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14-11-2015 22:29:08  #1


Ode to IBM

IBM Selectric II

I had no intentions of acquiring an IBM Selectric. I don't even really think of them as "typewriters", but more like a strange printer they somehow forgot to put the parallel port on. But when I found a guy twenty minutes from my house selling one for twenty bucks cash you bet I got there as fast as I could with a luggage cart. It came with spare ribbons. And a presentable cover. And supposedly was working.

At that price it was pretty much a gift horse, so I didn't look it in the mouth by insisting he plug it in and prove that it works. I handed him his money and left. He seemed like a nice guy, and I think the only reason for the $20 adoption fee was the usual one - to make sure new owner really wanted it - so I suspect what happened to the "working" part is, he meant to say it worked twenty years ago when it was put in storage, so of course it must still work! It's happened to me with 35 mm cameras.

Machine did nothing or sporadically made some horrible chattering noise. So I at least found out how to take off the hood, something I would NEVER have done when they were actually pieces of office equipment. My first surprise was the motor. I started at the front of the machine, gradually turning it around, and wondering if the motor would be difficult to find in the mechanism... until I got to the back and found what looked like the motor of a small washing machine! Holy cow. Motor was getting hot - so it getting power, and the sporadic chattering came when the motor turned but something was slipping, so the belt did not move. I presume the rest of the mechanism may be frozen with congealed oil, or something similar.

But then I had a religious experience! The power comes into the machine and goes to a SPDT switch controlled by a linkage and then to the motor. AND THAT'S IT! This blew me away. I expected some electronics, but it is all purely mechanical. All the complicated twisting and turning of the ball is purely mechanical! This is why I would say I was wrong. It is definitely a typewriter. The motor merely serves as a prime mover. It was a mechanically revolutionary typewriter, and shows that statements that the evolution of the typewriter essentially ended around 1920 with category killer machines like the Underwood 5, are incorrect. IBM successfully developed and marketed a radically different typewriter mechanism 40 years later.

That was a very satisfying epiphany and more than worth the twenty bucks and the schlep. I had no idea. I also have no idea what I am going to do with the corpus. One look under the hood convinces me I am NOT going to start working on it. Maybe I will just pass it on at the same price, this time making it clear that it does not work.


"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
 

14-11-2015 23:05:12  #2


Re: Ode to IBM

*DPST* switch... I wonder if anybody would have noticed.

 


"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
     Thread Starter
 

15-11-2015 06:37:57  #3


Re: Ode to IBM

There is nothing new under the sun !  Blickensderfer produced an electric typewriter not unlike the IBM Selectric in 1903.  It could even rule lines which the IBM couldn't do.  Of course, it was too far ahead of its' time and cost the equivalent of a mainframe computer, so very few were sold.  IBM like to tell people that they invented the concept, but they didn't.  It had been done before IBM ever existed !

 

15-11-2015 07:41:58  #4


Re: Ode to IBM

Repartee wrote:

IBM Selectric II

.... snip ....

But then I had a religious experience! The power comes into the machine and goes to a SPDT switch controlled by a linkage and then to the motor. AND THAT'S IT! This blew me away. I expected some electronics, but it is all purely mechanical. All the complicated twisting and turning of the ball is purely mechanical! This is why I would say I was wrong. It is definitely a typewriter. The motor merely serves as a prime mover. It was a mechanically revolutionary typewriter, .... snip ....

That was a very satisfying epiphany and more than worth the twenty bucks and the schlep. I had no idea.  ..... snip .....

Thank you for that observation! 

I had a running argument with a guy over on Reddit, who insisted that all the Selectrics are "electronic" because (as near as I could follow his ideas) they are digitally operated, i.e., that two-state decision tree that pulls the ball to its various positions. My argument is that the only electrons involved are those running through the motor, and the whole typewriter is properly called "electric".

Anyway, this is a good example of that "internet intelligence" that we have talked about elsewhere on this forum. Interesting that you understood it immediately. Epiphanies are neat, aren't they?

 

15-11-2015 07:45:14  #5


Re: Ode to IBM

Repartee wrote:

*DPST* switch... I wonder if anybody would have noticed.

 

Every example that I have seen was sealed, but it also seems like they could be SPST.

 

15-11-2015 10:54:47  #6


Re: Ode to IBM

thetypewriterman wrote:

There is nothing new under the sun !  Blickensderfer produced an electric typewriter not unlike the IBM Selectric in 1903.  It could even rule lines which the IBM couldn't do.  Of course, it was too far ahead of its' time and cost the equivalent of a mainframe computer, so very few were sold.  IBM like to tell people that they invented the concept, but they didn't.  It had been done before IBM ever existed !

