- KatLondon
- Key Master
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Re: Recent Acquisitions Thread
Uwe wrote:
Thanks; the number makes it a 1959 SG1-N.
Thanks Uwe, I knew it was 1959, but what is the N for? Are the two kinds different?
- Uwe
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Re: Recent Acquisitions Thread
There were four models, but in '56 they simplified it to only two, the -S (super) and the -N (normal) models.
The pronoun I has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
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Thread Starter- KatLondon
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Re: Recent Acquisitions Thread
Ah, so does N maybe signify the lack of a paper injector?
- colrehogan
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Re: Recent Acquisitions Thread
Well, I will soon be the owner of a Corona Folding #3.
Smith Premier typewriters are cool!
- Uwe
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Re: Recent Acquisitions Thread
Ah, so does N maybe signify the lack of a paper injector?
That, and the decimal tabulator. It also came standard with the 30 cm carriage.
The pronoun I has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
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Thread Starter- thetypewriterman
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- From: Leiston, England
- Registered: 29-5-2013
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Re: Recent Acquisitions Thread
The Olympia that is an Erika is the Olympia Regina. Yes, it is real and it does exist ! At first glance, it looks like an Olympia Carina, but look closely at the keyboard and you will see the typical Erika-shaped keytops. There is a picture of one on the Typewriter Database. Someone in the trade told me the story of how this machine came to be. Apparently Olympia ceased production of the well-liked SGE 50 electric typewriter around 1976. The replacement, the SGE 60 was so bad that they had to redesign it and re-launch it as the SGE 65. Even that wasn't an awful lot better (I should know, I worked for an Olympia dealer at the time and had to do a lot of warranty retro-fits on these machines). Olympia dealers wouldn't buy the new machine, and clamoured to have the old reliable SGE 50 back. The problem was that Olympia had already sold the tooling behind the Iron Curtain - some say East Germany. So Olympia had to go cap in hand and ask to buy supplies of their old model. The agreement was that they could only do so if they bought other typewriters too - so they had to accept a version of the Erika in order to get what they wanted. Supplies of the SGE 50 reappeared, and everyone was happy. Except maybe the management at Wilhelmshaven ! I often wondered if this tale was true, but then some years ago I came across a picture of an Olympia SGE 50 on Russian e-bay that did not have the Olympia logo and had a cyrillic keyboard instead of QWERTY.
- Fleetwing
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- Registered: 30-6-2015
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Re: Recent Acquisitions Thread
OK, my latest are two Royals: First, a 440 with a 16 inch carriage, making it quite the beast, though I think still not as hefty as my SG3. It was supposed to be in "mint" condition, and we all know that's going to be an exaggeration. Indeed it was. It wasn't terrible; some scratches, and the end plug on the righthand platen knob was missing. I doubt I'll ever find a replacement for that, but it's nonfunctional so not a problem. It came with a cover, which was sticky, probably nicotine. That took some scrubbing. But the machine itself was not grimy or stained, so the cover has done its job.
The machine was sluggish in advancing, especially as I got toward the middle of the carriage. And in trying to fix that I learned some important lessons. The 440 has a very convenient screw-worm gear adjustment for the mainspring, and I figured I'd just increase the spring tension to get the carriage to move without hesitation across its full travel. But indeed that didn't happen, and in fact it got so tight that I couldn't move the carriage return all the way to the beginning of the line. It finally dawned on me that the carriage advance is connected to the ribbon advance mechanism, which itself is driven by the escapement -- it's unconnected to the ribbon vibrator. I am sure many of you know this well, but I didn't! So liberal application of naphtha to the escapement, which is below the lefthand ribbon spool, got it to free up. I backed off the mainspring tension a fair amount as well, and I think I have things pretty well dialed in now -- the carriage advances all the way across to the righthand margin. One interesting feature of the machine is that it came with a set of the Roytype ribbon cartridges -- blue in color, and shaped with a flat surface toward the platen. The spool holders are shaped the same way. Presumably a regular Royal spool set will work OK also.
Its typing action is decent. Again, I may need to dial it in further, but it is working well.
The second machine I got recently is a 1946 Royal KMM, in vastly worse shape than the 440. A lot of rust inside and out -- keys sticking, shift sticking, one carriage release lever sticking, blue/red ribbon selector not budging. God only knows where this was stored -- I'm thinking some place like a garage. So I'm resorting to naphtha again, to clean the segment and other things, including the aforementioned carriage advance/ribbon advance mechanism. Some progress already, so that's great. I'll keep at it. A question -- the ribbon is shot, or at any rate it looks shot; I haven't got the machine working enough to . Am I right that I cannot substitute the original spools with a more recent Royal spool (the universal style with the single pin)?
- Uwe
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Re: Recent Acquisitions Thread
Many thanks for the explanation Tom! So in reality are we only talking about one rebadged Erika model - or like retro claims - several of them?
I have a Carina 2 - it's one of those Japanese models (Nakajima ALL) - which of course doesn't look anything like an Erika and is fairly common in my area. Its predecessor seems to be far less common on this side of the Atlantic, and I can't recall having ever seen a Regina. It makes me wonder then how long this arrangement with Erika existed, and how many of those machines were actually exported to North America. Given your comments - and those of retro - it sounds like the Regina was sold in some numbers in the UK.
The selling of tooling from one manufacturer to another was a fairly common practice during those years just before typewriter manufacturing began its swan song – I can think of quite a few other examples – but I don’t recall a manufacturer having to ‘buy back’ one of its previous models, and certainly not being extorted into buying others it didn’t really want! It’s a fascinating story, one that I’ll have to add to my list of items requiring more in depth research.
The pronoun I has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
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Thread Starter- tothetrail
- Novice Typer
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- From: Thousand Oaks, CA
- Registered: 01-9-2015
- Posts: 39
Re: Recent Acquisitions Thread
Acquired an Olympia SM3 with the #75 script typeface I was looking for. Love it!
Last edited by tothetrail (29-9-2015 12:18:33)
- Valiant
- Touch Typist
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- From: Toronto
- Registered: 12-3-2013
- Posts: 153
Re: Recent Acquisitions Thread
Looks clean.... How about a type sample?
"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the typewriter."
