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Haha ya it came with a case as well, although the case isn't as nice (little rust on clasp)
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Different style from the Olivetti case -- interesting.
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It isn´t a Lettera 22, it´s a completely different beast. Under the hood it´s nothing to do with the Lettera 22, and as far as I can tell it´s not as good, but TBH none of my machines are at 100%. I have one of these which skips a lot of spaces and needs a lot of time (but it was almost for free), and another one which is its poor man´s version: the Sundstrand 2000. Plastic body and weaker, useful only for ocassional typing. In fact, therre are several things that don´t quite add up with the Sundstrand (such as the autospacer and the tab key), but it´s a Underwood 18´s lookalike.
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Uwe wrote:
Not a Lettera 22. Not even an Olivetti. From what I can see it looks like there's an Antares under the hood.
That makes sense... The machinery is much more like that of the Antares S20, but that brings another question. My Underwood 18 has this badge on the back:
Olivetti and Underwood, righ. Related. But how gets Antares into the mix?
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I've only used mine briefly, it's actually for sale
But I liked the action well enough, and the carriage return was smooth. Good size Return lever as well. just kind of loud, (slugs on platen)
And rubber feet that, although not very hard, are so small that they're practically useless. It was sliding around everywhere, zero traction.
But then I've always preferred machines that were mechanically intact, rather than those that look nice but have flaws or are in need of repairs or tinkering (I have plenty of those as well)
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Javi wrote:
Olivetti and Underwood, right. Related. But how gets Antares into the mix?
I've never dug into that specific history, but Olivetti and Antares did have some form of a working association at some point, so it would seem possible that Olivetti would have sub-contracted the manufacturer of these Underwood models to Antares. I do have someone's thesis somewhere that was about Olivetti's history, so I should try to find it and see what it says about Antares.
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Busy day today
picked up all 4 of these
charcoal gray QDL is def the gem of the lot to me
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Got this the other day--1939 Corona Standard four-bank portable, outfitted with a Ukrainian keyboard. (It has I and Ï, but no Ы.) However, the layout of the keyboard doesn't resemble contemporary Ukrainian--or anything for that matter. I've always been curious about how customers would order foreign-language typewriters from the manufacturer (as opposed to custom retrofitting ala Tytell), or how many were ever manufactured.
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I love how you spelled Corona (might be pronounced "Soyaoya"!). I am not familiar with the character that looks like a capital V (top row, paired with the 5) or the character that looks like the Cyrillic g/G (resembles an r; third row, third from left). Beautiful machine, for sure. And I bet there aren't many of these over here.