Reframing and simplifying the idea of how to keep a Zettelkasten

Given many of the misconceptions I see online of how to keep a zettelkasten, particularly given the focus on the arcane addressing system used by Niklas Luhmann, perhaps it may be helpful to dramatically reframe the question of how to keep a zettelkasten? One page blog posts from people who’ve only recently seen the idea and are synopsizing it without a year or more practice themselves are highly confusing at best. Can I write something we don’t see enough of in spaces relating to zettelkasten? Perhaps we should briefly consider the intellectual predecessor of the slip box?

(Editor’s note: I’m using content within my own “slip box” to write this.)

Start out by forgetting zettelkasten exist. Instead read about what a commonplace book is and how that (simpler) form of note taking works. This short article outlined as a class assignment is a fascinating way to start and has some illustrative examples: https://www.academia.edu/35101285/Creating_a_Commonplace_Book_CPB_. If you’re a writer, researcher, or journalist, perhaps Steven Johnson’s perspective may be interesting to you instead: https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/the-glass-box-and-the-commonplace-book-639b16c4f3bb

The general idea is to collect interesting passages, quotes, and ideas as you read. Keep them in a notebook and call it your commonplace book. If you like call these your “fleeting notes” as some do.

As you do this, start building an index of subject headings for your ideas, perhaps using John Locke’s method (see this for some history and a synopsis: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685).

Once you’ve got this, you’ve really mastered the majority of what a zettelkasten is and have a powerful tool at your disposal. If you feel it’s useful to you, you can add a few more tools and variations to your set up.

Next instead of keeping the ideas in a notebook, put them on index cards so that they’re easier to sort through, move around, and re-arrange. This particularly useful if you want to use them to create an outline of your ideas for writing something with them. Once you’ve got index cards (slips) with ideas on them in a box, you now literally meet the minimum requirements of a zettelkasten (German for “slip box”, though in practice many will have their ideas in a metaphorical slip box using a digital note taking tool.

Next, maybe keep some index cards that have the references and bibliographies from which your excerpting and note taking comes from. Link these bibliographical cards to the cards with your content.

As you go through your notes, ideas, and excerpts, maybe you want to further refine them? Write them out in your own words. Improve their clarity, so that when you go to re-use them, you can simply “excerpt” material you’ve already written for yourself and you’re not plagiarizing others. You can call these improved notes, as some do either “permanent notes” or “evergreen notes”.

Perhaps you’re looking for more creativity, serendipity, and organic surprise in your system? Next you can link individual notes together. In a paper system you can do this by following one note with another or writing addresses on each card and using that addressing system to link them, but in a digital environment you can link one note to many multiple others that are related. If you’re not sure where to start here, look back to your subject headings and pull out cards related to broad categories. Some things will obviously fit more closely than others, so be more selective and only link ideas that are more intimately connected than just the subject heading you’ve used.

Now when you want to write or create something new on a particular topic, ask your slip box a question and attempt to answer it by consulting your index. Find cards related to the topic, pull out those and place them in a useful order to create an outline perhaps using the cross links that already exist. (You’ve done that linking work as you went, so why not use it to make things easier now?) Copy the contents into a document and begin editing.

Beyond the first few steps, you’re really just creating additional complexity to a system to increase the combinatorial complexity of juxtaposed ideas that you could potentially pull back out of your system for writing more interesting text and generating new ideas. Some people may neither want nor need this sort of complexity in their working lives. If you don’t need it, then just keep a simple commonplace book (or commonplace card file) to remind you of the interesting ideas and inspirations you’ve seen and could potentially reuse throughout your life.

The benefit of this method is that beyond creating your index, you’ll always have something useful even if you abandon things later on and quit refining it. If you do go all the way, concentrate on writing out just two short solid ideas every day (Luhmann averaged about 6 per day and Roland Barthes averaged 1 and change). Do it until you have between 500 and 1000 cards (based on some surveys and anecdotal evidence), and you should begin seeing some serendipitous and intriguing results as you use your system for your writing.

We should acknowledge that that (visual) artists and musicians might also keep commonplaces and zettelkasten. As an example, Eminem keeps a zettelkasten, though he calls his “stacking ammo”, but it is so minimal that it is literally just a box and slips of paper with no apparent organization beyond this. If this fits your style and you don’t get any value out of having cards with locators like 3a4b/65m1, then don’t do that (for you) useless make-work. Make sure your system is working for you and you’re not working for your system.

Sadly, it’s generally difficult to find a single blog post that can accurately define what a zettelkasten is, how it’s structured, how it works, and why one would want one much less what one should expect from it. Sönke Ahrens does a reasonably good job, but his explanation is an entire book. Hopefully this distillation will get you moving in a positive direction for having a useful daily practice, but without an excessive amount of work and perhaps a bit less cognitive dissonance. Once you’ve been at it a while, then start looking at Ahrens and others to refine things for your personal preferences and creative needs.

Differentiating online variations of the Commonplace Book: Digital Gardens, Wikis, Zettlekasten, Waste Books, Florilegia, and Second Brains

A fluorescence of note taking tools

Over the past three or so years there has been a fluorescence of digital note taking tools and platforms.

Some of these include:

Open source projects like Org Mode, Logseq, Foam, Jupyter, Trilium, Databyss, Athens, Dendron, Anagora, and Hypothes.is.

Closed sourced projects like: Roam Research, Notion, Knovigator, Amplenote, RemNote, Memex, Nototo, nvUltra, and Are.na.

Some are based on earlier incarnations of note taking and writing tools like OneNote, Evernote, Simple Note, TiddlyWiki, DEVONthink, Scrivener, etc.

This brief list doesn’t take into account a sea of other mobile apps and platforms in addition to a broad array of social media platforms that people use for similar note taking or annotations.

My particular interest in some of this note taking field comes in the growing number of people who are working in public and sharing their notes in online settings with others. This has been happening organically since the rise of the internet and has happened on blogs within the blogosphere and on personal and communal wikis.

As was highlighted (pun intended) at the recent I Annotate 2021 conference, the note taking space seems to have been coming to a new boil. With the expansion of the ideas of keeping a zettelkasten or a digital garden, these versions of notebooks seem to be a significant part of this new note taking craze.

One thing I have noticed, however, is a dramatic lack of continuity in the history of note taking within the longue durée of Western civilization. (Other cultures including oral cultures have similar traditions, but for our purposes here, I won’t go into them except to say that they’re highly valuable, spectacularly rich, and something of which we should all be aware.)

Many of these products are selling themselves based on ideas or philosophies which sound and even feel solid, but they’re completely ignoring their predecessors to the tune of feeling like they’re trying to reinvent the wheel. As a result, some of the pitches for these products sound like they’re selling snake oil rather than tried and true methods that go back over 2,000 years of intellectual history. I can only presume that modern education is failing us all dramatically. People are “taught” (maybe told is the better verb) to take notes in school, but they’re never told why, what to do with them, or how to leverage them for maximum efficiency. Perhaps the idea has been so heavily imbued into our culture we’ve honestly forgotten the basic parts and reasoning behind it?

