- JoeV
- Touch Typist
Offline - Registered: 11-4-2015
- Posts: 152
Re: Future developments in mechanical typewriter design: likely to happen?
I can see a valid place for a high-end artisanal mechanical typewriter, built and marketed much like Leica M-series rangefinder cameras, with emphasis placed on design, build quality, typing action and aesthetic style.
Cost would be no object; in my hypothetical model, expect to pay at least several thousand US$.
A selection of fonts would be offered, as well as body styles and colors. There might even be special, limited-edition models released periodically, playing on classic, mid-20th century design aesthetics.
Would there be a market for such a high-end manual typewriter? I think so; Leica certainly seems to be able to sell all the manual cameras it can make.
~Joe
- Uwe
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Re: Future developments in mechanical typewriter design: likely to happen?
JoeV wrote:
Would there be a market for such a high-end manual typewriter? I think so; Leica certainly seems to be able to sell all the manual cameras it can make.
Equating cameras to typewriters makes no sense to me. Those interested in photography, and would be potential buyers of limited edition high-end models, so greatly outnumber typewriter buyers that it makes comparison between the two pointless. Cameras are a completely different animal. And Leica is a company with a long history of manufacturing, not some upstart with zero experience designing and manufacturing complex machines consisting of a couple thousand parts.
I'm a serious collector, and even though I have an unbridled passion for typewriters, I can't imagine myself paying thousands for some bespoke typewriter with no history of reliability. Or guarantee that parts will be available for it long enough for when they would be needed. Worse, the assumption that it would be easy (or cost effective) to produce a new model that would represent a quantitive leap forward in typewriter performance seems unrealistic. The typewriters sold during their heyday represented a century of intense invention and development, they work extremely well, and even by the 1910s it was already proven that they could work faster than any typist.
The pronoun I has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
- Will Davis
- New Member
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- Posts: 16
Re: Future developments in mechanical typewriter design: likely to happen?
It is clear that Chinese companies are in possession of the tooling (and the rights) to make Brother pattern machines (the late dowel mounted key lever design), the IMC-Rover pattern machines (again, a dowel mounted key lever design but different), and the Nakajima pattern machines seen late in the Olympia era as the Carina.
One machine they might still have tooling for is the Model 100. This machine was a Frankenwriter, which used the key lever and type bar mechanism of the original TIPPA on which is mounted the carriage design of the Olympia Traveller De Luxe / UNIS TBM De Luxe. This is a better typewriter than the Brother pattern or IMC pattern machines that are being turned out now by the Chinese.
Of course, one would imagine that the Model 100 was dropped precisely because (being a more sophisticated design) it was more expensive to produce, and thus harder to sell at a competitive price.
The key issue (sorry for the pun!) with the modern machines and with very small ones is the entirely front mounted type bar action that incorporates only a bell crank and a reach rod to the type bar. This has a very tinny feel, and in many designs allows for sideplay of the keytops, giving a cheap feel also. A more complicated mechanism (such as that employed in the ABC, the Princess, the Hermes Rocket, the Corona Zephyr, etc.) gives a better feel but is harder to make. It's on this basis that I'd suggest (were I asked) that the Model 100 be resurrected, but would caution that the price would be much higher than we've seen for the imported Chinese machines over the last five to eight years.
Just my two cents.
Will Davis
Davis Typewriter Works
- ztyper
- Key Master
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- From: Somewhere in New Jersey
- Registered: 01-10-2014
- Posts: 773
Re: Future developments in mechanical typewriter design: likely to happen?
All I've got to say at this point is rest in pieces typewriter industry... 
A high schooler with a lot of typewriters. That's pretty much about it.
- Maschinengeschrieben
- Touch Typist
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- Registered: 09-7-2015
- Posts: 119
Re: Future developments in mechanical typewriter design: likely to happen?
Of cause it would be technically possible to "perfect" the manual typewriter, typewriter as we know them are far from perfect or even slightly efficient for that matter. There would just be no point in doing so, not only is there no market for such a company to sustain as was already being mentioned, the manufacturing of such a machine would also be highly inefficient and manufacturing costs would be absurdly high, therefore the price of such machine would be unbelievably high in order for the company to cover their costs in manufacturing.
