1 of 1- Ziggymon
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Royal KMM carriage advancement for exclamation point
Hey everyone,
This is my first time posting to this forum. I have a Royal KMM that I am trying to troubleshoot an issue with. The carriage advancement works fine for all the keys except two, the exclamation point and the umlaut. Both of these keys are at the far right hand side of the keyboard and when I look underneath and inside of the machine, I can see that these two keys engage the escapement differently than the rest. Specifically, whereas most keys have a universal bar link that hooks around the universal bar near the back of the machine, the two problem keys have universal bar links that extend further back and hook around another bar. This bar is at the very back of the machine and is perhaps a bit longer than 2 inches. When these two problem keys are pressed, there is a mechanism that engages the universal bar and moves it forward some but not enough to advance the carriage. I can't really see how this is supposed to work without taking the machine apart further.
Is anyone familiar with the issue I have described?
- Ziggymon
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Re: Royal KMM carriage advancement for exclamation point
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Thread Starter- Ziggymon
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Re: Royal KMM carriage advancement for exclamation point
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Thread Starter- SoucekFan
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Re: Royal KMM carriage advancement for exclamation point
That is a "dead key." It is suppose to work that way. It is to add the marks above a character.
- SoucekFan
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Re: Royal KMM carriage advancement for exclamation point
I am not entirely sure why they decided to put an exclamation point on the same key as a "dead" accent character, but it is not broken; it is a keyboard designed and/or customized for a specific language.
- Ziggymon
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Re: Royal KMM carriage advancement for exclamation point
Ha! I'm feeling kind of dumb now but at least my typewriter isn't broken and I learned something. Thanks for bringing me up to speed on "dead keys". It does seem a little weird to me that they would put the exclamation point on one of these keys.
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Thread Starter- Lucas Dul
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Re: Royal KMM carriage advancement for exclamation point
I would have guessed dead keys as well, however it seems strange to place an exclamation point on one. Did you mention that this second, shorter bar trips the escapement? That shouldn’t happen on a dead key, though I recognize those punctuation marks as dead ones except the exclamation. Perhaps it’s supposed to trip on lowercase, and not on uppercase?
Typewriter Service Tech (and avid nerd)
- skywatcher
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Re: Royal KMM carriage advancement for exclamation point
Hi Ziggy
It's usual to have diadritics on dead keys, this is so the typist doesn't have to backspace when typing an accented letter, the diacritic is typed followed by the letter, at which point the carriage advances to the next space. On your machine, the umlaut and acute accent are on one dead key, it's possible the other dead key containing the grave accent may have held a circumflex when marketed for a different language region. Interesting to note the hàček is on the question mark key and not on the dead key with the grave accent.
Generally speaking, typewriters of that era didn't have an exclamation point, the typist would construct one from apostrophe and period (or full stop depending on where you live). I often find myself constructing exclamation points even if the typewriter I'm using has an exclamation point key. You'll just have to get into the habit of double spacing after typing ! All the best and happy typing,
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)
