obviously made after the Smith brothers emerged with Corona in 1926. Or maybe not ...
I realise many L.C.Smith owners have difficulty finding the serial numbers on their typewriters, and indeed it was for this very reason that I posted the chart from Wilf Beeching's Century of the Typewriter which points to the location of serial numbers on various machines, including two versions of the L.C.Smith.
A Charleston, South Carolina, reader called John Guthrie had prompted the post by emailing me, "The serial number has eluded me. I have flipped it on all sides, slid the platen to both the extreme right and left and snooped around with a bright flashlight - all to no avail." John's was just such a model - a No 8 with a 14-inch carriage. Beeching's chart pointed him in the right direction and John responded, "Sure enough, I found it. T’were it a snake, it’ve bit me." The number he found was 875707, which, using Ted Munk's Typewriter Database, enabled John to date his machine to early 1929. "Now, Robert," added John, "please post the owner’s manual. We can find neither the copy-paste nor the delete button."
Well, like John, I have looked for a serial number in every nook and cranny of my L.C.Smith, but unlike John I have had no success. The Model 8 was called the "Silent Smith" and this one is certainly keeping its secrets. The more I looked, the more convinced I became that this machine has, at some stage of its life, undergone a very thorough and professional refurbishment, including the replacement of decals (perhaps the one on the front which includes the name Corona was all that was available at the time the typewriter was repainted and rebuilt). And that in the process, the serial number was painted over with a good, thick coat of a new "crinkle" finish. One of the many things that convinced me this had occurred is that there is ample evidence on quite a few screws of burring, which indicates it has been completely taken apart in its past.
Now, what we do know about my L.C.Smith is that it was bought for Marjorie by her doting father in 1947, when Marjorie was 16 and keen to learn to type on a "proper typewriter". "He spoiled me," Marjorie recalled last week. It came with a Remington touch typing keyboard chart (below), and I have even found a listing for it in the classified advertising columns of The Sydney Morning Herald in August 1947:
Even 10 years earlier, reconditioned L.C.Smith 8s were being sold by Stotts in Australia for 10 guineas. It's important to bear in mind here that from May 22, 1936, American-made typewriters could not be imported into Australia, so no new L.C.Smiths or US-made Coronas were sold here beyond that time - though some Canadian-assembled typewriters such as Underwoods, relabelled machines (as Australian brands) and British-made Remingtons and SCMs began to appear in the mid to late 1950s. From 1936 to the early 1950s, all American standards sold in this country were reconditioned - which adds to my theory that my L.C.Smith was completely refurbished during that period.
Australian Women's Weekly, November 27, 1937
I might not have been able to find a serial number on my L.C.Smith, but I did find this (it's pretty hard to miss, given its size). 
Now, just as I am aware some L.C.Smith owners have had a job finding serial numbers, I'm also mindful that some others have been misled by the larger numbers and letters underneath the typewriter. Not sure what the "2" stands for, but the "8" clearly indicates the model number. 
This photo of L.C.Smith No 1, No 1 was taken in New York City in 1953. It wasn't in Wisconsin.
When I posted on the L.C.Smith No 1 No 1, a reader in Wisconsin asked about her machine, stamped 1-1 (naturally assuming it was very rare). An Italian blogger said his L.C.Smith No 1 "had only [the one] mark, in very big letters, under the machine ... 1-3 X". And Antonio wasn't fooled into thinking that this indicated his machine was just the third off the production line!
I particularly like the "little" things about the L.C.Smith, features that are so simple and yet so efficient - like the line spacing dial, the ribbon colour selector key (both much better than switches) and the ribbon direction switch. No fuss, no bother.
The four Smith brothers, who had taken the Smith-Premier brandname into the trust in 1893, resigned from the Union Writing Machine Company on January 27, 1903, and formed L.C.Smith & Brothers later that same day. Just as their original enterprise, founded in 1888, had risen on the back of Alexander Timothy Brown's typewriter design, so did the Smiths rely entirely on one mechanical engineer to guide their second venture.
Typewriter Topics, 1915
Gabrielson in later life, when he was also vice-president at Meldrum-Gabrielson Corporation, manufacturers of rapid production drilling and milling machines.
He was Carl Gustav Gabrielson, born in Gothenburg, Sweden, on March 6, 1869. Gabrielson arrived in the US in 1887. From 1892 he worked as a draughtsman for New York City typewriter patent attorneys Jacob Felbel and Burnham Coos Stickney, both of whom claimed many of his designs as their own (in lieu of pay). In 1899 Gabrielson joined the Smith-Premier wing of the Union Trust, based at the Merritt Brothers factory inSpringfield, Massachusetts. Under the Union's control, Gabrielson's designs were shared by other company engineers, such as Edwin Barney for Monarch. Not surprisingly, Gabrielson left with the Smiths in early 1903. By the end of 1904 he had not one but two typewriters for them. The L.C.Smith No 1 and No 2 came out simultaneously (the No 1 had 76 characters and the No 2 had 84). The No 3 came out in 1907 with a 14-inch carriage (and with a 18-inch carriage in 1925), followed by the Nos 1 and 2 successors, the Nos 4 and 5 in 1911. The No 6 with a 20-inch carriage had emerged in 1909. The Nos 7 (76 characters) and 8 (84 characters) succeeded the No 4 and 5 in 1915. Gabrielson remained chief engineer for the Smith brothers until his death in Syracuse on August 15, 1936, aged 67. His particular line of L.C. Smith typewriters died with him that same year.

