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I like how the keyboard lacks the “1” character. Do you do it by hitting the lowercase “i” ?

I’ve got one of these machines, too. Cormac McCarthy writes on one.

I like how the keyboard lacks the “1” character. Do you do it by hitting the lowercase “i” ?

I’m gonna guess it’s the key in the upper left, where the “1” should be – maybe wore off or was replaced. I don’t know anything about vintage typewriters, though!

Nevermind, should have read the Wikipedia article before commenting. It’s i234567890 after all!

I’m not sure if it’s the same model, but we had one pretty much like this at home, quite a vintage nowadays. It didn’t have the “1” key, it was designed like that, we would use the lowercase “L” to type it not the “i”.

The blank key was used to make accents, if I’m not wrong, after hitting the accent, say ”^”, the machine moves the print head for the next character and the the blank key made it go back. But that was a long time ago :)

Cheers

This model was used by the most important italian journalist of all times: Indro Montanelli ho kept hitting it until the age of 90!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indro_Montanelli

Big up to Lettera 22!

Lowercase L is the 1. Beautiful machine but how’d you like to do all your college papers on it!

I did do all my college term papers on one and I was a philosophy major! Thanks for sharing this – I wish I still had mine but it went away a long time ago – I think my grandmother was the last person to have it -

I also remember using multiple symbols to make some extra characters – like ampersand and X made a soldier looking thing – you needed the backspace for that as well as handling the accents.

I have this typewriter, as well.

It was my mom’s in college, and I grew up using. I recently took it out and was playing with it.

It is in the MOMA ’s design collection.

My father taught me to typing with this one. I suppose it is still at my parent’s. It is nice to see a photo of it after all these years :)

“Sure, it probably did a lot more – it even had a WhiteOut laced backspace key! – but how much of that was necessary? Bells and whistles and electronic WhiteOut do a lot to blow the mind, but nothing will ever compare to the most simple, elegant solution.”

Methinks 37s has a simplicity fetish.

Why don’t you confer with someone who typed all day long for a living and ask them if those ‘bells and whistles’ were useful?

In the town of Partschins, in South Tyrol, there is a beautiful typewriter museum. There are exhibits incredible designed machines (ancient Olivetti too). Highly recommended.

http://www.schreibmaschinenmuseum.com/

Methinks 37s has a simplicity fetish.
Why don’t you confer with someone who typed all day long for a living and ask them if those ‘bells and whistles’ were useful?

That made me laugh :)

God bless Italian design and craftsmanship.

Methinks 37s has a simplicity fetish.

I’d have thought that was pretty obvious ;)

That is a beautiful machine!

I still use a typewriter, and I have a strong affinity for them… they remind me of my Dad. I like the old cast iron ones best hough actually… a typewriter’s a station—it doesn’t need to be light and portable. I don’t need ANY electronics.

But….

how much of that was necessary?

You’ve got to remember that in the 80s people were still writing papers and books and theses and doing real business on these things. For such tasks, the electronics/white out etc really were a necessity.

I can’t imagine typing up a long document on one of those old typewriters. I am hopelessly addicted to my word processor and all the conveniences entailed.

Ooh, I want one. I was just watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas last night and Johnny, I mean, Hunter clutched a portable typewriter to his chest while trying to sneak out of their first suite. I wonder if it was this model.

Not an Olivetti, but check out the Remington Rand Model 5 streamlined. I found one about a year ago and have it in our house loaded with paper for anyone to walk by and do some impulse typing.

Remington Rand 5
http://staff.xu.edu/ polt/typewriters/index.html

The Classic Typewriter Page
http://staff.xu.edu/ polt/typewriters/index.html

Tuck a tilde in that Remington Rand URL before “polt” and it’ll work. Must have been a forbidden character for posting.

I already have one, from my father… it’s a really nice object Maybe no one remember about Olivetti PC (8086…), nice machines of other old times…

i can’t see why so many writers keep such a tight hold on their old clunky out of date typewriters instead of just getting a laptop! unless of course for the retro appeal :-)

Take this typewriter to a conference- SXSW is the first one that comes to mind, and then just post up amongst all the attendees there with their MacBooks and iPhones and just peck away at that thing with a latte in hand.

Oh- also, have a big black rotary dial phone there by your side for added effect.

Also missing on the keyboard is the exclamation point. To type one, you first type a period, then you hit backspace and type an apostrophe ( . + ’ = ! ). Clever, if not downright elegant…

Clever, if not downright elegant…

Maybe all keyboards should do this!

It’s a few extra key strokes! But maybe that’s a good thing! Exclamation points are well overused anyways!

It was so baeutiful that mine was stoled by a ‘friend’ upon a visit of my flat when I was student. It was not in use because computer based wordprocessors were more useful, but was a fine piece of machinery and I was not glad.

I’ll go you one better GeelWonder; the keys should represent the constituent parts of the letters, so that with a few combinations of keys and backspaces you can create any letter! An ‘e’ might take 6 strokes – very elegant! You could create your own alphabet!

Well, there are certainly books written without e’s.

But most editors spend so much time removing adjectives and exclamation points you could certainly make a solid case for their omission on productive typewriters.

It was a joke man.

I’ll say. Funny too. ;)

the back part of the case is some kind of monitor? confused.