Such machines would (in the best case) be more like individual pieces of art rarer then mass-produced marketable produces. The price for such a machine would probably be outstanding, up to well over a million dollars is not unrealistic.
I could without any problem design a typewriter with the functionality of a IBM selectric composer, fully manual in the size of a blickensderfer, barely weighting over 1 kg. But its just not marketable, you don't need to be an economist to figure that out.
Learned watchmaker and office machine enthusiast from Germany.
- TypewriterGuy
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- Registered: 24-4-2015
- Posts: 1,250
Re: Future developments in mechanical typewriter design: likely to happen?
I don't see anything new happening. I mean, really, how many people do you know use a typewriter?
I know none... Except me.
Back from a long break.
Starting fresh with my favorite typer. A Royal Futura!
- treefaller
- Touch Typist
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- From: The Dalles, Oregon, USA
- Registered: 24-9-2015
- Posts: 153
Re: Future developments in mechanical typewriter design: likely to happen?
Ultimately, a typewriter is a mechanical way of taking a thought in your head and putting it into a physical form that can be stored, transmitted, and shared with other. I'd like to see a plug-in headset that could read my thoughts and put them on paper (I admit, though, that it would be a computer rather than a typewriter).
So, maybe if there were a way to mechanically put imagery on paper for us "artistically challenged" types. Yeah, I've seen typewriter art, but that just uses the standard characters. How about something designed for artwork from the start?
Bangin' around, this dirty old town, typin' for nickels and dimes...
- JoeV
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- Posts: 152
Re: Future developments in mechanical typewriter design: likely to happen?
- TypewriterGuy
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Re: Future developments in mechanical typewriter design: likely to happen?
Jeez, I used one of those in school...
Back from a long break.
Starting fresh with my favorite typer. A Royal Futura!
- treefaller
- Touch Typist
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- From: The Dalles, Oregon, USA
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Re: Future developments in mechanical typewriter design: likely to happen?
Well, lo and behold, I was just cruising the local St Vinnie's the other day, looking for old typers, of course. And I ended up buying this typing tablet device called an Alphasmart NEO for $8.
Now that I've got it home and I've used it and looked up the model on the internet and read a lot of comments and reviews of it I have to put my two cents in here and say: I LOVE THE NEO!
This is just what I was looking for to coax me to dream up stuff and put it into words. It's specific function is for drafting, first drafting, and only for drafting. After that you transfer your words into a computer word processor for editing. And then you can print it from the word processor or whatever you want to do with it. But the drafting process has been the bugaboo with me all along. And this device seems to be a big help.
And I love the long battery life and the USB jack that connects to any computer as though it were a simple USB keyboard so I can put the text into any word processor.
In fact, I am composing this comment on the NEO right now. I will upload it into the comment form on Typewriter Talk with my USB cable when it comes time to post this comment. The only thing I will have to add is a URL to the picture.
I know this thread was started about the Hemingwrite, aka Freewrite, device. But I have read the early reviews and the Freewrite looks to have missed the mark, both on price and functionality. The AlphaSmart NEO hits the sweet spot quite squarely. I can buy another NEO (which I am sorely tempted to do) on ebay for $30-50. Less than one-tenth the price of a Freewrite. And that is for a single unit. If I wanted to buy larger quantities I could get the unit price down closer to $12 in some cases. That is a fantastic buy for the utility of this device! Give me a dozen, please!
I still love pounding the keys of old manual typers. But I also love the little bit of flexibility to go back and correct typos before they are committed to paper, and maybe to add a sentence or two earlier on without having to write a pencil comment on the page and then later re-typing the whole page. There are always trade-offs. But right now I am pumped on producing something with this NEO that I haven't had much luck at with a typewriter (or a regular word processor).
---------------
Interestingly enough, it didn't work just sending my file directly to this comment entry form. I think the tab key kicked me out of the entry form or something. I had to open an ordinary word processor page on my computer and upload from the NEO to that page. Then copy it to this entry form. Anyway, here's the picture:
Bangin' around, this dirty old town, typin' for nickels and dimes...