1909 advert
1911 adverts
1912 adverts
1922 advert
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Trouble at Station: Typewriter Thievery - Blow to Public Typing on its 60th Anniversary

March 22, 2015, 9:05 pm
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Someone's been stealing sidewalk typewriters from the "Public Typing Station" in Portland, Oregon (featured in the latest Welcome to the Typospherepost from Richard Polt, with an image from Rachel Coward).
Ron Rich, above, owner of Oblation Papers and Press on Northwest 12th Avenue in Portland's Pearl District, has reported to police the loss of two typewriters, stolen from right outside his shop door.
Ron had the idea to leave a pair of typewriters in front of his store at a "public typing station". "People tend to use them to say that they love somebody. Some people are saying that they're getting divorced. Some people are revealing personal things that maybe they wouldn't reveal to anybody else," he said. 
Ron is now securing his typewriters with a lock and cable. "I've tied them down and, you know, it doesn't seem quite as free and liberating."
Above, Ron, second from left, talks with Cindy Bilotti, second from right, who, with her son, Ben, bought a refurbished Consul portable during the Portland store's "type-in" on International Typewriter Day in 2013. Below, Rich talks with Arthur Springer, who uses a manual typewriter to prepare invoices for his business.
The Oregonian's Carli Brosseau (below) has responded to the thievery with an "Open letter to thief: Typewriters were key to Portland's confessional; please return".
"So far, no one has confessed to stealing a typewriter," Carli wrote. She quoted Ron as saying, "Someone has seen the opportunity ... It may be, though I doubt it, that they're taking it to the park to write a poem or going to Powell's to work on some literary pursuit, in which case I would support that."
Carli reported that two years ago Ron responded to a Craigslist ad for 50 typewriters in Keizer, Oregon, but learned when he arrived that there were actually 250 machines for sale. It was a collection born to fill the time opened by retirement, he was told. Ron sells about one a week, at around $150-$200 each.
60th ANNIVERSARY
Last May marked the 60th anniversary of the public typing station set up outside Olivetti's store on Fifth Avenue, New York. The event was photographed for LIFE magazine's issue of April 11, 1955, by Michael Rougier, below. The model used was an Olivetti Lettera 22 (bolted to its stand!). In 11 months, more than 50,000 people used the typewriter.
 
 Only joking!!! It was actually ...
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