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28-4-2020 19:43:13  #1


What's your favorite Typewriter to type on?

What's your favorite typewriter to type on.

I have several favorites,
1) My Everest K2 cursive is elegant beautiful and a pleasure to type, very visually pleasing. stays parked in our kitchen.  It gets used often to type love letters to my wife, grocery lists, memo's and such.  Also my grand children like to use it. we keep what's typed in a basket next to the typewriter, kind of like a diary or journal.

2) My SC Silents, I have (2), and my recently acquired SC Silent Super (Cursive) are clearly the best engineered typing machines I have ever used. No other typewriter I have used comes close to their clean snappy ease to use and raw speed.

3) But my all time favorite is my Triumph Perfect (Cursive) Typewriter.  I love the font, and CPI, it's a very elegant and beautiful machine.  It types very crisp and clean, the key stroke is slightly longer than my other typewriters, but the balance between the stroke, key board rise & run, key pressure, and momentum of the type bars is phenomenal, whoever designed this machine got it right.  The rise of the keys it higher than any of my other typewriters, which would seam like it would be harder to use, but it works well with the stroke of the keys, like walking up a set of stairs where the rise and run is perfect for your stride.  The only draw back to the machine is it's a carriage shift, which results in a heaver shift key.  But aside from that.  It is clearly my favorite.  I tell people, it's like typing on butter, extremely smooth.

Ray

 

29-4-2020 02:53:45  #2


Re: What's your favorite Typewriter to type on?

Hi Ray, I feel the same about the Triumph. In what year was yours built?

Lau

 

29-4-2020 10:18:27  #3


Re: What's your favorite Typewriter to type on?

You have quite the collection of cursive machines there!

I have to second the SC Silent Super being a very nice typewriter.  I have one I picked up at an antique store in great shape for a real bargain.  It is my favorite to type on.  It has great key feel and a nice snap to it.

 

29-4-2020 16:35:58  #4


Re: What's your favorite Typewriter to type on?

We don’t use typewriters to make words on a page. Computers can do that. We use typewriters for the experience of using them, that certain feel or touch, their healing powers if you will and there is no one machine that is this experience for each person. It’s a certain alignment, a fitting between you and that particularly machine. For me, I see these old metal forms as functional art, the visual part of the experience, so their design affects me, just looking at them sitting there and still. Then there’s putting your hands on them, and what that is like, and what happens to you when your finger tips touch the first keys. It’s a relationship of a special kind and only a person who can allow the machine to align with him in that special way can understand such a bond and experience. Since each machine has its own personality, it’s often near impossible to like one over the other much like saying you like blondes over brunettes when it is the woman who grabs your heart first and then you notice the color of her hair. So I think an appropriate answer to the question of a favorite machine to write with would have to be about the experience you are in the mood to have at that particularly moment. For jaw dropping precision and utter engineering greatness that invites you to type forever and a day, it’s a tie right down the middle between my Alpina circa 1963 and lime-yellow two-toned Torpedo 18b circa 1961. And my two Swissa Juniors circa 1961 and 1965 are of the same mechanical genius and wonder just more portable. For lightness of touch so light that you could blow on the keys and that would be enough to send the type slugs to the page as the heavy iron hulk literally rumbles and shakes the desk, hand’s down it’s my L.C. Smith No. 8 circa 1918.  For that old-school clacking and magical feel, there are my 3 Erika 5 machines with my personal favorite the one made in 1931 in original burgundy with gold trim and the pinch device to advance the paper to the next line instead of the carriage return that came later. I love these three equally, and likely my Erika M in burgundy from 1938 a wee bit more. And my typewriter guy is bringing back to life my newest addition, a Corona Four in channel blue circa 1928, and he says she will be my favorite machine to write with since that is his personal favorite out of his extensive collection, and he knows what moves me. So I have a feeling I will love yet another machine in my metal harem just as much as the others. When I take my Underwood Portable 3-bank for a spin, I quickly say she’s the only machine I would ever need. And as those words leave my lips, I remember those same words leaving my lips for every machine I have! And that is exactly my point: Only you and your machine know how it is between you. And it is that thing, whatever you can call it, that makes that machine your favorite machine to write with…at that particularly moment.