Even Vannevar Bush’s dream of the Memex as stated in his article As We May Think (The Atlantic, 1945), which many of these note taking applications might point to as an inspiration, ignores this same tradition and background, so perhaps these app creators and users aren’t all to blame?

Delineating Online Forms

I’ve been doing some serious reading and research into these traditions to help uncover our missing shared history. I’ll write something longer and more specific about them at a later date.

In the meanwhile, I want to outline just a bit about the various flavors as they relate to some of the more public online versions that I see in the related internet spaces. I hope to help better delineate what they have in common, how they differ, and what they may still add to the mix to get us to a more robust version of Bush’s dream.

Other’s thoughts and comments about these various incarnations and their forms and functions are both encouraged and appreciated.

Commonplace books

Historically commonplace books are one of the oldest and most influential structures in the note taking, writing, and thinking space. They have generally been physical books written by hand that contain notes which are categorized by headings (or in a modern context categories or tags. Often they’re created with an index to help their creators find and organize their notes.

They originated in ancient Greece and Rome out of the thought of Aristotle and Cicero as a tool for thinking and writing and have generally enjoyed a solid place in history since. A huge variety of commonplaces have been either copied by hand or published in print book form over the centuries.

Most significant thinkers, writers, and creators throughout history have kept something resembling a commonplace book. While many may want to attribute the output of historical figures like Erasmus, Newton, Darwin, Leibnitz, Locke, or Emerson to sheer genius (and many often do), I might suggest that their works were the result of sustained work of creating personal commonplace books—somewhat like a portable Google search engine for their day, but honed to their particular interests. (One naturally can’t ignore their other many privileges like wealth, education, and time to do this work, which were also certainly a significant factor in their success.)

Many people over the past quarter of a century have used a variety of digital forms to keep digital commonplace books including public versions on blogs, wikis, and other software for either public or private consumption.

Florilegium

Florilegia are a subcategory of commonplace book starting around 900 CE but flourishing in the 12th and 13th centuries and primarily kept by theologians and preachers. The first were a series of short excerpted passages often arranged in order of their appearance in a single text, but eventually were arranged systematically under discrete headings. Medieval florilegia where overwhelmingly, and often exclusively, concerned with religious topics from the works of scriptures, the moral dicta of the Doctors of the Church, and—less frequently—the teachings of approved, classical moral philosophers. The idea and form of florilegium generally merged back into the idea of the commonplace book which had renewed interest and wide popularity during the Renaissance.

These didn’t add any new or innovative features over what had come before. Perhaps, if anything, they were a regression because they so heavily focused only on religion as a topic.

Few (if any) examples of florilegia can be found in modern digital contexts. Though I have seen some people talk about using digital note taking tools for religious study, I have yet to see public versions online.

Zettelkästen

Born out of the commonplace tradition with modifications by Conrad Gessner (1516-1565) and descriptions by Johann Jacob Moser (1701–1785), the Zettelkasten, a German word translated as “slip box”, is generally a collection of highly curated atomic notes collected on slips of paper or index cards. Zettelkasten were made simpler to create and maintain with the introduction of the mass manufacture of index cards (and card boxes and furniture) in the early 20th century. Slips of paper which were moveable within books or files and later on index cards were a significant innovation in terms of storing and organizing a commonplace book.

Generally zettels (or cards) are organized by topics and often contain dates and other taxonomies or serialized numbers as a means of linking them to other cards within the system. The cross linking of these cards (and thus ideas) were certainly a historical physical precursor of the internet we have today, simply in digital form.

Almost all the current references I’ve seen online to Zettelkasten mention Niklas Luhmann as their inspiration, but none of them reference any other well-known historical examples despite the fact the idea has been around and evolving for several centuries now.

This productivity system and sets of digital tools around it came to greater attention in Germany in 2013 with the exhibition “Zettelkästen: Machines of Fantasy” at the Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar and in 2014 with the launch of the zettelkasten.de website. A subsequent boost in the English speaking world occurred following the publication of Sönke Ahrens’s book How to Take Smart Notes – One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers in February 2017. The recent ability to use platforms like Roam Research, Obsidian, Notion, et al. has helped to fan the flames of their popularization.

More often than not, most of these digital tools (like their card-based predecessors) are geared toward private personal use rather than an open public model. Roam Research and Obsidian Publish have features which allow public publishing. TiddlyWiki is also an excellent tool for this as its so-called Tiddlers have a card-based appearance and can be placed in custom orders as well as transcluded, but again not many are available to the online public.

Waste books/Sudelbücher

This sub-genre of notebooks comes out of the tradition of double-entry book keeping where accountants often kept a daily diary of all transactions in chronological order. These temporary notes were then later moved into a more permanent accounting ledger and the remaining book was considered “waste”.

In the commonplace book tradition, these books for temporary notes or (fleeting notes in a Zettelkasten framing), might eventually be copied over, expanded, and indexed into one’s permanent commonplace collection.

In modern digital settings, one might consider some of the ephemeral social media stream platforms like Twitter to be a digital version of a waste book, though to my knowledge I may be the first person to suggest this connection. (To be clear, others have certainly mentioned Twitter as being a waste and even a wasteland.)

Wikis

Inspired, in part, by Apple’s HyperCard, Ward Cunningham created the first public wiki on his website on March 25, 1995. Apple had designed a system allowing users to create virtual “card stacks” supporting links among the various cards (sound familiar?). HyperCard was designed as a single user system.

Wikis allowed multiple users to author and edit pages on the web with a basic web browser. They were also able to create meaningful links and associations between pages, whether they existed or not using [[WikiLinks]]. They were meant to allow the average visitor to participate in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration.

Here there is some innovative user interface as well as the ability to collaborate with others in keeping a commonplace book. Transclusion of one page into another is a useful feature here.

Personal wikis have been used (as have many blogs) for information aggregation and dissemination over the years in a manner similar to their historical predecessors.

Second brain

Second brain is a marketing term which stands in for the idea of the original commonplace book. It popped up in the note taking context in early 2017 for promoting the use of commonplace books techniques using Tiago Forte’s expensive online course Building a Second Brain which focused on capturing, organizing, and sharing your knowledge using (digital) notes. It is a platform agnostic method for improving productivity wholly using the commonplace underpinning.

Google searches for this term will be heavily mixed in with results about the gastrointestinal system being the body’s “second brain”, the enteric nervous system, second brain tumors, a debunked theory that dinosaurs had two brains, and other general health-related topics.

Some websites, personal wikis and other online versions will use the phrase second brain, but they generally have no innovative features that are missing from prior efforts. Again, I view the phrase simply as marketing with no additional substance.

