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No. 75 -- September 2006

In this issueEditors Notes .......................2Writing Ball Rediscovered ...3Walker Silent Typewriter ....4New on the Shelf .................5Shannon Johnson ..................6Olivetti ICO ..........................7

Ephemera: Caligraph ...........8Odell No. 1 ........................... 10Portables, ETCetera ............11

Journal of theEarly Typewriter

Collectors Association

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2/12 / ETCetera No. 75 / September 006

EditorsNotes

Sometimes a competition comesdown to the last cent and the lastsecond. Thats what two competitorsdiscovered earlier this year on eBay

when they both bid $4444.44 on atypewriter near the very end of an

auction. In accordance with eBayrules, the rst bidder won.

I was in Boston in May for a con-ference which wasnt constantly scin-tillating. Whats a man to do in theduller moments but sketch fantasytypewriters? Here are some of theresults, along with mementos of myenjoyable visit to former ETCeteraeditors Chuck Dilts and Rich Cin-cotta. Do you have typewriter day-

dreams too? Send them intheresno need to tie this magazine exclu-sively to the real world.

On Our Cover

If you had checked out a garage sale in a certainsmall Minnesota town a few months ago, this iswhat you would have found. But you werent

there and I wasnt there, so this Burnett, whichhad languished in its owners basement for de-cades, failed to sell for $5. The owner had bet-ter luck getting rid of it on eBay, where it alsobrought a rathererbetter price. See page 5

for more photos.

CorrectionLeertaste does not mean dead key (ETCete-ra No. 73, p. 3), but empty key, that is,spacebar. There was nothing dead aboutFritz Niemanns newsletter!

ETCeteraJournal of the

Early TypewriterCollectors Association

September 2006No. 75

Editor:Richard Polt

4745 Winton Rd.Cincinnati, OH 45232

[email protected]

Secretary-Treasurer:Herman Price

German translation:Norbert Schwarz

2006 ETCA. Published quarterly.Subscription: $25, North America;$30 elsewhere. ISSN 1062-9645

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3/12ETCetera No. 75 / September 006 /

Its the dream of every collector onearth to nd an original 1867 MallingHansen Writing Ball, the rst success-

fully produced typewriter, but for most ofus it remains a dream: the very few luckycollectors who have been able to discovera specimen were those who some thirty(or more) years ago, when nobody wasinterested in typewriters as collectableobjects, went to Denmark to investigate

with great eorts and begin tremendoustreasure hunts that, sometimes, lasted

years! But today the Writing Ball is aworld famous machineit is advertisedon the Internet as the worlds rst and

most expensive typewriterand there-fore, it was very unlikely that even onlyone was still hidden somewhere waitingfor a passionate collector to rescue it.

To conrm once again that good type-writers are still around, a few months agoWriting Ball serial number 137, a previ-ously unknown specimen, saw the lightagainand it wasnt on an Internet auc-tion!

I was contacted by the owner andI just couldnt believe it, I was shocked:over the years I have had the great luck

of discovering some very rare and impor-tant machines, even a few one-of-a-kindmodels and prototypes, but nothing waseven close to the experience of receivingpictures of a beautiful Malling HansenWriting Ball in its original dovetailedwood case and reading the words, Wouldyou be interested in this machine? Thesurprise was not only the machine itself,but the place where the letter came from:the United States of America! I was star-ing at the rst Malling Hansen ever to be

found outside of Europe.The rst question was: is it one of thevery few specimens that originally leftDenmark ordered from America, or is itone that for some other reason arrivedthere later, brought by the original owneror acquired by someone interested in an-tiques? The answer soon came, and to thegreat relief of those who still hope to ndone of the very few specimens ordered in

America in the 1870s, this machine wasan emigrant: it was originally purchasedby a family of northern Europe and it re-

mained there for more than half a century.However, sometime between WWI andWWII (early 1930s) the sons of the rst

owner decided to ee to the USA, seek-ing their fortune and leaving behind themisery of post-WWI Europe. In thosehard times, emigrants usually had barelyenough money to eat and no valuable ob-jects at all, but it was usual to bring on thejourney with them the very few treasuresthey had, usually little trinkets or silverframes with family picturesin the caseof this family, a Writing Ball!

