Typewriter Talk / Oh have the times changed...

**Posted by ztyper** 13-3-2015 18:10:00

As I was doing my daily ebay runs, searching for that perfect deal that has never happened, I stumbled across an old Royal ad. Now I've bought one before, the perfect Royal Arrow ad to match my almost perfect Arrow itself. However this ad I felt like made a personal jab at me and community. It depicted me, as one who helps save these machines from utter destruction, as some sort of evil-doer who tinkers with typewriters and just wants to watch the world burn in a horrific ball of fire. Here's the link of the ad itself.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1943-Royal-Typewriter-Vintage-Magazine-Ad-How-to-Spot-a-tinker-/201056619264?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2ecfe88b00

Isn't the ad insulting nearly (with the exception of thetypewriterman since it's his job to fix typewriters) all of us? Perhaps I'm putting too much thought into it, and I know it's from a different time when a repairman was in almost every town and typewriters were worth ten times they are now. But I just couldn't help but to feel slightly offended, like my best friend called my favourite shirt ugly (something small like that). Anyways, I just thought it was interesting.

**Posted by beak** 13-3-2015 20:26:59

A bit heavy handed - but maybe in war-time resorces were precious, and waste through meddling with the machines seen as more of a national than a private problem?

**Posted by M. Höhne** 13-3-2015 23:39:00

Oh, don't take it so personally. Beak is entirely right about the situation. Royal had other concerns during WWII than what collectors and hobbyists would be doing with obsolete machines 70 years later. At the time there was a shortage of typewriters and every one lost to inept repair was a hinderance to the war effort. It was not even (mostly) an attempt to drum up repair business for Royal's dealers; it was a serious patriotic plea. Franky, I feel the same way today when I read some enthusiasts' descriptions. "They ain't makin' any more of 'em."

I like your story about your favorite shirt! I have some friends who wrote a very sensitive song about exactly that, called "I Don't Believe You Like my Shirt". I'll send it to you if you can find a way to get me your email address.

**Posted by retro** 14-3-2015 15:21:43

Some of the wartime posters often seem a bit odd. Typewriters were expensive items then but it was still expected that you would donate them for the war effort, aluminium saucepans to make aircraft, guns were handed in for the Home Guard as the Germans could invade at any moment. The poster is dated 1940, the Empire Typewriter factory was bombed in November 1940 which had been making the service field typewriter, other typewriter factories were making other things and very few machines were made during the war. My father's shop in East Ham, London was bombed, the typewriter survived and the shop continued to trade thoughout the war. Attitudes were very different then and the posters reflect this, don't you know there's a war on? sort of thing. My big sister and brother were evacuated twice during the war and got bombed twice. Production didn't really get going again until the mid 1950's and up to then, like cars if you wanted one your name was put on the waiting list. My sweet ration book was used up to 1953, everything was still in short supply. Our local museum has a house just as it was in the 1930's which has a typewriter, a donation, just like the one in my father's shop. Children are encouraged to play with it, just as I did. I don't think they will break it, it's pretty bomb proof.

**Posted by KatLondon** 14-3-2015 16:11:25

Actually I think that ad is interesting. Make do and mend is one thing but it shows how important typewriters were in the war - think of it - they couldn;t afford to waste one. And of course onewell-meaning secretary and her hairpin could be disastrous for a business.

We do things to typewriters, but we have also done untold hours of research on the web and taught outselves to do it properly, or as properly as we can.

I read somewhere about a ship that was sunk that was carrying 10,000 typewriters. All lost at sea.

**Posted by ztyper** 14-3-2015 18:01:57

I kinda figured it had to do something about the war effort. I was just taken aback by the somewhat hostile tone Royal gave off. But it's alright since if we hadn't given up a lot for the War, well, I doubt many of us would be sitting here discussing it.

At M. Hohne,
I actually made up the story about the shirt . It might have happened, but I don't remember. It's just something that I thought of, but hey, it happened to somebody if your friend wrote a song about it.

At KatLondon,
If that story is true, then I'm going to find that shipwreck, and have the largest collection of typewriters ever

**Posted by TypewriterKing** 25-3-2016 17:55:14

There were, and probably still are, a lot of jack leg repairmen of all sorts who believe they know enough about general repair of anything, when in reality they know barely enough about how to blow themselves and whatever they're trying to fix to smithereens. My guess has it that this article was targeting those types--the ones who were hungry from the Great Depression who made claims they could fix anything, but were really trying to hustle money from any unsuspecting victim with a broken whateveritis. I know the breed. I've had dealings with plumbers like this, and believe me, I would put them in the same waste bin as keychoppers.

**Posted by TypewriterKing** 16-7-2016 16:33:17

KatLondon and ztyper--10,000 typewriters!!? W-O-W!!! What a find that'd be. But, I would hope that if the ship was sunk, that it would be deep and dark enough so that rust would not have oxidized the metal in these typewriters. They'd require lots of attention, I'd bet. But if these were found, and all these typewriters rescued, you'd have a lot of 70-80 year old pieces of history on your hands to restore.