Digital Gardens

Informed heavily by their cultural predecessors in commonplace books, zettelkasten, and wikis, digital gardens are digital first note collections which are primarily public by default and encourage the idea of working in public.

Digital Gardens arose more formally in 2019 and 2020 out of the work and influence of Mark Bernstein’s 1998 essay Hypertext Gardens: Delightful Vistas, Ward Cunningham’s Smallest Federated Wiki (which just celebrated it’s 10th anniversary), Mike Caulfield’s essays including The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral as well as some influence from the broader IndieWeb Community and their focus on design and user interface.

Digital garden design can often use the gardening metaphor to focus attention on an active tending and care of one’s personal knowledge base and building toward new knowledge or creations. The idea of planting a knowledge “seed” (a note), tending it gradually over time with regular watering and feeding in a progression of 🌱 Seedlings → 🌿 Budding → 🌳 Evergreen is a common feature.

There are a growing number of people with personal digital gardens in public. Many are built on pre-existing wiki software like WikiMedia, the Smallest Federated Wiki, or TiddlyWiki, static site generators like Jekyll, note taking platforms like Obsidian Publish and Roam Research, or even out of common blogging software like WordPress. A growing common feature of these platforms is that they not only link out to resources on the open web, but contain bidirectional links within themselves using either custom code (in a wiki-like manner) or using the W3C Webmention specification.

The Future?

With luck, application and platform designers and users will come to know more about the traditions, uses, and workflows of our rich cultural note taking history. Beyond this there are a few innovations, particularly in the public-facing arena which could be useful, but which aren’t broadly seen or available yet.

Still missing from the overall personal knowledge and note taking space is a more tightly integrated version of both a garden and a stream (in Mike Caulfield’s excellent framing) that easily allows interaction between the two arenas. Some of the more blog-based sites with notes, bookmarks, articles and IndieWeb friendly building blocks like Webmention, feeds (RSS, JSON Feed, h-feed), Micropub, and Microsub integrations may come the closest to this ideal.

One of the most fascinating recent entrants on the scene is Flancian’s Anagora which he uses as a personal commonplace book in a wiki-esque style. Over other incarnations it also has the ability to pull in and aggregate the notes of other digital commonplace books to create a larger marketplace of ideas. It also includes collaborative note taking space using Etherpad, which I’ve seen as a standalone tool, but never integrated into a digital commonplace book.

Ultimately, my dream—similar to that of Bush’s—is for individual commonplace books to be able to communicate not only with their users in the Luhmann-esqe sense, but also communicate with each other.

Niklas Luhmann apparently said:

Ohne zu schreiben, kann man nicht denken; jedenfalls nicht in anspruchsvoller, anschlussfähiger Weise.

(Translation) You cannot think without writing; at least not in a sophisticated, connectable way.

I think his conceptualization of “connectable” was much more limited and limiting than he might have guessed. Vannevar Bush, as the academic advisor of Claude Shannon, the godfather of the modern digital age, was more prepared to envision it.

(Luhmann’s “you” in his quote is obviously only a Western cultural referent which erases the existence of oral based cultures which have other ways to do their sophisticated thinking. His ignorant framing on the topic shouldn’t be a shared one.)

This post has grown out of my own personal commonplace book, portions of which are on housed on my blog, in a wiki, and in a private repository of which I hope to make more public soon. Further thoughts, ideas and expansions of it are more than welcome.

I’ve slowly been updating pieces of the history along with examples on shared commonplaces in both the IndieWeb Wiki and Wikipedia under the appropriate headings. Feel free to browse those or contribute to them as you would, at least until our digital commonplace books can communicate with each other.

I’d also invite those who are interested in this topic and who have or want online spaces to do this sort of thing to join us at the proposed upcoming Gardens and Streams II IndieWebCamp Pop up session which is being planned for later this Summer or early Fall. Comment below, stop by the page or chat to indicate your interest in attending.

Acquisition: Early 1900s 3 x 5 Inch No. 15 Card Index Filing Cabinet with No. 1535 C. I. Inserts from The Macey Company

The Macey Company Card Index Filing Cabinet

On July 15, 2024 I acquired an oak filing cabinet with 16 drawers for 3 x 5 inch index card storage. It’s a warm and lovely piece of antique furniture as well as an excellent example of an early 20th century card index cabinet designed for business use and a paper-based pre-cursor of our more modern computer databases.

A light brown Macey Co. oak card index with 16 drawers sits between a black and gray Steelcase card index and an oak barrister bookcase.

From the exterior, there were none of the typical metal badging or decals printed on the filing cabinet to give an idea of the manufacturer of which there were several dozens in the early 1900s.

It wasn’t until I began dismantling the cabinet for cleaning and some restoration that I found one of the four sectional inserts stamped with the words “Macey Inter-Inter / [unintelligible] / No. 1535 C.I.”. The three others had partial versions of a similar stamp, but only the “No. 1535 C.I.” portion is easily discerned without better imaging. Without needing to look it up, I immediately recognized the Macey name as the early 1900s mail order furniture company of Fred Macey which was renamed The Macey Co. and which also helped to get the still extant Steelcase company off the ground. This was a nice thrill for me as I didn’t have any Macey Company furniture in my collection yet.

Several wooden slats glued together with a faint black ink stamp on them that reads: "MACEY / INTER-INTER / [unintelligible] / NO. 1535 C.I."

My new-to-me filing cabinet is a Macey Company No. 15 Cabinet with four inserts of the No. 1535 C.I. card index frames which each hold 4 drawers for 3 x 5 inch index cards. This gives me an additional 16 drawers of storage each of which has a linear capacity of 16.25 inches for the drawers with card stops. (5 of the drawers are sadly missing either the metal slide hardware and/or card stops altogether.) 

The cabinet frame is 61.1 pounds and each 1535 C.I. section (including its 4 drawers) is 17.9 pounds. This gives the entire cabinet in my configuration a curb weight of 132.7 pounds when empty. 

A Macey Company catalog No. 4206 “Macey Filing Appliances” from 1906 lists the shipping weight of the filing cabinet frame at 75 pounds and sold it for $7.00. Each of the No. 1535-C.I. sections had shipping weights of 30 pounds and listed for $4.00. The complete case with 16 drawers was listed for $22.00. Adjusted for inflation from 1906 to 2024, this would be roughly $770.00. 

Catalog page 16 of the 1906 Catalog with an image of a 2 x 2 card index insert at the top and a picture of a full cabinet of four of these on the left hand side. Listed are descriptions of the 2 x 2 inserts along with weights, specifications and sales price.
Page 16 of the Macey Filing Appliances catalog from 1906

The catalog listed the capacity of their 16 inch drawers at 1,950 light (or thin) cards, 1,550 medium cards, or 1,200 heavy cards plus 40 thicker divider cards. 

