Category: Social Stream

Acquired 1958 Royal FP typewriter
Serial Number: FPE-16-66444461
16" platen, elite typeface, in Royaltone or Pearl Light Gray smooth
I’ve been wanting to score an FP for a long time. Well shipped and in generally functional shape. My first typewriter of 2025 and the first since the Eaton Fire. 

 

Quoted The Parable of the Sower by Octavia ButlerOctavia Butler
Saturday, February 1, 2025

WE HAD A FIRE TODAY.
As a 50 year old with a 13 year old daughter living in Octavia Butler’s neighborhood of Altadena, CA, it was eerie when I re-read The Parable of the Sower last summer. Today following the devastating Eaton Fire, the opening of chapter four just doubles down on the dystopia in which we’re living.
We were allowed back into our neighborhood over the weekend and were excited to find our poor wind battered and smoke damaged house still standing.

Naturally I brought back a daily typewriter, but it was eerie to see what I’d last typed on it two weeks ago just before we had to evacuate.

A Remington Standard typewriter sitting in the front seat of a car.

Typed index card that reads: 2025-01-07 Crazy winds kicked up this morning around 5:30AM and woke up both Sonia and I early. I went out briefly around 6:00 A to batten down the hatches and move the car out from under the tree. Evie was already up and working on her math homework. I'm really proud of her for this as well as going to bed at a reasonable time last night. The trip to school wasn't too bad this morning, though I did have to navigate around a Christmas thee that had blown into the middle of the street. Winds are supposed to be bad all day long. I'm sort of worried about going to class tonight at UCLA, but I suspect that winds there probably aren't as bad based on what Sonia has said about her drive into the office earlier

Read ‘We’d be stuck’: alarm as UK’s last braille typewriter repairer ponders retirement by Matthew WeaverMatthew Weaver (the Guardian)
Thorpe is often amused by the objects he finds in the machines. “I’ve found pens, memory sticks, house keys, Lego bricks, little rubber toys, all sorts inside,” he says.
I often find things inside typewriters…

LEGO (multiple), a chicken leg from a Calico Critters playset, a tiny 70s photo of a child, the stub of a pencil, glitter, a pocket knife, a mini clothespin…

And naturally lots and lots of eraser bits, loose screws, loose springs, dust rhinoceroses, dried white out, dirt, cobwebs, even dead spiders, and even love. 

What’s the oddest thing you’ve found in a typewriter? 

Acquired 1954 Smith-Corona Silent Typewriter by Smith Corona, Inc. (Goodwill)
Serial Number: 5A 458864
Pica No. 1 typeface; 6 lines/vertical inch
American No. 20A keyboard
Fifteen minutes of tinkering and this machine is imminently usable. It’ll take about a half day to clean up properly, but this is well on its way to its former glory. I should be able to turn this $25 find into a proper $350 work-a-day typewriter.
Acquired Solari #606 elite typewriter erasing shield, letter counter, line counter, 8 inch ruler by Solari Manufacturing Co., Los Angeles, California
A curved metal typing ruler for a variety of purposes including:
* curved erasing shield (especially useful for carbon copy packs to prevent carbon transfer)
* elite spacing letter counter
* line counter
* 8 inch ruler
Amidst all the typewriter paraphernalia I come across, the curved typing shield doesn’t get enough of its due. While it has some useful measurement functions, its primary functionality is as an eraser shield for erasing errors in carbon copy packs. You would move the carriage to the far right or left (to keep eraser crumbs out of your segment and machine), place the shield behind the first page and then behind each subsequent page to erase the errors from each one at a time. The smooth, curved aluminum would allow you to erase without causing the carbon papers to transfer smudges to the pages behind the shield. 

The curved ruler comes with a convenient tab (here labeled “Elite”) for grabbing with one’s thumb and forefinger for placement into as well as removal from a carbon pack. They obviously came in both Pica and Elite versions to cover various typewriter typefaces. 

Our friend Joe Van Cleave cleverly uses one to cleanly tear off paper from his Kerouac-like rolls of typing paper. 

A thin curved aluminum Solari eraser shield placed between two pages in a Royal HH typewriter for making corrections. Sitting on the hood of the typewriter is a blue tape-based correction ribbon.

A typed index card with a Solari eraser shield sitting on top of it horizontally to measure the number of characters in a typed line of text. The numbers on the ruler correspond to the letters of text.

A Solari erasing shield sitting vertically on a typed index card to count the number of typed lines of text on it. Each numbered mark on the side of the ruler counts the corresponding number of lines of text on the page.

Label from a Solari Eraser Shield listing its uses and features