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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3082 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A Smart Typewriter Is a Thing and I’m in Love With It

Hi, I'm old. I learned to type on this:

My first reports were typed on this:

My first attempts at fiction were typed on this:

Know what technology fuckin' deserved to die?

I say this, knowing a guy who made a fuckn documentary on typewriters. Fuck typewriters. But especially FUCK typewriters that can't even put ink on paper.

(full disclosure - I occasionally toy with buying a Groma Kolibri off eBay, but that's only because they're East German, ridiculously tiny, and part of a key plot point in The Lives of Others. I would never attempt to use it, nor pretend that it would be anything other than a twee object of fetishism)





zedadex  ·  3081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Nostalgia can make for decent niche markets.

Cedar  ·  3082 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I have a mid-80s electronic typewriter from Epson, it's surprisingly robust but trying to find ribbon cartridges for it is a nightmare. One cool thing it does, other than offer basic word processing, is it lets you hook it up to a modern and use it as a terminal.

One got a Raspberry Pi, I've got a ribbon, I think it's time I hack this thing on to the modern internet!

goobster  ·  3081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Protip from someone who had to supply typewriter ribbons for about 40 typewriters of widely varying vintage for a couple of years: Amazon has every typewriter ribbon you could ever need.

We even found a ribbon for this beast... the Oliver No. 9:

user-inactivated  ·  3081 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That falls in the "so weird it's cool" territory. I want it.

goobster  ·  3080 days ago  ·  link  ·  

RIGHT?!? I know!

There were a couple of different attempts at typewriter design early on, trying to figure out the best way to arrange the mechanisms to make them work well.

This one is a real "winner" because it actually obscures what you are writing, as you write it. Check it out:

People complain about only being able to see two or three lines... well about about only being able to see 6 or 8 characters of the line you are typing?!?

You will rarely see an Oliver No 9 working. Ours you could type a word or two on, and then do another 20 minutes of service to get it working again....

user-inactivated  ·  3080 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I once saw a typewriter completely taken apart and then neatly put into a shadowbox. It really illustrated just how intricate those machines could be.