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Type Talk » What's your favorite Typewriter to type on? » 29-4-2020 16:35:58

We don’t use typewriters to make words on a page. Computers can do that. We use typewriters for the experience of using them, that certain feel or touch, their healing powers if you will and there is no one machine that is this experience for each person. It’s a certain alignment, a fitting between you and that particularly machine. For me, I see these old metal forms as functional art, the visual part of the experience, so their design affects me, just looking at them sitting there and still. Then there’s putting your hands on them, and what that is like, and what happens to you when your finger tips touch the first keys. It’s a relationship of a special kind and only a person who can allow the machine to align with him in that special way can understand such a bond and experience. Since each machine has its own personality, it’s often near impossible to like one over the other much like saying you like blondes over brunettes when it is the woman who grabs your heart first and then you notice the color of her hair. So I think an appropriate answer to the question of a favorite machine to write with would have to be about the experience you are in the mood to have at that particularly moment. For jaw dropping precision and utter engineering greatness that invites you to type forever and a day, it’s a tie right down the middle between my Alpina circa 1963 and lime-yellow two-toned Torpedo 18b circa 1961. And my two Swissa Juniors circa 1961 and 1965 are of the same mechanical genius and wonder just more portable. For lightness of touch so light that you could blow on the keys and that would be enough to send the type slugs to the page as the heavy iron hulk literally rumbles and shakes the desk, hand’s down it’s my L.C. Smith No. 8 circa 1918.  For that old-school clacking and magical feel, there are my 3 Erika 5 machines with my personal favorite the one made in 1931 in original burgundy with gold trim and the pinch device to advance the paper

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