Another seventy years had to go bybefore the machine saw the light again:

the sons of the emigrants had already soldthe entire estate of their parents (who ap-parently were actually able to make a for-tune in the US) many years ago, but notthe Writing Ball. They kept it as a familytreasure, recalling their origins and tell-ing their sons the story of their grandpar-ents, until now, when they decided it wastime for someone else to treasure it andfor the machine itself to close the circleand y back to Europe after a long 75

years.The previous owners obviously knew

they had something valuable in their

hands, but fortunately they had not evena close idea of the world record pricesfetched at auction for Writing Balls a

couple of years ago, and most of the economic value they put to the machine was

given by the sentimental value of theobject rather than its rarity or historicalsignicance: it still was, of course, an expensive typewriter, but after a brief negotiation I agreed to pay a price that is, tosay the least, very reasonable for such animportant item.

The whole deal took approximatelytwo months but nally, after a never-ending four days of waiting for FedEx Inter

national Express Service to knock at mydoor, Malling Hansen serial number 137arrived in Romeperfectly packed inits original dovetailed wood case, whereit was standing proudly in pristine condition and even retaining the original ribbon, after approximately 75 years sincethe day it left Europe as if the time hadgone by without touching it, respectingit as a silent observer that traveled overthree centuries around the world with agreat story to tell.

It has nally been told, the circle is

closed.

A Malling-Hansen Writing Ball RediscoveredThe Exceptional Journey of a Unique Typewriter

by Flavio Mantelli

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For many collectors, the early history oftypewriters and the rugged individual

with a design and a purpose are things ofthe highest interest. In fact, the story ofa man and a dream continues throughouttypewriter history, to the point of includ-ing spectacular failures up through to theend.

We were recently very excited to ob-tain two stock certicates (illustrated)from the early 1920s for a company which,it would appear, failed before ever havingconstructed any production machines.

They are issued in the name of the Walk-er Silent Typewriter Company, a Corpo-ration of Connecticut,and both are dated Au-

gust 22, 1921. The nd-ing of these certicatesappears to update andpossibly change infor-mation previously givenin the literature underthis topic. M i c h a e l

Adler, in his book An-tique Typewriters: From

Creed to QWERTY, in-cludes, in his section onmachines never built, anentry for the Walker ma-chine and gives dates of1909 for the beginningand 1912 for the selloutof the concern. Thesestock certicates are adecade later, and in factthe patents for the ma-chine coincide with the

dates of these certicates as well. It is notpresently known if there were separateattempts; what is a fact is that by the timethe patents were issued in the early 1920s,Charles Wellington Walker, accordingto Adler the designs originator, had died,and the patents were assigned to one ArioC. Walker, administrator for the late Mr.Walker and also, as we can see from thecerticates, the Treasurer of the company.In point of fact, it does appear as if ArioWalker was a co-inventor since his nameis given as such on the patents discovered

so far. The design of the machineis keyed to the Walkers notions for whata typewriter ought to be and ought tohave; it was to have been silent in opera-tion, and was to have allowed not only thesetup of whole lines of text, or any sectionthereof, prior to printing, but also to haveallowed the typist to have viewed the line(or section) prior to printing in order toallow corrections. This concept is nor-mally associated with the very moderndaisy-wheel electronic typewriter, which

was in many ways almost a word proces-

sor; it was very much an idea well ahead ofits time.

The fact that the idea existed, as weare all well aware, meant nothing oncethe actual execution of such a concept

was attempted, and the two patents re-ect the (likely) incredible struggle themen had with turning this concept intoa reality. The accompanying patent draw-ing illustrates the later of two overalldesigns; the earlier one was, from an en-

gineering standpoint, so wholly unwork-able as to require no comment. The laterpatent acknowledges that the new designis, in fact, entirely revised and only makes

occasional reference to the rst in termof conceptual similarity in operation andto parts briey illustrated but non-criticain the rst, for points of completeness.

The design is, as I have said, complicaed, but a brief explanation of the operation as conceived is certainly possible. Inthe view of the side, two large wheels canbe seen. That in the rear of the machineaway from the typist, is the actual printing wheel or type-wheel. There is one

wheel for every single character space onan entire sheet, side to side. The othe

wheel is actually an indicator wheel, arranged with the type-wheel so that wha

ever character is selectedin the printing positionin the rear is indicated(probably through a slior window) in the fronof the machine. In thimanner, the typist cansee the character seleced for each position, thuthe entire line of text.