For most of the (modern) index cards I tend to use, I’m guestimating that I can get 2,250 cards in each drawer giving me an approximate capacity of 36,000 for the entire cabinet. With a quick back-of-the-index card calculation, this would add about 110 pounds to the weight of the cabinet when full.

16 3 x 5 inch index card drawers lined up for cleaning.

The catalog describes the cabinet as made of “quarter sawed oak” with “velvet gold finish” and solid cast brass trimmings. This roughly squares with the materials on my version. The catalog indicated that versions with card rods were available for an additional 25 cents per drawer, but mine doesn’t have any present. The metal clamps on the card stops do have an appropriately spaced hole in them which should make it easy to drill holes in both the front of the drawer and the card stop itself to install rods pretty quickly and easily at the factory.

The Macey Company had been around just before the turn of the century under the name Fred Macey Furniture, Ltd., so without better catalogs with parts numbers, the best range I can currently give to date my card index is roughly about 1900-1940. It couldn’t have been manufactured after 1940 as this was when The Macey Company went out of business.

The “Inter-Inter” brand marking on my drawers is a shortening of “Interchangeable Interiors” a method of sectional filing cabinetry as described in the company’s catalog. One would first select an outer cabinet or shell from one of four widths. After this, they would select the sorts of storage they needed within that shell from a variety of options including: vertical letter file drawer, deep storage drawer (for stationery and supplies), 3 x 5 card index drawers, 8 x 5 card index drawers, medium storage drawers (11″ x 2 3/4″ x 17 1/4″), legal blank drawers (for legal blanks, electrotypes, drawings, etc.), small or large cupboards with doors, flat letter file drawers, document file drawers, check file drawers, vertical cap file drawers (“suitable for filing legal blanks, legal documents (without folding) large photographs, blue prints, etc.”), deep storage drawers, 4 x 6 card index drawers, and etc.

A page from the Macey catalog with a filing cabinet exterior in the center. Floating around the cabinet are nine accessory filing inserts that can be installed into the cabinet.
Inter-Inter Filing Cabinets

The modularity of the system allows for a wide variety of storage needs. It also likely accounts for some difference in the drawers within my particular unit which may have been ordered a few years apart and mixed-and-matched over time as the original owner’s needs changed.

Now that I know about this modular system, I’ll be on the look out for other versions and alternate inserts in the secondary market. (I’m still looking for that 4 x 6 inch version…) Based on the systematic numbering in the catalog, the insert pieces seem to be the labeled with the width in inches of the exterior case followed by the numbers for the dimensions of the index cards. Thus the 3 x 5 inch index card sectional for a 15 inch cabinet is 1535 C.I. where the initials indicate “Card Index”. Thus we could correctly presume the 4 x 6 inch card index insert would be 1846 C.I. since the 4 x 6 modular insert fits into their 18 inch wide cabinet.

A catalog page from 1906 with the heading "Outside Cabinets" which features photos of the four different width sizes of the Macey Company's filing cabinets. At the bottom is a chart of the part numbers, widths (15, 18, 21, 28, 15 1/4, 18 1/4, 21 1/6 and 28 1/4), weights and list prices for the cabinets for ordering by mail.

The Purchase

In the late spring of 2024, I saw what I thought was a 4 x 6 inch oak card index cabinet pop up in the listings on Facebook Marketplace for over $1,000 in Studio City, CA. Knowing that it was likely to sit unloved at that price, I bookmarked and waited. It quickly came down several times over a few weeks to the point I worried someone might actually snipe it. Watching the price reduction over a few weeks, I knew the seller was motivated, so I sent her a message with some data about actual sales of these and made an offer which was promptly accepted. A half hour later I was on my way to pick it up. 

Of course I had been searching for an oak 4 x 6 inch card index filing cabinet for a while, but I was disappointed after seeing the details in her listing that the drawers were each 6-1/8″ wide x 4-6/8″ high to see that it was actually a 3 x 5 inch card index. (Her measurements were for the outside and not the inside.) Knowing that the piece was lovely and special, I succumbed anyway and took it. 

I had double-checked the larger cabinet measurements before leaving to pick it up, but I was surprised to see that it barely fit into the back seat of my Lexus ES350!

History

While owned—though probably not heavily used—for about 42 years by a production manager in Studio City, this cabinet was previously used as a set decoration on the 1982 NBC television series Cassie & Co. starring Angie Dickinson. With the tag line “Ex-cop. New private eye. All woman!”, the show could be viewed as a follow up of Dickinson’s popular NBC show Police Woman (1974-1978). It appeared as a mid-season pick up following on the heels of the female two-hander Cagney and Lacey (1981-1988) and appeared in the Winter before NBC’s Remington Steele (1982-1987)—also featuring a female private detective—that premiered in the fall of 1982. Sadly Cassie & Co. only ran for 13 episodes before shuttering. 

Here was part of the sales description for the cabinet when I purchased it:

This lovely old file cabinet is 52″ high x 14-3/4″ wide x 27-1/2″ deep. Each drawer is 6-1/8″ wide x 4-6/8″ high x 18-1/4″ deep. It has a few scratches on the side, but nothing that can’t be touched up. Otherwise, it’s in good condition. In the early 80’s, I worked on a TV series called “Cassie & Co.” starring Angie Dickinson. This (and another antique file cabinet) was purchased and used as set dressing in Angie/Cassie’s office. When the show was canceled, I bought the cabinets and have had them ever since. I don’t have specific background info on them.
Appearing before the release of the popular Apple IIe computer, the broad public would have expected to see not only filing cabinets but card index cabinets in a business office, so it would have blended right into the decor of the time.

Restoration

Naturally as a filing cabinet that is likely over 100 years old, it has seen some things. (And like Burt Bacharach and Frank Sinatra, it had a relationship with Angie Dickinson.) There are a number of scratches and dings in the top where pulling out drawers and setting them on top has obviously occurred. There were several white scuffs where the cabinet has rubbed up against painted walls or other furniture. 

Focus on the top front edge of the Macey Company card index which has decades of scrapes and scars where the drawers have been plunked down on top of it. Some of the worst have been filled and coated with dark polish to give a warm, used look.

Prior to discovering the manufacturer and knowing about the modularity, I instinctively knew to remove the four screws in the front of the cabinet to see what they were attaching to and how. This led to the ability to pull out the four modular sections to see the interior of the cabinet which, in turn, led to identifying the manufacturer.

The top of one of the four modular sections of four drawers pulled out about an inch from the main cabinet. At the top of the section is an antique brass screw in the center of a top crossbar which would be used to secure the sectional unit into the filing cabinet.

Based on the magnificently dirty and dusty internal condition of the cabinet, I think I’ve been the only person to open them up in over half a century. This took a few hours of vacuuming and careful cleaning to properly mitigate. 

The skeletons of the modular 2 x 2 card index frames lined up on the floor for cleaning.

