Typing Simulator

Don't hit more than one key at a time.   It has 'correction tape.'

I totally understand this

My typewriter is a war era Remington Rand KMC.

I use a Lamy AlStar at work for writing by hand.

My pencils are Palamino Blackwing 602s.

My phone is a Western ELectric model 500.

I saw with a Disston and Son.  No plural.

So, I totally understand the appeal of the Rolls Royce of chalk.

Another Smith

Normally I am a Remington man, but a shooting buddy found this Smiff along with a Remington while dumpster diving a couple years back.  Sold be the Remington and through the Smith in for free.

The Remington was fine, but the Smith needed some serious TLC.

I just got it back from Kensington Typewriter Repair.

It's a nice typer.  Smooth.  Might be because they lubed it during service.  I could do a term paper on this!

Tom Hanks' favorite model, the Smith Corona Clipper, which is why I went ahead and took the trouble to make a dead typewriter work again.  It had a cracked typebar assembly.  Where the base of all them typebars attach and connect to the keybars.

If I had to guess... 4C series from the 1940s?  Prolly 49.

Gonna Add It Up

Typecast

New axe.

A Remington Model 5 portable:

Gah, I'm a horrible typist.  That should be 'sweetly' and 'Messed' among other issues.

This cost $65 back in '32.  One in mint condition will cost 10 times that today.  I didn't spend 10 times that.  Or even twice that.

So now i have one of each in the typewriter department.  An office size, a portable Noiseless, and a portable standard.  All Remington.  In keeping with my 'one of each' philosophy, I am done.  Unless something special falls in my lap like this one...

Book Report #1

How bout an author report with typewriters?

Type Cast

Blogging with a typewriter.  Gotta do that again...

I'd go on and on about linotype machines, but I did that last year.

I think of a typewriter as the 'attainable' printing press and typeset hobby.   While it would be neat to have my own shop to play in, who has the time unless you can devote your life to what it otherwise a fleeting interest.  A shop with a Heidelburg press and a Mergethaler linotype machine.  All in a 80 year old 5000 squarefoot industrial space...

Yeah, I can dream about the unattainable, right!  Even if I won Powerball I don't know if I could do such a dream justice.  Half the fun is in the longing.

Fonts

I've shifted my fonts on computer applications, apart from Blogger, from something designed to be screen readable, like sans serif Calibri or Verdana, and now use Palatino Linotype.  More of a print font, but works fine on the screen, too, I think.

It's an older style font and is pretty ubiquitous.  And it is a fine classic font that many of the books you've read in your life were printed in.  Or something similar.  Something like the Bembo, or Garamond.  Remember fonts changed when hot metal typesetting machines had to adopt earlier, more hand made type.  I like Palatino.  For one reason, the r and n don't run together to appear to me a m when you type burn, and it looks more like bum.  Stupid Georgia....

Plus, Linotype, duh.  Put that in the marketing and you get a sale, for me.

If you are self-publishing, here are some rules, quick and dirty:

1. Use 11-point Palatino for text.
2. Use 14-point Helvetica for chapter titles and 12-point Helvetica for section headings.
3. Never use monospaced (a.k.a. “typewriter”) fonts, e.g., Courier, except when mocking up documents, i.e., reports, that actually use such a font.
4. Use unusual fonts only for short items, e.g., the title and author's name on the cover, or for chapter titles.
5. Don't use too many fonts. Three should be enough for almost any book.
6. Check books you like the look of, and see which fonts they use. Half an hour in a bookstore looking at fonts can be very useful and enlightening.

I am a little tired of Helvetica.  It's a nice enough font but it is in too many places and I don't like what it did to world we see since 1960.  James Lileks practically has a whole sight that inadvertently is a rejection of Helvetica, and I share his sentiment.  There is a documentary on how Helvetica conquered the post Eisenhower world.