Of course, the ma

chine must be workableas a typewriter, and doein fact have a totallyconventional keyboardThe requirement thenis to get the keys to select characters sequentially from left to right

This most complicatedportion of the machineand its operation is besdescribed very simply a

follows: there is a moving selector unitwhich travels from left to right on themachine, and which includes provisionfor both connecting a key levers motionto itself and for converting that (any) keylevers motion to a set of pins which acas travel stops for the spring-loaded type

wheels; it might be said that each key lever or character has an assigned degree orotation which corresponds to one pin inthe bank for a type wheel. In any positiondepression of a key lever causes the typeand indicator wheels to quickly rotate by

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spring action, with stopping point (char-acter) determined by the bank of pins.Once this action has occurred for a char-acter, the selector moves one type-spaceto the right for selection of the next char-acter. For those with mechanical experi-ence, no comment is necessary here; forthose without, this is incredibly compli-cated and certainly must have been what

killed the design and the company.Once the whole line was arranged (cor-rections were possible with the design)then the PRINT key would be pressed.

This brings the carriage unit forward tomeet the type. The patent states that noline-space mechanism is shown, and nei-ther is any inking mechanism, these be-ing of conventional design and thus not

required for inclusion. Operation of aRETURN key would not only clear allthe pin settings, and move the selectorunit back to the left but naturally allowall type-wheels to return to the zero orneutral positions (and this may, it is in-ferred, have spaced the paper as well.) It isimportant to note that the machine wasintended clearly to be a typewriter, and

not a typesetting machine or some othermachine, as described (again) clearly inthe inventors own wordsalthough thepatents arenotled within the typewriterclass group. The stock certicates discovered recently give a capital value forthe Walker Silent Typewriter Companyof $500,000. While many other companies failed with amounts much larger

than this and with wholly workable designs, it is unquestionable that no amountof money would have suced to get thisdesign into production. Only the introduction of microprocessors convertedthis see and edit concept for typewriters into a reality, about as near to the endof the century as the Walkers attempt

was to the beginning.

New on the Shelf

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Collectors CornerShannon: Im in my late twenties, sin-gle. I went to school for civil engineer-ing. Im currently helping a friend in thenewspaper business, but Ill be gettingback into engineering. I recently movedto Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I have fam-

ily a couple of hours away; in my familythey all know Im the crazy oneweird,as my sister puts it. Around here until re-cently auctioneers were begging for bidson machines, regardless of condi-tion ... but now, with the Internet,antique dealers are thinking, Ican get a bit more for that on eBay.

And then there are the kitschypeople who like to make jewelryout of keytops.

ETCetera: So you got a lot of your

typewriters in person at auctions?

YepI got over half of my col-lection for under ve bucks. Thatmeans most of them are commonthings, but some are in nice shape.

The rarer ones didnt come thatway.

What are some favorites in your collection?

The Oliverslast fall I scored an Oli-ver No. 2 from eBay. Its one of the ear-

lier ones, with a nice wide carriage on it.Then theres the aluminum Blickensder-fer 8. And Ive got a Williams 4. Thosethree Im kind of partial to.

Recently an eBay auction listed a Corona asmade by S. L. Johnson Typewriter Collection.Obviously the seller had found (and misunder-stood) your outstanding web site on Coronas.You also have great information on Olivers.[See homepage.mac.com/sljohnson.] Tell usabout how you focused on those two makes.

About the Oliver, I just started pulling in-formation out of books that I was able toacquire or that I got through interlibraryloan when I was at college, and I boughtthe back issues for both ETCetera and Ty-pex and dug through there. That gave mesome leads, and Ive been digging aroundfor obscure mentions of the Oliver Type-

writer Company on the Web. I was sur-prised about how much I was able to pullout of that. The research picked up steam,I got photocopies of catalogues sent to me

and fellow collectors shared informationwith me. I started pulling it al l togetherand decided to do a census of Olivers,

which is still ongoing; that pulled out alot of interesting little design dierences.Patents were really helpful on thatdig-ging through patent books at the library,or researching people I knew were tied tothe Oliver Company and looking at theirpatents online, and doing the same thing

when Dirk Schumann put together thePatent Database on DVD. As for Co-rona, I had some advertising literature onCorona and the art was really neat look-ing; Coronas marketing department had

some really great graphics. That was thegenesis of the Corona site. I like usingthe old art, because I gure some guys insome art department spent some time onit, and we may as well use it as a sort oftribute to them.