I then spent some time tapping several dozen nails back into place with an awl and re-gluing some of the loose dovetail joins. I’ve also filled in a few of the scratches and scuffs, given the full cabinet a complete cleaning, and followed up with a thorough polish. 

One missing piece that I’ll have to recreate is a 26 inch strip of hardwood which serves a sled-like function for moving/sliding the cabinet. It’s missing from the bottom left hand side of the filing cabinet frame, but fortunately has a complete version on the right hand side that I can use to recreate the missing portion. It’s not necessary for regular use, but it does help to protect the bottom edge of the filing cabinet from wear and chipping.

There are surely a few more small issues here or there that will require some additional attention as I begin using it, but in general, this cabinet is ready for another century of use.

Typewriter Storage?

Naturally, while removing the drawers and internal sectional pieces, I noticed that the openings in the cabinet were just the right size and depth that each of the four sectional openings is capable of storing two portable typewriters each. 

While I’ll be using this as a traditional card index, I could easily see someone removing one or more of the four sections to store their office typewriter. As a decorative test, I moved the cabinet next to my library card cabinet and loaded it up with some Olympia, Smith-Corona, Remington, and Royal typewriters. One could certainly do worse. After all, Fred Macy did custom manufacture desks for typewriter specific use.

New Grand Total

Recalculating from my collection of card indexes, I think this new cabinet brings our total up to 9 “boxes” with a total of 77 drawers featuring almost 125 linear feet of index card storage space. This comes out to the possibility of storing 208,183 index cards, with a cost per drawer hovering around $12.70 and still dropping.

In solid quarter sawn oak with solid cast brass fittings, it certainly classes up the collection significantly.

Now I just need to negotiate with my partner where this lovely piece of furniture will live in the house… or what will become relegated to the garage? At the moment, maybe this spot works?

Oak 16 drawer Macey Co. card index sandwiched in between a grey and black Steelcase card index and a barrister bookshelf

What should I put into it first? Maybe since I’m not using X (fka Twitter) anymore, I’ll print all my tweets out and archive them in one of the drawers? Feel free to send me your favorite recipes on index cards as I’ve now got some extra space for them.

Photo Gallery

Below are some additional photos from the acquisition and cleaning process.

An oak card index filing cabinet sits in front of an office set up with a desk, a bookcase and several filing cabinets in the background. There are 16 dark holes in the cabinet where the drawers have been removed for cleaning and repair. Close up frontal view of four oak card index drawers sitting on the floor. Each has an interesting stained oak pattern on the front as well as darkly tarnished brass label frames with finger pulls. One of the boxes has several beige manilla and dark green dividers in it. Right side angle on the Macey Co. card index with all the drawers removed. A close up interior view of the empty inside of one of the top section of the modular filing cabinet. there is a small platform on the bottom with a hole cut into it allowing one to see farther down into the cabinet. Close up of an oak card catalog drawer opened up. We have a better view of the brass drawer pull and label frame as well as the card stop and a small dark brass fitting which holds the card stop into the drawer. View down into a single card index drawer sitting on a wooden floor. We have a clear view of the 16 1/2 inch metal track in the middle of the drawer which has spaced metal holes that allow the card stop to be moved and locked into various positions along the length of the drawer.

A piece of cardboard with a 1 inch spring, a variety of tiny 1mm screws, a piece of white crayon, a dark brown furniture crayon and several slips of paper to label drawers on a card index.
Items found hiding inside the Macey Co. card index when I purchased it.

A 3 x 3 matrix of 8 paper slips with the bottom corner slip missing. Most are written in a clean calligraphical hand in brown ink with names like "Orders", "Business cards", and "Ron's Book catalog". One outlier in a simpler hand reads "July".

I was cleaning and doing some restoration work on a new card index and realized that this Fred Macey Company cabinet body was the perfect size to hold up to 8 typewriters inside for a mix of both storage and display! 

A Fred Macey Company 20-drawer card index filing cabinet with the drawers and hardware removed. In their place we see four typewriters peeking out from each of four shelves inside and an additional typewriter on top. Next to the filing cabinet is a Gaylord library card catalog with a black typewriter on top along with some additional decorations.

Acquisition: 1958 Olympia SM3 Portable Typewriter

The Purchase

On Saturday, August 3rd, after a patience-trying wait, I picked up this lovely green 1958 Olympia SM3. It’s the first typewriter in my collection with both an exotic character set as well as a typeface that veers outside of the standard pica and elite typefaces.

It was a Facebook Marketplace purchase for a better-than-reasonable price. I had made a middling offer to someone out in Rancho Cucamonga not knowing what sort of condition the machine was in. I should have headed out the next day to pick it up from the seller, but with our respective schedules and the 45+ minute drive out, I opted to suggest a Saturday pickup. In the erstwhile, someone sniped it away from me with a significantly larger offer. And of course a day later, they’re on r/typewriters asking about what the typewriter was not realizing that it included some math and Greek characters. I watched and waited and stayed in contact with the seller for more than two weeks. As it turned out the bigger offer never materialized, so the seller told me to come out and pick it up for my original offer. 

The seller was in her early 30’s with a relatively young family. She’d inherited the machine from her parents or in-laws who used it, but had kept it in an attic in Newport Beach for the past few decades. Apparently the original owner was a pharmacist, which may account in part for the custom Greek letters on the keyboard. Despite the intermediate inheritor, this has broadly been a one owner machine.

I tried to not show any shock at the non-standard typeface when I picked it up for what is assuredly below market value. I could easily have seen this going for $180-200 as a standard SM3 in unknown condition, but somewhere in the neighborhood of $300-400 with the non-standard typeset and the Congress typeface.

Overall condition

The machine had seen some reasonable use followed by neglect. The first thing I noticed was the damaged paint job on the case, which I’ll go into detail on below.

The usual bushings problem in Olympia SM3s was definitely present, but fortunately the seller hadn’t spent much time testing or tinkering with it to damage the paint job. I quickly swapped the compressed bushings out the day I brought it home.

The ribbon was mostly dried out and worn, but potentially serviceable, though I’ve opted to replace it entirely. One of the spools was an original metal and the other was a plastic replacement. 

In addition to a carriage lock that wasn’t engaging properly, there were some issues with five of the custom keycaps.

Beyond this, the machine was generally in good condition. Despite some reasonable use, the paint finish is in great shape and only shows light wear on the front corners and the front edge of the hood. It definitely needed a good cleaning, oiling, and adjusting.

Richard Polt has posted a manual for the Olympia SM3 for those who’d like to see what originally came with the machine as well as its features.

Clean, Oil, and Adjust

I started the process of disassembling and cleaning the machine on Saturday, August 31st. I spent a portion of the day on Sunday finishing the cleaning and reassembling and adjusting the machine. Oiling the necessary parts as I reassembled made it far easier to limit the amount of oil I used for future maintenance.

I took some photos as work proceeded for those interested in that portion of the process.

My notes from mid-July were tremendously helpful in speeding this process along.