 

29-4-2020 20:52:37  #5


Re: What's your favorite Typewriter to type on?

My Cursive Typewriter Collection

1) Triumph Perfect, 1961-62, s/n 3044313 (VGC)
2) Everest K2, 1959, s/n 584088 (Missing Parts)(Needs work)
3) Everest K2, 1962, s/n 1597990 (Near Mint)
4) Smith Corona Silent Super, 1954, s/n 5T207593 (VGC)
5) Olympia SM7, 1961, s/n 1865342 (VGC)(For Sale on Etsy)
6) Olympia SM7, 1961, s/n 1874513 (Near Mint) (Wide Carriage)
7) Alder Tippa, 1967, s/n 4615377 (For sell)

Ray

     Thread Starter
 

02-5-2020 03:16:05  #6


Re: What's your favorite Typewriter to type on?

Olympia SM9 


    My blog: http://papelymaquina.blogspot.com/  
            Photo gallery: http://papelymaquina.imgur.com/
 

02-5-2020 11:08:11  #7


Re: What's your favorite Typewriter to type on?

Amelia - Amelia, it's you ! !

Greetings and salutations Amelia, it's so good to see you again after what seems like a very long time. Isn't it interesting how we all get so wound up and involved with work and everyday life that we tend to lose track of our friends and the things that help us relax that it takes something like a global pandemic to make us slow down, take a few steps back and get a better look at the big picture.

I tend to agree with what  A wee bit of Crazy wrote about the relationship between the typist and his or her machine, however I still feel that when I type, my personality comes through on the paper a lot more than when I type on a computer. My favourite typewriter is the one from my core group of 6 that I want to type on at that given time. There are other machines that I pull out from time to time to give them some desk time, but I generally tend to gravitate to those 6 machines. All the very best, Sky

1964 Hermes 3000
1960 Olympia SM-4 cursive
1956 Royal Citadel
1970 Hermes 3000
1954 Remington Quiet-Riter
1936 Imperial Good Companion.


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)
 

05-5-2020 12:28:34  #8


Re: What's your favorite Typewriter to type on?

I have restored and sold many typewriters, but my Torpedo 18 types so well ("fluid" is the word that comes to mind) that I could not get myself to sell it!

 

06-5-2020 00:03:54  #9


Re: What's your favorite Typewriter to type on?

Even though I rarely see this typewriter come up when people talk about their best, I actually like my Facit TP1 cursive the best. The action is snappy, but not too snappy so as to be too loud. The carriage return is the absolute smoothest you'll ever find on a portable because of the ball bearing design. Since I got new rubber on the platen, it solidified its position even more so because the cursive letters now touch more consistently like they should and the sound is greatly deadened. Second place would go to my Alpina, which as Aweebitofcrazy says, is an obvious engineering marvel. Third is probably a tie between my Olympia SM3 and 1963 Hermes 3000. I apparently need to get a Torpedo though...


____________________________________________
1937 Royal Model O Portable, 1949 Underwood Champion, 1954 Olympia SM-3, 1955 Royal Quiet De Luxe, 1957 Hermes Rocket, 1957 Imperial De Luxe 5, 1959 Smith-Corona Sterling, 1963 Olivetti Studio 44, 1963 Olympia SM-7, 1968 Olympia SG-3, 196X Smith-Corona Electra 120
 

06-5-2020 12:09:52  #10


Re: What's your favorite Typewriter to type on?

I agree. The TP1 (or TP2), script typeface or not, is a very nice portable to use. However, it's still a portable.

I'm surprised - just a little - that all of the nominations in this thread are for portable typewriters. I've yet to use a portable that compares to the performance of a '50-'60s standard that's in peak tune. When it comes to using a typewriter, which for me means sitting down and typing for hours on end, I would always opt for a standard. In many cases that would be an Olympia SG1.


The pronoun has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
 

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