What would you consider to be the Holy Grailsof Corona and Oliver, and maybe a few oth-er unusual models that we might not know

about?

The Holy Grail of Oliver is the one they

made for Sears, the Woodstock brandedone. From what I understand there wereonly 19 made, and it sounds like they wereall reclaimed and destroyed. That wouldbe a nd if they survivedbut they prob-ably got under the hammer pretty quick.Other than that, it would be an OliverNo. 1. As far as Coronas, there has beensome luck in nding some early StandardFoldings. But if youre looking for some-thing youre going to have a hard timending, its probably going to be the ani-

mal keyboard Corona with the rings. Therings ended up in a dierent toybox and

were long separated from any memory owhat they were for. Other than a collectorno one would have a clue. And the keytops might go to a jewelry personeventhough they could get much more for thetypewriter.

Personally, when Ive tried typing on an Oliver Ive found it very awkward: itsheavy, theres a double shift, visibility is limited, and the typebars easily get out of alignment. Would you

agree, and if so, why do you thinkthis typewriter was so popular in its

day?

I cant really speak to the perfor

mance; the ones I have are usedand I dont use them much fortyping because the platens areall hard. I just keep them nicekeep them from rusting. Butfrom what I understand, one ofthe big draws was for mimeograph stencils. You could punch

out a stencil nicely. Ive seen a couple ofEdison Mimeograph ads that prominently feature an Oliver, well into the early20s, past Olivers prime.

Your web site makes it obvious that youre handy with a computer (specifcally a Mac). Do youever use typewriters yourself?

Once in a while I break out one that Ithink still has a decent platen and Ill usethat for writing a letter now and thenmaybe addressing an envelope. Right nowIm in an apartment, and Ive picked outsome of the nicest, most interesting machines for display, but theyre not necessarily the most functional. I have a coupleof Hermes 3000s I use. One has a scripttype, which I didnt realize until I started typing with it and wondered, Whatthe?

What are some things youre hoping to do in thefuture as a collector?

Right now, get my collection moved frommy parents where its in storage, and thenstart looking for some of the harder to

(Continued on p. 9)

...................................Shannon Johnson

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Pretty from any angle, the Olivetti

MP1, as it was ofcially known, was

the companys rst portable model

(modello portatile 1). Its popularly

known as the ICO for the logo in

front; thats an acronym for Inge-

gnere Camillo Olivetti (Engineer

Camillo Olivetti, the companys

founder). The machine was designed

in purest streamlined Deco style by

Aldo Magnielli; the equally stylish

photo poster for it was created by

Bauhaus artist Xanti Schawinsky.

Mechanically, the typewriter is not

unlike Remingtons non-noiseless

portables: the typebars are driven

by gears. 139,706 ICOs were made

from 1932 to 1950, and there are

plenty of variations for fans to

collect: its names include Harrods

(made for the famous London de-

partment store) and Simplex; its

colors include black, red, maroon,

and gray; and there are variations

in the treatment of the paper table

and the ICO logo plate. The red

model inevitably makes us think of

the more famous Olivetti Valentine,

designed in 1969 by Ettore Sottsass

and Perry King; but personally, I

like the ICO better. Richard Polt

A peek at the ICO

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Ephemera by Peter Weil

Our ephemeral window into life andtimes of typewriter history thismonth is a trade card that advertisesVermilyes College, a business school,and the Caligraph Typewriter.

Trade cards were an early form ofmass advertising that usually includedan image, often totally unrelated to

what was being advertised, and a mes-sage about the good or service beingsold. The idea was to encourage peopleto accept and keep the advertisement, inpart, because of its visual entertainment

value. The image and the message mightappear on only one side or they might beseparated, with each assigned to dier-ent sides of the card. Trading cards in

general are rooted in call ing cards and

more mundane business cards. Afterthe American Civil War, as the UnitedStates rapidly industrialized to sell fac-tory-made goods to a growing mass mar-ket, the trade card came into its own asan important marketing device. At thesame time, the development in Europeof better dyes for colored inks made pos-sible brighter, more permanent printingand more visually attractive trade cards.Early on in this commercial explosion,people not only began to accept tradecards, but also became members of that

larger group that includes us: the collec-tors. Today, if you are lucky enough tond one of these cards, they often haveattached to them remnants of the blackpaper that they were glued to in albumsby collectors. Even worse, the side glueddown is often the one with the typewrit-er image on it in black and white, the

very image we want. The 19th-centurycard collectors wanted the color imageto show in their albums, sometimes to-tally robbing us of the typewriter image.Still, if they had not collected them, it isdoubtful that nearly as many would havesurvived.