One of the most bothersome issues I encountered while cleaning it was that it was put up “wet” and stored  for too long. The original owner had the all-too-common bad habit of erasing directly into the typewriter rather than moving the carriage to the side. This means that it had a fair amount of eraser crumbs stuck to the over-oiled carriage rails and other internals. Over decades of storage, this has heavily tarnished the carriage rails and required not only aggressive cleaning on some parts, but several rounds of metal polish to remove some of the tarnish. There are still some light stains on the internal “brights” which I’ve given up on after half a dozen attempts to minimize them. They’re now in much better condition, but not as perfect as I wish they might be.

Keys

The keyboard on this Olympia is a fairly standard U.S. based QWERTY keyboard meant for sale in America through The Inter-Continental Trading Corporation which originally imported Olympias into the Americas.

View down onto the typebasket and keyboard of an Olympia SM3.

Of particular note on this machine, some of the standard keys have been swapped out with some custom math and Greek letter keys.  These are the )/0, !/3/4, 1/4, 1/2, ,/, ./. which have been replaced respectively by )/ϒ, Ω/π, λ/∫, Δ/, , μ/. 

A close up view of the right side of a green 1958 Olympia SM3 typewriter that has some custom Greek and mathematical symbols

I’ve already accidentally typed an upsilon instead of a zero at least once. It may take some work at the muscle memory to remember to use the capital “O” to make it as reflexive as doing an apostrophe-backspace-period to effect an exclamation point which this machine lacks in lieu of other glyphs.

 While most of the keys have the appearance of being doubleshot plastic, the custom keys seem to have been manufactured differently. Perhaps they were etched out and then filled? In any case, the symbols on the custom keys were etched out and missing most of their original color making it difficult, but not impossible to know what they were. To quickly and easily restore them, I spent a couple of minutes with a Crayola crayon and the small gaps on the keys were filled in and looking nice and white again. This solution also has the benefit of being easily reversible from a restoration perspective.

Side by side photos of several keycaps on a typewriter. The left has some characters which are etched in but have no colors. The right has those filled in with white crayoe so that they are a good match with all the rest of the keys

Other functionality

Manufactured at the peak of typewriter functionality, this SM3 has just about all the niceties one could wish for. Compared to typewriters made since mid-century there isn’t anything really extraordinary about any of the features aside from their incredibly well designed and manufactured tolerances.

It does bear mentioning that while most other machines of this era were segment shift machines, this one is a carriage shift which can make using it for very long periods a bit more tiring. There are two manually adjustable spring mechanisms inside the machine to help alleviate some of this effect.

Of interest, in comparing this machine with my other 1958 SM3 which has a lower serial number, I noticed that the older SM3 has an additional scale on the back near the tab stops, but this one doesn’t. It’s likely a reasonable cost savings to have removed it which also frees the assembly line from needing to do another alignment procedure on them. From a functionality standpoint, it’s not a big loss as I tend to set my tabs from the front of the machine and can easily look down on the scale at the back of the paper table and align the tab stops with that scale anyway. The additional scale on the back would only have been useful for those who turned their machines around and set them from the back, but this would also need the scale to have been appropriately aligned to provide the precision in setting the correct stops.

Case

This SM3 came with one of the traditional curved, space-aged wooden cases painted in silver that most SM3s shipped with. The inside was in relatively nice condition and only needed a quick vacuuming and some brushing to clean it out. It also came with the original key on a small keychain.

A 1958 Olympia SM3 typewriter case with sinuous curves, pitted silver paint. and a few splotches of white out. It has a very space age feel, but isn't the sort of square or modular case that one would want to stack up like other typewriter cases of the period.

Apparently the environment it had been stored in was less than ideal, so the exterior paint has reacted and has a terribly rough texture now compared with its traditional smooth surface. I’m going to have to strip and repaint it I think. I’ve seen some hammered metal paint finishes which might come close to matching the original, but I might opt for something completely out of the ordinary as well. 

The metal on the case fittings has rusted significantly.  I should be able to clean up and polish most of the metal fittings fairly easily, though I probably won’t be able to get them back completely without replacing them altogether.

Silver Olympia SM3 typewriter case standing up on it's end. The metal fittings holding the green plastic handle are thoroughly rusted and the key latch is heavily tarnished. The feet on the top side are dried out and wrinkled and the bottom feet are only slightly better. There is a brown tag with the typewriter's name and serial number tied around the handle with a piece of brown twine.

Based on the condition of the case’s feet, I’m guessing the owner used the typewriter inside the case for most of their work. I’m debating whether or not to replace the feet, but I’m leaning towards doing it because they’re in functional, but marginal condition.

A view of the inside bottom portion of the Olympia SM3 typewriter case. Fairly clean there are four metal fittings for clamping the machine into the case. Sitting in the middle of the case is the key.

My Last Typewriter?

I suppose if you were going to quit collecting Olympia SM3s after getting a particular machine, this would be pretty close to the perfect one. This shirt I got on the same day as the typewriter is obviously about Olympia SM3s, as who could ever quit collecting? or perhaps as Richard Polt is fond of saying, “investing”?

Sitting on a desk are a green Olympia SM3 typewriter in its case next to a gray t-shirt with a black and white image of the same typewriter surrounded with the text: "My Last One. Maybe"

Full transparency, I’ve acquired five machines since I picked up this typewriter, but I’ve also washed that t-shirt 3 times since then. With the washings you almost can’t seen any of the original screen print, so I suppose the universe has spoken on that account in my favor.

Typeface Sample

The typeface on this SM3 is a somewhat uncommon (though not rare as some might contend) Congress Elite No. 84 at 11 pitch or 2.3m/m. (I’d suspect it’s probably rarer in the U.S. compared to Germany or the rest of Europe, but have no data beyond my limited colloquial experience to support this.)

A type sample from my machine with its custom typeset and a new ribbon appears below.

1958 Serial Number: 1279338 Olympia SM3 Congress Elite No. 84 typeface, 11 CPI, 2.3m/m, portable w/ case, bichrome, carriage shift, tabulator, U.S. keyboare 4 bank, 51 keys, green crinkle paint, dark green plastic keys =234567897-π qwertyuiop asdfghjkl;e zxcvbnm,./ +"#$%&'()*2 QWERTYUIOPA ASDFGHJKL: @ ZXCVBNMAU? the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog SPHINX OF BLACK QUARTZ JUDGE MY VOW

Close up of the typebasket and Congress Elite typeface on a 1958 Olympia SM3 typewriter. The typeface is gleamingly clean.
Though upside down, you can see the faint Upsilon and end parenthesis characters next to the “9” key which needed some restoration.

Sound

Here’s a sound sample of inserting a sheet of paper, aligning it writing a sentence, the bell, and a return with more typing on my 1958 Olympia SM3:

Future

While I do like the difference in typeface, I’m not sure how much use this machine will get with my finely tuned and very similar 1958 SM3 which has an elite typeface I really love. There are still a few paces I want to put this typewriter through and one or two fine tuning adjustments I’ll likely make, but perhaps I may consider selling this? 

