There truly is something beautiful about that sheet of paper! I tutored graduate students in writing, and what I noted was that many are losing their ability to self-correct their own work. I think that is partly why I needed to go back to the typewriter. I do not wish to be ignorant in my own ability to write. Thank Uwe, for this nice piece here.

So lovely!

JoeV wrote:

Thank you, Uwe, for posting this. As typing writers...
~Joe

I sometimes think I can write English because I can compose (mainly) grammatical reports at work - which seems to be a strange and wonderful skill to many and gets me feeling all puffed up - but you and KatLondon are the real article because you both take common words and phrases and just changing a few letters open up paths never seen before. A typing writer! Wonderful. I aspire to be a typing writer - which captures everything about the reason one would want to own typewriters.

 

Nicole wrote:

The letters look much crisper than anything I have achieved so far; was he using a carbon ribbon? Is that the benefit of them?

It doesn't look like a carbon imprint to me (it's usually much darker - higher contrast). In fact, it looks like fairly standard quality to me, at least for a ribbon that still has lots of life left in it and was used on decent paper. What the type quality suggests to me is the use of good technique and a machine that's working properly; note how consistent the impressions are, amateur typists usually create lighter and darker characters on the page. Burroughs used a number of different models over the years, including an Olympia SG1, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was the typewriter responsible for this example.