Trade cards produced for early type-writer companies indicate low advertis-ing budgets. Only later, in the 1890s, did

proprietary typewriter company tradecards come into their own. Before that,the trade cards either used a generic im-age and only the printing of words wascustomized, or they had customizedcards made in combination with otherbusiness advertisements.

While these other businesses couldinclude rms like shipping companies,the clear best t for co-advertising werebusinesses teaching typing and skillsrelated to the use of the new oce ma-chines. That synergy is the basis of the

Caligraph card you see here. The be-ginnings of these new educational andmarketing school businesses are usuallytraced to no later than 1878 (the fourth

year of the production of the Sholeand Glidden and the second year of thePerfected # 2 Type-Writer). The Scott-Browne School in New York was therst, and it was joined by 1881 by theNew York YWCA, now focusing ontraining women in the typewriter arts

The synergy grew when the schools be-gan to sell typewriters to their studentswith the promise that the education andthe machine would, with the help ofthe schools employment service, obtainthem good-paying jobs. (In 1883, Cali-

graph did a survey in Washington and

New York and claimed the rate to be veto ten cents [about $ 1.00-$ 2.00 today]per folio100 typed words.)

Vermilyes College, the tie-in for Ca-ligraph and the American Writing Ma-chine Co., was one of these pioneeringschools, also located in New York City

The school also was a pioneer in sellingtypewriters, while creating eective cus-tomers by teaching them how to use themachines. As the advertising copy on theback of the card says, the College soldboth new and used typewriters. Howev-

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er, the Caligraph is not advertised on theColleges main side of the card. Instead,it is on the other, color image side that

we nd the Caligraph featured. Thisnear complete separation follows theusual pattern on trade cards, combininga primary ad for the typing school withan ad for a specic typewriter brand. Ofcourse, in most of the 1880s, the only of-

ce typewriters were the Caligraph andbrand T(ype-Writer), and the tie-in waslikely to include only one of the two. Onthis card, the separation of the two ad-

vertisers is not complete, as indicatedby the draft paper the man is holdingon the color side. Of course, the separa-tion is not nearly as strong as the dier-ent sides of the card might implythesynergy between the two advertisersproducts creates a more unied messageabout training for the use of the type-

writer and buying it.The color image on the front, with its

highlighting of women as stenographer-typewriters responding to the communi-cation needs and authority of businesses(most of which were owned and managedby men) embodies the marketing goalsof both Vermilyes and Caligraph. Bothsaw a major part of their success com-ing from recruiting women to the new

vocation. The prose on the back of thecard includes a section that begins, To

ladies there is no better occupationAnd Caligraph, in its magazine The Cali-graph Quarterly, published in 1882-83 (anddistributed by local sellers to potentialcustomers), regularly promoted the newtypewriting profession as the best solu-tion for employing women in cities andproperly channeling their new urban val-ues. For example, Willard Flacker wrotein the Quarterly (April, 1883), The prob-lem in many of our large cities [is] whatto do with our young women.A spiritof independence seems to take hold ofthem.Among the new occupations re-cently introduced none has proved more

valuable [in solving the problem] thanthat furnished by writing machines.With it many girls have found employ-ment and protable work.

In this Caligraph and Vermilyestrade card, we nd the typewriter at thecenter of a technological, commercial,and social historical moment that helpedmake the time and place we collect andenjoy the survivors.

May 2006 Celestino Gallis Potenografo Remington portable: manymodels, many color variants The woman and the inventionof the typewriter Museum Tecnologic@menteopening in November in Ivrea

No. 23, May 2006 Over 1000 visitors to an expo-sition on the history of writingand calculating machines inMontmorillon

June 2006 Restoring Jupiter pencil sharp-eners

Typebar disentangling mecha-nisms in postwar typewriters

July 2006 Reports on meetings inPartschins and Braak Photos: Sampson, Adji Sk, er-gonomic Rheinmetall, etc.