It’s now in excellent condition and I may recover the original platen and rubber to enhance it even further. The issue may become how much to list it for as a potential sale? It has several uncommon features which may appeal to a serious collector who doesn’t clean and service their own machines, but who wants one of the most collectible machines out there with a few exotic features that is ready to type on from day one.

Photo Gallery

 

I started the process of cleaning my green 1958 Olympia SM3 to bring it back up to speed. Things are generally moving apace although the mixture of eraser shavings and old oil has tarnished the carriage rails. Spent some time with some metal polish trying to bring them back to their old glory. Should be able to finish flushing out tomorrow and getting it back together and properly adjusted.

Here’s a bit of a time lapse of the work:

Bookmarked Fundamentals of Point-Set Topology by Michael Miller (UCLA Extension)

Point-set topology is the branch of mathematics that deals with collections of points endowed with sufficient structure to make meaningful the notions of closeness, separation, and convergence. Beginning with familiar notions concerning open sets, closed sets, and convergence on the real number line and Euclidean plane, this course systematically develops the theory of arbitrary topological spaces. Topics include bases and subbases, separation axioms (Hausdorff, regular, and normal spaces), countability (first- and second-countable spaces), compactness and compactification, connectedness, and convergence (nets and filters). Instruction emphasizes examples and problem solving. The course appeals to those seeking a better understanding of the algebraic and geometric underpinnings of common mathematical constructs.

September 24 - December 3 on Tuesday 7:00PM - 10:00PM PT
Fee: $453.00
Location: UCLA, Math Sciences Building, Room 5127

Mike Miller’s fall math class at UCLA has been posted. I’m registering and hope to see you there!

As usual, there’s no recommended textbook (yet), and he generally provides his own excellent notes over a required textbook. I’d suspect that he’ll recommend an inexpensive Dover Publication text like those of Kahn, Baum, or Gamelin & Greene.

If you’re curious about what’s out there, I’ve already compiled a bibliography of the usual suspects in the space:

AI generated featured photo courtesy of Glif Alpha

What typwriter-related project(s) are you working on this weekend?

Maybe you’re:

Let us know what you’re doing in the comments…

Acquisition: 1940 Corona Zephyr Ultra-Portable Typewriter

On Friday, August 16, 2024, I picked up a dreadful looking cur from GoodWill. On Sunday, I spent several hours the afternoon and then again in the evening pulling the machine apart, cleaning all the external and internal parts and flushing it out with lacquer thinner. A quick and very light oiling and a rubdown with WD-40 to make the exterior shine later, and I’m now the proud owner of a wonderful, and sparkling little Corona Zephyr.

1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter sits on a wooden library card catalog next to a white ceramic bowl of bright yellow lemons

Design

The Corona Zephyr manufactured by L. C. Smith & Corona Co. of Syracuse, NY was produced from 1938-1941 before being superseded by the Smith-Corona Skyriter. Both the Zephyr and the Skyriter were meant to compete directly with the Hermes Baby. Meant to be used on the go, these typewriters are compact and light.

View of the back of the typewriter featuring the gold L. C. Smith & Corona Company decal, a portion of which has faded to silver.

My Zephyr with full spools and the case cover on weights 8 pounds 14.7 ounces. Typical standard (desktop) typewriters of the day weighed a ponderous 30+ pounds and even the burgeoning market of portable machines usually clocked in in the low 20s. In it’s case, the Zephyr measures 11″ x 12″ 2 11/16″. These were the OG laptop machines.

Overall condition

This machine has the appearance of having once been at least moderately used. There were some bits of paint knocked off the corners (common with portables of this size) and the machine had more than it’s fair share of dirt and grime inside. Fortunately it was full of eraser shavings like my Smith-Corona Skyriter was.

Based on the way several screws were inserted, I suspect that the machine had been serviced at least once in its life. But it was definitely used well and put up wet. My guess is that in the late 70s or early 80s, as with many typewriters, this was put into storage and forgotten about until it was donated and made its way into my stewardship. Somewhere in that journey it was housed back-down in its case and exposed to some level of moisture causing some moderate rusting on the bottom of the case and to the back of the typewriter. I spent some time removing the worst of of the rust, but wasn’t overly aggressive on it. With the modest treatment, I’ve hopefully arrested most future damage.

In addition to the rust, I had to repair the ribbon vibrator which was bent out in front of the typing guide, and I’ll have to address the ribbon pick up moving to the left which isn’t working. The model came with broken 2 inch universal plastic spools and dried out ribbon which will need to be replaced with the correct smaller spools.

Richard Polt has posted a contemporaneous manual for the Zephyr typewriter for those who’d like to see what originally came with the machine. My favorite is that the manual appears to be typewritten. It has all the keystone markings of a pre-WWII manual with sparce diagrams and a wall of text.

Keys

The keyboard follows the general format of Smith-Corona’s American No. 20A set up. As was the case for most pre-World War II typewriters, the Zephyr came with round glass keys. The machine has 4 banks of keys which had become standard by mid-century. With 46 keys, the observant typist will notice that there are no shift lock or margin release keys. The shift lock can be effectuated by pushing down either of the shift keys and then moving them to the side where their metal levers can be “locked” into a metal slot under the key lever. If there’s a way to easily release the margin lock, I’ve not found it.

Close up of the keyboard of the Corona Zephyr featuring circular yellow lettered legends with black backgrounds and wrapped in silver metal with glass keytops.

Other functionality

Obviously, it’s light weight and portability means that corners were cut including features like margin release, tabulation and niceties like touch control or a paper guide. Presumably this was meant for writers, journalists, and students on the go rather than accountants. 

The machine features a carriage shift, which is quick and light, particularly because of the small size and weight of the platen and carriage.

Focus on the rear portion of the typewriter including the Corona Zephyr decal, the small plastic ribbon spools, the type basket, and the carriage and platen

The Zephyr doesn’t have the typical bichrome settings, but only features monochrome functionality. However, it’s still capable of doing stencils. While many typewriters have a specific mechanical setting for stencils, they can all generally do stencils by unhooking the ribbon from the ribbon vibrator. It bears mentioning that the ribbon vibrator here is effectuated by an unconventional method in the form of a metal bar which is attached at the left side which arcs up and down rather than a central mechanism as seen on the majority of modern machines which only moves vertically.

The Zephyr uses the typical 1/2 inch wide ribbon, but requires a smaller ribbon spool of 1 3/4 inches in  diameter rather than the universal 2 inch spool. This gives the writer closer to 12 feet of ribbon rather than 16, but is still very functional.

To my knowledge, these machines came with body-colored spool covers. Sadly, like many I’ve seen in the wild, mine are missing. 