Very cool info, thank you! "Ahead of its time" is cliche, but cliches are based in reality! You make me want to learn more technical history. In science the Blickensderfer would be said to be out of its Zeitgeist. Special Relativity, on the other hand, was very much in the Zeitgeist, and when Einstein got there two years later he was neck and neck with several other scientists - who graciously conceded full credit. If what he did had been the scientific equivalent of the Blickensderfer he just would have remained some unknown crackpot at the Swiss patent office. 


"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
     Thread Starter
 

15-11-2015 11:15:27  #7


Re: Ode to IBM

M. Höhne wrote:

...
I had a running argument with a guy over on Reddit, who insisted that all the Selectrics are "electronic" because (as near as I could follow his ideas) they are digitally operated, i.e., that two-state decision tree that pulls the ball to its various positions. My argument is that the only electrons involved are those running through the motor, and the whole typewriter is properly called "electric".

Very interesting. Your antagonist seems to have confused "electronics" with "logic". Of course there are loads of examples of machines that carry out something that looks very much like logical processing without a transistor in sight. I have served on a submarine, and I never did quite understand the torpedo firing process though I did have the wit to recognize I was looking at pneumatic logic - a whole host of interconnected valves and pistons 'n stuff which required only compressed air to operate: when the order was given to "shoot" you could hear them quickly carrying out their final programming steps - chich, chich, chich... Wooosh!

Maybe that's why I got the IBM immediately - I'd encountered non-electronic logic before.

Anyway, this is a good example of that "internet intelligence" that we have talked about elsewhere on this forum. Interesting that you understood it immediately. Epiphanies are neat, aren't they?

Yes. And you know what is even neater? Somebody immediately getting your getting it! Thank you. You made my day.

P.S. The switch. It has two wires in (line) and two wires out (motor), hence double pole, I believe, but only two states (connect, disconnect) - which I believe is single throw. Of course I was striving so hard to nonchalantly throw out the right four letter designation that I got it wrong. 


"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
     Thread Starter
 

15-11-2015 17:18:34  #8


Re: Ode to IBM

And I have seen vids of a computer (admittedly very simple) where the switches were streams of water affected by their proximity or not to another stream. And another of a more complex computer made of manually-powered Legos. Easy to see why electronics won out.

My uncertainty regarding that IBM power switch is that it could just as well be a single pole switch on one side with a pass-through wire on the other; it would look the same from the outside and work the same. Pretty trivial though; *sometimes* people who accuse me of being pedantic are correct. Yeah, i hate it , too, when nonchalance doesn't work.

 

15-11-2015 18:37:07  #9


Re: Ode to IBM

Repartee, a more general term would be Boolean Logic, which I prefer to use at times over "digital," since it can be any two-state logic system, not necessarily electronic; and even many electronic "digital" systems were non-Boolean, such as PWM (pulse width modulation), which used square waves whose width was modulated in an analog fashion to encode audio.

~Joe

 

15-11-2015 19:17:28  #10


Re: Ode to IBM

M. Höhne wrote:

...My uncertainty regarding that IBM power switch is that it could just as well be a single pole switch on one side with a pass-through wire on the other; it would look the same from the outside and work the same.

Yep. I understood your comment later! I think I assumed that both wires were switched for safety. It does not have a polarized plug. (It now occurs to that when I install one of those rocker switches on a cord where one line does indeed pass through, I never concern myself with which is the hot wire! Oops.)

Regarding mechanical logic, I found the following on Wikipedia:

"The Selectric mechanism was notable for using internal mechanical binary coding and two mechanical digital-to-analog converters, called whiffletree linkages, to select the character to be typed".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter

Despite my first epiphany, this makes my jaw drop as second time. I was speaking loosely of "mechanical logic", but the IBM engineers actually were explicitly thinking in those terms! The thing is a printing Babbage Engine! Woohoo!   Darn! Now that I know how incredibly mechanically cool the thing is I do want to get it working. Which is too bad, since a search for other Selectric II's for sale seems to return about 70% as-is, for parts, needs repair and etc. So I gather they have passed the end of their useful service life, and keeping one functioning will be expensive. Is it the complexity of the mechanism? A 1924 Royal 10 I bought cheap recently is nowhere NEAR the end of its service life - though it looks like it got some new rubber somewhere along the road.

I guess when I have a couple of hundred bucks to plunk down instead of twenty there will still be a working one waiting for me, and maybe even with a guarantee. Which, now that I think about it, is pretty reasonable given the sophistication of the mechanism.

JoeV - thank you for the refinement in terminology.


"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
     Thread Starter
 

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