Aro

undtheW

orld

MarketplaceFor sale: 577 pieces of typewriter

trade literature.Don Hoke, 972-661-9672,[email protected]

For sale: Remington No. 4. FritzNiemann, Niemannsweg 12,49201 Dissen, Germany,

[email protected]

Collectors Corner(continued from p. 6)

nd machines. The ones I have, Ive sortof stumbled upon in an antique shop hereand there. I almost didnt get the aluminumBlickensderfer because I wasnt sure what itwas worth at the time. It was in a shop, ithad a price of $250; I got it down to $200and was a little nervous, I wasnt sure whatId gotten. Then I shared my nd with the

group on the web and got a lot of pats onthe back. If I could nd more like that inthe wild or at local prices, Id be on them. Ifound the Williams at an antique shop inSioux Falls; the case was in storage, and theproprietor oered to sell it to me at a discount without the case. I said, No, let meknow when the case comes in and Ill pickup the whole shebang. I recently got thepaperwork that would have come with it; afew years ago someone cleaning out an olddesk found this cache of paperwork for Wiliams No. 4sthe instruction manual, the

warranty, everything that would have comewith it when you walked out of the storeHe sold several sets. This paperworkIcould have walked into a printer and pickedup, thats how fresh it is. Id like to workon lling out my Oliver line with those produced in Europe, like a Courier or a Jacobi

An Oliver No. 1 and the Jacobi, which fromwhat I understand is just a rebranded Courier, are two of the hardest to be found.

Good luck in your hunt! Thanks very much forthe interview, and well all look forward to moreof your research.

Regia: this ca. 150 machine fromSpain is new in my collection.

Thomas Frtig and I areinterested in serial numbers from

other Regia owners. Richard Polt

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Show & Tell .........................................................Odell No. 1

Dear folks, time came to look into my store because there was interest in an Odell 1 from a collector. I remembered that I havesome Odells, and I had a close look at them. Two Odells were model 1s. Butas I looked at one of these two, I never hadseen such a machine, especially such a nameplate: Hoheimer & Fish Gen, Mgrs, New York City. I do not remember where I

got this machine. Maybe I found it at a Brimeld ea market some 10 years ago. Or was it in the Peter Tandy collection that I got4 years ago? So the ownership history is complicated. But it is not just an Odell model 1. It has two dierent serial numbers: no750 in the body and no. 761 in the body of the carriage. I think this ts, because I think that the manufacture of the carriage wasnot really the same as the manufacture of the body. My questions to all of you are: Do you know this special Odell No. 1? WhereI may nd another one? Are the serial numbers in the same range (if there is another one)? Do you know of other Odells model with serial numbers? Do you know other Odells model 1 with just nickel plate on the body? Or is this a very special thing only onthis variation of this model? I want to sell this machine. Please contact me if interested in it.

Fritz NiemannGalerie Alte Technik, Niemannsweg 12, 49201 Dissen, Germany, [email protected]

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Portables, ETCetera by Will Davis

This time, folks, we have a number ofsmaller entries on various topics whichby themselves arent enough for a large ar-ticle, but which are worthy of note. As such,heres a Portable Potpourri.

NEW MANUAL PORTABLES, UP-

DATE: Last issue, we covered fully theRover 5000 and the Generation 3000 ma-chines oered presently by mail order. Wecan now add to these a machine labeled lit-erally CLASSIC TYPEWRITER on its front,colored in black, with unlettered black vinylzipper case, and which matches the Rover5000 in the small detail variances more thanit does the Generation 3000. The manualfor this machine includes a photo of themachine bearing the label 300 on its frontpanel. Also, some of the new photos of theGeneration 3000 display it with a dierent

paper bail which includes two rollers. ThisClassic Typewriter is oered through Dr.Leonards Health Care Products, via catalogand online. Carol Wright Gifts is oering theRover 5000, while catalogs from StarcrestProducts of California continue to oer theGeneration 3000. And, yes, the name CLAS-SIC has been used before, on Smith-Coro-na machines of the early 1960s which werehoused in the older 1950 body following theintroduction of the Galaxie body. Whichleads us to

