- Uwe
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- From: Toronto, Canada
- Registered: 12-3-2013
- Posts: 4,408
Re: Smith Corona Classic 12
[rant] The internet certainly is a conundrum. On the one hand there's a wealth of information available, but on the other, a substantial portion of that information can be unreliable.
It is a problem that too many of us rely on - in part because of convenience - Wikipedia entries (which range from impressively researched content to absolute nonsense), or a Google search, which presents highly controlled results.
I stopped using both years ago. Google has become one of the evil digital empires that have spread like a virus on the internet, and which work ceaselessly at bolstering its control and impact on the digital world. It's a fact that Google searches provide extremely prejudiced results - they provide you with what Google wants you to see - and that's just the tip of the company's nefariousness. That so many people use the word Google as a blanket term for an online search is itself disturbing.
I mostly use duckduckgo.com for online searches, and even then I'm always prepared to go many, many pages deep in the results to avoid those websites that are light on useful information and heavy on their SEO work.
Okay, I've gone way off-topic. Sorry folks. [/rant] 
The pronoun I has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
- brozzy
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- From: British Columbia
- Registered: 07-3-2021
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Re: Smith Corona Classic 12
Facing a lack of reliable corroboration, preferably not from an online forum, then really anything goes, correct? :>
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Thread Starter- M. Höhne
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- From: Maine
- Registered: 14-3-2013
- Posts: 625
Re: Smith Corona Classic 12
brozzy wrote:
Facing a lack of reliable corroboration, preferably not from an online forum, then really anything goes, correct? :>
Not sure what this means, so I'm not prepared to say whether it's correct.
- Uwe
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- From: Toronto, Canada
- Registered: 12-3-2013
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Re: Smith Corona Classic 12
... anything goes, correct? :>
That is a good description for the internet. 
Separating the wheat from the chaff is not easy when there are so many people out there posing as experts. I believe (some) forums can be a good resource, providing of course it actually has competent members. When you post a question on a such a forum it's fairly safe to assume that the consensus answer will be reasonably correct. If you're lucky the question will result in a discussion involving differing opinions, a situation when physical proof and/or sound research practices will support the answer.
The pronoun I has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
- brozzy
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- From: British Columbia
- Registered: 07-3-2021
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Re: Smith Corona Classic 12
It shouldn't be very difficult to figure out the actual changeover year; surely someone has done that already?!?
This is the question that appears so far to have no corroborated answer.
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Thread Starter- skywatcher
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- From: The Prairies of Alberta
- Registered: 14-3-2013
- Posts: 712
Re: Smith Corona Classic 12
Hi Again Brozzy
Here's where you may need to become a member of a research team with the goal of pinpointing the date of change over. It may take some serious digging in libraries, finding digitized copies (or even original copies if you're lucky) of popular Canadian magazines of the time and sifting through them to find adverts for the Smith-Corona Galaxie series typewriters.
If you are able to find enough information like this, you should be able to determine by the print date of the magazine when the change over happened. As we say, none of us here are experts on the design dates and marketing of typewriters, especially typewriters made and sold in the smaller Canadian market. The population of Canada in 1970 was barely one tenth of the population of the USA, so there's going to be a lot more information available on USA statistics than Canadian Statistics no matter what subject you are searching.
In other words, I guess I'm saying that the ball is as much in your court as it is in ours. Who knows, you might even be able to get a government grant to help fund your research project (tongue in cheek). Please let us know if you are able to source any useable information that can be added to the typewriter database. 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)
- Uwe
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- From: Toronto, Canada
- Registered: 12-3-2013
- Posts: 4,408
Re: Smith Corona Classic 12
This is the question that appears so far to have no corroborated answer.
I took a few minutes to look into this. It appears that the change was made for the 1968 model year. The feature appeared on earlier years of the electric models, but not on the Classic 12 and other manual portables until ca.1968. Based on that you could further estimate that right-side tabulator controls indicate machines manufactured 1967 and earlier, and relocated to the top of the keyboard on machines manufactured from 1967 [second half] and later.
I'm happy if someone wants to prove or disprove my five-minute research effort...
The pronoun I has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