One of the clever features is a miniscule carriage return lever. (As a point of comparison, I think the “ice cream scoop” return lever on the Royal Empress standard may weigh more than this entire machine.) It’s a tiny cupped nub the size of a thumb or finger tip which can be used to press it in to do the line space and then slide the carriage back home. To save on weight and engineering, the machine only has a single space ratchet, but it does have a switch for allowing variable platen spacing for filling in forms. The paper bail is also a simple metal arm, which means it’s not great with thicker card stocks like post cards or index cards, though it will work passably with a single card finger next to the typing point. One would not be happy doing lots of index card work on this machine.

One of the curious features of the machine is that it doesn’t have a traditional universal bar to engage the escapement. Instead there’s a thin, but sturdy simple wire right at the typing point that is hit by the typebars when typing. Pressing this bar in trips the escapement and moves the carriage to the next space.

Also particular to this machine is the “jacket” or exterior enclosure into which the typewriter chassis slides for protection. The machine is so small and tight that getting it into and out of the case can be a bit trying compared to its close cousin the Skyriter. To get the Zephyr out, one removes six screws and two small nuts to free the rear panel from the jacket. Then there are four screws which hold the jacket on to the chassis—two on the sides at the carriage and two in the keyboard near the shift keys. Then one needs to press down the top row of keys to carefully wiggle the unit out. However, the felt on the bottom of the jacket can impede the sliding of the metal. As a result one is best advised to insert a few thicker (index card weight or heavier) pieces of paper between the metal chassis and the felt and another between the top of the case and the keys to ensure they don’t get caught or scratched up. When re-inserting, similar care must be taken for the felt as well as for the (now brittle) plastic feet.

Kirk Jackson of Nashville Typewriter has a copy of the Corona Zephyr Servicing and Adjustment Methods manual which Theodore Munk has published on his blog. The manual lists among its six recommended tools, tool number “S. T. 1243 Keyboard Depresser (for Jacket removal and replacement)”. It’s a simple piece of cardboard for which they charged 25¢. Incidentally, Rev. Munk has also re-published a 1954 Smith-Corona Carriage Shift Portable Parts Manual – Corona 3, 4, Junior, Zephyr and Skyriter which contains lots of diagrams for those who might benefit from it.

Case

As also seen on early models of the Smith-Corona Skyriter, the Zephyr has a thin metal case that has two metal prongs which fit into the rear of the typewriter and then comes down over the typewriter and clicks into place with two metal spring bars with buttons that depress from the front of the case. It’s a simple and no frills case/cover, but far more effective and functional than some of the similar integral covers of typewriters in the late 60s and 70s. It’s not present on my Skyriter, but this case does have a very fine velvet-like interior which I suspect was somehow sprayed into the inside of the case as it doesn’t seem like it’s fabric glued into it. 

Corona Zephyr with it's thin metal case cover standing upright behind it. Compared to the majority of cases and covers, it's phenomenally thin and light. The inside rear of the Corona Zephyr's metal lid featuring two sharp small metal triangles which fit into the back of the machine. Also present is some obvious rust damage. Close up of the metal handle attachments and the thin metal handle strap of the Corona Zephyr typewriter case The Corona Zephyr typewriter with it's case top attached and ready to go sits on top of a wooden library card catalog.

Typeface Sample

The typeface on my Zephyr is Smith-Corona’s ubiquitous Pica No. 1 face with 10 characters per inch and types with 6 vertical lines per inch. A type sample from my machine with an overly wet, new ribbon appears below.

Typeface sample on a 3x5" index card which includes the serial number and basic information about the typewriter.

Close up of the left side of the type basket featuring a shiny Pica No. 1 typeface of the 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter

Sound

Here’s a sound sample of inserting a sheet of paper, aligning it writing a sentence, the bell, and a return with more typing on my 1940 Corona Zephyr:

Photo Gallery

Angle down on a front view of a brown crinkle painted 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter sitting on the top of an oak library card catalog
Oblique angle of a brown Corona Zephyr ultra-portable typewriter with black glass keys.
Table-level view of the 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter showing how thin the machine is. The top row of keys is nearly level with the top of the machine.
Close up of the main decal on the hood of a 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter
Close up of the finger cup nub which is the return lever of a 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter
Close up of the left corner of the 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter's carriage. Of particular note above the tiny platen knob is a chrome finger cup which is the entirety of the typewriter return lever.
Angle down on the left side of the 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter
Table-level view of the left rear of the 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter from the back. We can see some metal wear near the tab hole where the metal case fits onto the back of the machine.
View of the right rear corner of the 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter
View from the rear of the 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter featuring the internals of the carriage including the mainspring assembly and drawband. The inside is clean as a whistle.
Oblique view into the carriage and basket of the 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter from the rear of the machine with the carriage moved to the machines left.
Close up featuring the entire type basket of the 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter. The photo has the typing point at the front and the typewriter keyboard barely visible in the background
Close up of the left side of the type basket featuring a shiny Pica No. 1 typeface of the 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter
Close up of the right side of the type basket featuring a shiny Pica No. 1 typeface of the 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter
Angle down on a view of the right side of the 1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter
1940 Corona Zephyr typewriter sits on a wooden library card catalog next to a white ceramic bowl of bright yellow lemons
More progress on the 1931 New Orga (Privat 5): he types! I found some compatible spools and ribbon. Given the Orga typewriter from the movie, I thought this Willy Wonka quote was apropos both as the first type sample and as encouragement for the remainder of the restoration mountain ahead.

View on the top of a 1931 Orga Privat 5 with a typed index card. The card reads: If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it! Want to change the world? There's nothing to it. --Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Paramount Pictures, 1971)

Repairing the Drawband on an Orga Privat 5 Typewriter

The Orga Privat 5‘s mainspring and drawband assembly is very similar to that of the Smith-Corona 5 series, but is imminently more accessible and easier to attach. You can see and access all the major parts for basic repair without removing anything.

Rear of an Orga Privat 5 typewriter featuring a hand at the left side holding the drawstring where it needs to be attached to the carriage. On the other side the string is attached to the mainspring wheel which has a thin silver knurled ratchet system attached to it.

The mainspring here seems to be fine. The catgut-type drawstring seemed long enough to work, though it seemed a tad damaged from having been pinched into the mainspring hub assembly. I tried looping a slipknot to attach it at the metal tab/channel on the right side of the carriage (left when looking from the back). However when adding tension to the mainspring, the drawstring predictably broke about halfway through.

I’ll need to get some fishing line to completely replace the drawband and get this working again.

Looking from the back, the silver knurled wheel on the right can be turned clockwise to tension the mainspring and there’s a silver thumb lever right next to it that can be used to slowly let off tension when necessary. I recommend using either rubber gloves or some similar scheme to protect your fingers against the thin knurled wheel which gets tougher to turn/tighten as you progress.