PORTABLES OF THE 50s AND 60s:Lately Ive been asked quite a few timeswhether or not the older Hermes 2000 com-pares well with the 3000. Background: whilethe Hermes 3000 has always had a small butdedicated following (perhaps small here inthe US due to its extravagant price whensold new) it recently was pushed right to theforefront of all typewriter events followingthe comments of writer Larry McMurtry;eBay acionados will no doubt recall theextravagant prices achieved by these ma-chines in the recent past. Prior to this time,

but particularly after it, I have been askedwhether or not the earlier model of Hermesportable compared favorably with the later,perhaps to allow people to avoid the extrav-agance of the 3000s realized values (whichpleasingly have gone right back down for themost part). I nally acquired a Hermes 2000,

and put a new ribbon in it for the purpose oftesting; my ndings are as follows.

Naturally, one has only to examine bothmachines briey to determine that muchmore has been changed between the 2000and 3000 Hermes machines than just thebody style. In point of fact, these are veryconsiderably dierent machines, and the dif-ferences are exactly those you might expectto nd in machines of the same make but inmodels developed years apart (although ofcourse the 3000 took up where the 2000 lefto; the 3000 appeared in 1958 with produc-

tion of the 2000 trickling down and endingabout 1960). The biggest operational dier-ences are the typing feel and the shiftwhichare naturally the two biggest ones there canbe. The feel of the 2000 is altogether older,notchier and more severe; the carriage shiftis much stier to operate than the segmentshift of the 3000 and is a world removed.The 2000 lacks those ergonomic featuresfound so interesting in the 3000, most no-tably the red-line margin placement featurein the paper bail (although it does have au-tomatic margin setting like the Royal MagicMargin and many others). The function keys,

such as backspace and tab, are in convention-al outboard positions on the 2000, and notcentered as on the 3000. In the nal analy-sis, the 3000 is a complete improvement onmost aspects and has many merits to com-mend it, even if the unconventional controlsare at rst confusing. The 2000, though, willbe familiar to those who enjoy all older por-tables with carriage shift, and compares wellwith most of them built anywhere from itsown time back to the 1920s, at the beginning.Which leads us to

PORTABLES OF THE 1920s seem inmany ways to have attempted competi-tion with the vastly successful Corona. Com-

parison was perhaps unavoidable point for

point, for any make, with this market leader

some attempted to go head to head with the

machine, even to the point of attempting to

improve upon its design. The best-known

example of this is perhaps the Fox Type

writer Companys little folding (or collapsible) portable, which was supposedly the

target of litigation that ended its production

even though the patent led for the machinewas actually granted and never altered or re

voked. Still, Fox apparently decided to drop

the whole matter and go with a non-folding

machine, which makes it all the more incred

ible that another company tried at the same

time to develop a machine much more like

the Corona than the Fox Portable was!

At least nine patents were led by OttoHokanson, assignor to Woodstock Type

writer Company, for a portable typewritewhose carriage folded forward and over the

machine itself. It may be the case that the

patent of this one basic feature had expired

or at least in and of itself was not considered

so specic as to even be violable; or it may bethat Woodstock was keeping abreast of the

Corona-Fox litigation and felt that the pro

ceedings would overturn Corona. Whateve

the case, though, the machine Hokanson

was developing for Woodstock was clearly

superior. It included a full four-bank key

board, segment shift, ball bearing carriagesuspension, complete tabulator with manu

ally positioned stops, and automatic ribbon

reverse. Hokanson: Notwithstanding the

compact arrangement the machine has al

the functions of the standard typewriter.

In just those features, the machine would

have been competitive with every other por

table on the market, and indeed the folding

feature would have been unnecessary had it

not been thought of as essential for reducing

stored volume. No example of this machine

is known to exist, although the drawings

furnished for the patents appear in later ex

amples to be nished engineering drawingsof a completely production-ready machine

so dimensionally accurate and complete are

they. Yes, at least one portable typewriter

has inexplicably been found in Europe with

the Woodstock label (a member of the semi

ubiquitous SIM / MAS family) but for nowwe can safely assume that Woodstocks at

tempts at a domestic portable proved abor

tive, even after more than four years of de

velopment.

