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Typing With Man Ray: wonderful! I hope whoever buys it will put it on the database
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This is an interesting one. It's a Royal Varsity, but look closely and you will see an assortment of accent keys. QWERTY layout, though.
Last edited by JustAnotherGuy (20-6-2015 21:57:00)
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What a strange coincidence! I was watching a Will Davis video this morning:
It's about cleaning typewriters and features an Imperial 50. They appear to be easy to dismantle for cleaning and servicing. The dismantling starts at minute 5:36. The Ebay Imperial appears to be of a more recent vintage, but I wonder if the easy-dismantling feature was preserved.
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I'm intrigued by the fact that this ebay imperial has only 3 rows of keys and a contraption on the top of the carriage.
Nice video. Oh, gawd, I really would like to have a go!
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malole wrote:
I'm intrigued by the fact that this ebay imperial has only 3 rows of keys and a contraption on the top of the carriage.
Nice video. Oh, gawd, I really would like to have a go!
Weird! hadn't noticed that it had only 3 banks of keys. Perhaps the contraption on top held the paper tray (appears to be missing in action). And yes - the video makes it look like a whole lot of fun.
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That's quite a rare machine, as opposed to 'e-bay rare' ! It is based on an Imperial 55, and the serial number fixes it as being made in 1953. The platen is more like the Imperial 66 style (the knobs are different) Did anyone notice the lack of a tabulator and the black/GREEN ribbon ? I have seen one of these before. It's a long story, but a customer of a typewriter firm (An Imperial Dealership) that I was working for had a job lot of assorted typewriters for training purposes and one of these was amongst them. I persuaded them to give it to us to donate to the local museum. A chap in the service department who was near retirement rebuilt it before it went to the museum. He told me that a government weather station at Dunstable had several of these as he remembered working on them. I do not know what their precise function was, but probably similar to a radio mill. The brackets on top were probably to hold a roll of paper or continuous forms. Imperial prided themselves on making special purpose typewriters, more so than other manufacturers. No doubt they made a loss on them !
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Yes! I noticed the green and black ribbon, too. Very very interesting stuff there, thank you!
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If anyone is looking for a 30s Royal Portable with the Vogue typeface:
The price is right for Vogues, I think.
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Ah, nice. If the vogue was in the Uk, then I might, but no more overseas shipments for me!