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29-5-2015 07:00:07  #11


Re: Advantages of a Standard, Full Sized Typewriter Over Portables???

Hahaha! Patience is indeed the thing. And it's not as if any of us on this board don't have enough typewriters to be going on with for the time being...

I would also love to get hold of an SG1, but am happy with my SG3 for now. And the big Adler Special, which is also the noisiest typewriter I own by some stretch - a quality I actually like.
 

 

29-5-2015 12:16:00  #12


Re: Advantages of a Standard, Full Sized Typewriter Over Portables???

ztyper wrote:

I have a freaking Smith Premier from l897.

Using l for 1? Looks like you've been using your typewriters a lot 

(I do it all the time too)


 
 

29-5-2015 15:51:38  #13


Re: Advantages of a Standard, Full Sized Typewriter Over Portables???

I always said that I'm impatiently waiting for my patience, so that helps...

And did I really use an 'I' instead of a '1'?... I really did. I don't know if this is a good thing, or a bad one...


A high schooler with a lot of typewriters. That's pretty much about it.
 

29-5-2015 17:18:34  #14


Re: Advantages of a Standard, Full Sized Typewriter Over Portables???

I definitely find a difference typing on a manual standard and a portable.  Though the portable produces just as well as the Standard in some regards, the Standard or desk top models are more durable.  They have the strength that the portable may not have.  I've been recently typing on a Royal KHM Standard from the 1930s and I found a difference, not so much in quality, this is a very old machine so its hard to say.  I've used IBM selectrics and other heavy office machines when I worked at companies that still used those machines before the computer age.  And I found that typing on the Royal KHM was a totally different experience opposed to typing on my portable Olympia, Smith Corona Skyriter and Hermes Rocket.  It was definitely more fun, at least for me.  But I believe that a manuscript can be written on a good portable as well as a Standard and that the Standard is basically designed to to a heavy work load.  Having a Royal KHM 1930 Standard is more to me than just having a piece of history I can do small type jobs on, its an absolute thing of beauty and when it finally sees it day it will look just as beautiful whether it can still be typed on or not. 

Last edited by Olivetiger (29-5-2015 17:30:12)


You can never have too many typewriters.
 

30-5-2015 23:11:18  #15


Re: Advantages of a Standard, Full Sized Typewriter Over Portables???

Greetings All

In an earlier comment on this thread, Uwe said the only way to get a true feel is to compare two machines of the same make and same year. At the moment I'm working on building a collection of 4 1951 Smith-Coronas (with the light and dark green keys). I have the Skyriter and the Silent all cleaned up and serviced. My Secretarial 88 is actually a 1954 so has all dark green keys and my Super-Speed arrived damaged in shipping, the front frame was broken. However, I did find an eBayer who was stripping down a Super-Speed so now have a replacement frame.

What makes this unit worth repairing for me is all the keys are blank as it was a teaching typewriter. The seller thought the letters were worn off so was selling it cheap. If you ever ship a Smith-Corona Super-Speed, ship it on its back with lots of packing around the keyboard. When I get them all repaired, cleaned and serviced, I hope to set them as a temporary display at our local museum detailing how the 4 different machines all of the same year were designed for 4 different purposes, from going on holiday to typing 8 hours a day in a typing pool.

I probably won't get this done until this winter, but I still thinks it's worth a go. All the best,

Sky


We humans go through many computers in our lives, but in their lives, typewriters go through many of us.
In that way, they’re like violins, like ancestral swords. So I use mine with honor and treat them with respect.
I try to leave them in better condition than I met them. I am not their first user, nor will I be their last.
Frederic S. Durbin. (Typewriter mania and the modern writer)
 

31-5-2015 07:18:30  #16


Re: Advantages of a Standard, Full Sized Typewriter Over Portables???

Good luck Sky!

Kinda off topic, but whats fun to think about when collect manual typewriters, is picture a typewriter you own thats older than you. Now, think about it. That typewriter was somewhere, while you were a kid, teenager, adult, so on. That typewriter was sitting (probably) in a bsement, or an attic.


Back from a long break.

Starting fresh with my favorite typer. A Royal Futura!
 

31-5-2015 08:53:19  #17


Re: Advantages of a Standard, Full Sized Typewriter Over Portables???

Sky, it would be really interesting to read a thing about that - the different ways in which typewriters were used, and by different people to some extent, and how the machines different in order to accommodate that. We don't think of it now - a computer is pretty much a computer no matter whether it's one person or another using it, despite differences in things like graphics cards etc. It would be great to see/read something that helps us get back into the mindset of THEN and of viewing these machines in light of their specificities...

 

31-5-2015 21:23:52  #18


Re: Advantages of a Standard, Full Sized Typewriter Over Portables???

KatLondon wrote:

........................ It would be great to see/read something that helps us get back into the mindset of THEN and of viewing these machines in light of their specificities...

I was wondering if anyone here worked as a professional typist in the times when such a beast was common?  I have asked around locally, but never found anyone who said they were, or even knew of one.


Sincerely,
beak.
 
 

01-6-2015 04:34:45  #19


Re: Advantages of a Standard, Full Sized Typewriter Over Portables???

Well my mother and aunts all worked in NYC around the late 50s, real Mad Men territory. I've heard horror stories about working in the typing pool. But the one who told me those is now in a home with dementia so hard to get more out of her, especially about the machines. (Most of her stories, frankly, were about the men...!)

I've tried to get more out of my mum but tbh I get the impression no one was really that interested in the machines themselves... they were more like tools of oppression than a thing to celebrate. And my mother was a teacher by her mid-20s. My sister worked as a legal secretary for years, but on a computer (& hated every minute; she's a teacher now too).

 

01-6-2015 04:38:30  #20


Re: Advantages of a Standard, Full Sized Typewriter Over Portables???

My mother is tickled and amused by my typewriter obsession. We've had long chats about her old machine, which was a 1949 QDL given her for her birthday when she became editor of her school magazine, and which we had till I was in my teens. She certainly never felt the need to get more and more typewriters! And I remember when I was growing up that manuals got no respect, they were considered uncivilised' and 'impossible' to type on. When I got my first few typers and was talking to her, my mother just said: 'Your pinkies will strngthen up!' And laughed like a drain. I hadn't even mentioned my pinkies. Hahaha...

 

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