Not mine.....No affiliation :eBay item number :  194509949708

In the end I decided it looked too nice to pass up and I bought it. I’m hoping the good folks at USPS treat it kindly on its journey to my house. Today I discovered how handy the base piece is when a suitable place for typing isn’t available. With the SM4 fastened to it using on my lap worked perfect!

Uwe wrote:

SM4? Attached to base? Typing on lap?

I can check all three boxes off with this photo:

I love it! It’s good to know someone before me thought of it as well. 😁

You may be interested to hear a tale that an old-time typewriter mechanic told me about typewriters in sandy conditions.  At the beginning of World War Two, the British government approached the Oliver Typewriter Company with an order for the traditional downstroke Oliver, which had ceased production around 1932 in favour of producing a licence-built modern Swedish Halda instead.  Luckily, Oliver hadn't disposed of the tooling, as a company today would have, and were able to produce more of the old model for the government until the contract ran out in 1947.  So why did the government want these antiquated machines ?  Many of them were for use in desert locations where fine sand would clog up the segment slots on a conventional typewriter.  The Oliver, of course, did not have a segment !

Down-stroke Olivers of any sort are fairly rare here, and sometimes fetch silly prices because, whenever they were made, they are still essentially a Victorian typewriter.  This makes them really valuable to TV set designers wanting a working Victorian machine.  It would take an expert to tell a 1929 model from an 1899 model when shown fleetingly in a TV programme.  Very occasionally, you do see a 1940's Oliver.  You can tell these from the originals because they are black, rather than traditional Oliver dark green, and they do no have the 'wings' under the carriage rails.  Maybe the wings were deleted to save cast iron for the war effort !  From memory (it is a long time since I have seen one) I think the wartime Oliver has keycard and keyring keytops - but don't quote me on that !