Think about it.  For a book you need the Body font for the majority of the words, a larger different Chapter font, a fancy big Illumination style font for the first letter of a chapter if your taste go that way.  A larger and maybe tall and thin font for the Cover.  If you have a character like Death in Discworld you may need a font for him.  Thats five total, and plenty.  Don't go nuts.  And do me a favor... avoid Helvetica.  Just cuz.  I won't hold you to it, but it'd be a refreshing gesture.

Typewriter

A new documentary.

Gotta Have that Funk

Typewriter 2

Lemme typecast a new addition.

click embiggens



Here is the WWII instructional film.  I posted it the other week, too. You see my OTHER typewriter in it at times.  The Remington Rand Model 17.  This one is a Remington Rand Noiseless Portable.  With SLEEK Art Deco styling.  Handier AND prettier.  And ten years older than my Grandfathers Desktop war model.

Aw jeez, this is almost verbatim what my previous post of 3 weeks ago.  Got sort of jumbled up I guess in the set up for my 2 weeks out of pocket.  

I have to add a bleg for  this...   Does anyone have a source for correction paper/film?  Ko-Rec-Type invented it I believe but doesn't seem to make it anymore.  Unless... Wait, this might be it.  I'll just have to buy some on spec to know.

You know, typewriters used to be ordinary.  Pedestrian.  Ubiquitous.  Now they are a throwback and people use them for the joy of using them.  The novelty AND nostalgia.

Hey that explains a lot about me.

Old tools like a Stanley plane or a Disston saw on workshop bench... no rechargeable drills or tablesaws.

Steam and hit and miss 2-stroke engines.

Linotype.

Browning designed firearms.

Fountain pens.

Pulp fiction now in the public domain.

Blacksmithing.

All appeal to me, and I am drawn to them.  If even to dabble with them, in my mind, from afar. I may never touch a working linotype, or see a working steam train again, or another flying B-17.  But I want to.

Maybe I wasn't born too late.  Maybe I'd whistfully look to the past no matter what era I found myself.



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Hey, that typewriter sure beats buying $15,000 worth of linotype machine I have no place for, huh?  Hope that itch stays scratched.


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Now I want a Writer's Shed.

Like All the Cool Kids

I finally retrieved my 80 year old proto-blogging machine from my former in laws basement.  Now I can be like the cooler bloggers.

A Remington Rand Model 17.  One like this:

It was my grandfathers, and it still functions, despite the abandoned mouse nest inside.  Even the ribbon works, if faded.  And with a little kludging, replacement ribbon is still available.  It's built like a Sherman tank, of similar vintage, and almost as svelte and lightweight.  And harder to figure out than I had supposed.  Setting the margins and what those silver knobs and levers do will take a bit of learning curve to surmount.  Prolly some instruction manuals online...  One doohickey is for multiple paper thickness.  Another is for reversing the ribbon direction manually.  Yet another is switching between red and black sections of the ribbon.

Mine was built between 1939 and 1950.  Because that is the years they built this model.

Check THIS ad out!  From here.  Ad copy: "Released to the public a few months before the Nazis invaded Poland, the Model 17 is produced only for the Armed Forces and a few essential industries.  When it is again available to all, remember: this new Remington Rand typewriter, proven under the toughest wartime service, is the finest you can buy."

My typewriter fought the Nazis!  What did YOUR keyboard do?  Troll an anti-gun website comments section with a rational argument grounded in fact and logic?  That's like taking candy from a baby.

What inspired me was the quote I read somewhere, "cars didn't replace the bicycle, why would computers replace the typewriter."  I am ready for desktop publishing, post EMP burst that aces the electric grid for decades. 

It's going on the Singer table.  The sewing machine is electric, but I have the treadle to convert it, if need be.  Yay.

Next project, shortwave radio.  I'm trying to think of vital areas of my life that require electricity.  I am down to AC, refrigerator, and clothes washer.  Oh, and better off grid heat.  If I can figure out a way for those four, I am set for most anything.  And I can handwash clothes.



It's a Remington... that's like gun content, right?