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There is much more behind the Du-plex than can possibly be gleaned fromthe machine itself. As I recall, inventor

A. S. Dennis interviewed a certain Halafter Hal nished his studies at the busi-ness college in Des Moines, Iowa. Hal

could have done much better with anyother typewriter company, but becausehe was so good on the Duplex, he washired to demonstrate it. Problem was,Hal was about the only person who wascapable of typing at the speeds he typedon the Duplex. Hal could sell the Du-plex, but once the buyers found that they

were unable to nd typists that couldtype as fast as Hal, further sales wereslim to none. Unlike some typewritermakes that sold by word of mouth, theDuplex probably did not share a similar

experience. Even Hal was known to usea Smith Premier, though Dennis did notcare to see Hal using any machine otherthan his Dennis Duplex. Hal was so pro-lic on the typewriter that I believe oneof his personal letters was 10 pages long.When you add that it was single spaced

you begin to get an idea of his typingskill.

Jim DaxCitrus Heights, Cal.

Back in the early 80s I had an elderlyman from D.C. send me a Smith Pre-mier No. 1 that he had taken apart whenhe was a boy, some 60 years earlier. Ithad belonged to his grandfather and hehad wanted to surprise him by repair-ing it. Well, as he put it, he could not

get it back together and his grandfathernever forgave him for it. He wanted itback together before he died so he couldpass it on to a family member. I jumpedon the repair, saying I could handle anymachine. Well, it was not very long be-

fore I was very sorry I had even triedto tackle that particular machine. Theonly parts that were intact were the onesmaking up the carriage. Even the frame

was apart. All of the springs, plates, andshafts were neatly bundled in very oldlinen and tied in butcher shop string.It took me a few weeks to complete thejob. Since then I have done a couple ofdozen Smith Premiers and have lost myfear of them.

John LewisAlbuquerque, N.M.

Ed.: I recently received this Smith PremierNo. 1 with a number of rods out of placebutafter several sessions in the workshop, themachine is back together. Now it could evenserve as a practical tool

I like to use this Smith Premier No. 1for short letters. I bought it in 1967, butdidnt get a new platen from Ames untila few years ago.

I like antiques, but not ones whichare too primitive and not practical touse. I am concerned about oce type-

writers from the 1950s which seem tohave quickly largely disappeared fromthe scene. I am likely to buy a modern,otherwise uninteresting or unattractivetypewriter if it has an unusual style orsize of type.

Champaign, Ill.

Over the years the Varityper cap-tured my interest and respect, largelybecause I was and still am using thesemachines to set up columns for osetprinting. Right now, if I had room todo so, I could set out the little humbleportable Hammond, and next to it therst actual Varityper model, and an-

other next to it, with wider carriage anda couple more features, and so on rightthrough the most elaborate of the non-dierential-spacing models, then the

various dierential and DSJ (justi-fying) ones. Each hardly variesfrom the former, but the evo-lution is striking, overall. Forday-to-day typesetting

work I prefer the 610and 660 models from themid-1950s and 60s.

LettersThis has led into appreciating the

more normal collectable old typewriters, though Id never think of setting upcolumns on a non-proportional typer

The Holy Grail, for me, would be CharleSears Direct Printer of the late 1890[pats. 644188, 682759, etc.Ed.]othe still earlier Varityper-like gadget oCharles Moores (which apparently really was manufactured and sold) [pats419864, 549523]. I havent even seen pictures of Moores models, which wereapparently the things that got Mergenthaler interested in typesetting, leadinghim to invent, eventually, the Linotypemachine (a whole dierent concept). Bupictures of Sears Direct Printer doexist, and Id swear it looks like a modied Hammond, with a crank, some increment keys for justication, and somekind of proportional spacing.

To drive the Varitypers, Ive needed

the special extremely narrow carbon ribbons, so have had to make my own byslitting carbon lm ribbons out of Selectric cartridges. The other big need of theVaritypers is fonts: 268 dierential spacing ones were made, but I am stuck ataround 195.

Fred WoodworthTucson, Ariz

Im glad youre getting Peter Weil tocome forward and share his knowledgeand his ephemera.

Tilman Elster expressed some provocative opinions. I must defend theIBM Selectric for its practicality as a

writing machine in these modern timesI eventually grew tired of using my Roya10 to type notes, labels, and forms, andconsider the Selectric a better alternative. But when friends visit, the Selectricisnt the rst shown.

Frank LindaueTucker, Ga

Charles Moores 10 patent(Thanks to USPTO and Dirk Schumann)

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