Tonight it’s a double pairing: first it’s the 1955 Royal HHE typewriter and an Isle of Skye 18 year old Scotch whisky and an almost perfect pairing of the Royal HH with my new (to me) brown vintage (1940s?) desk lamp with art deco styling.
This textbook has evolved from a set of lecture notes which I prepared for a semester course in Hilbert space. I have in mind first- or second-year graduate students in Mathematics and related fields such as Physics.
I feel like I can call myself a real typewriter afficionado now. My new pen typewrwiter-pal Tom Hanks has written me a letter on some fascinating letterhead.
Berberian, Sterling Khazag. Introduction To Hilbert Space. Oxford University Press, 1961. Reprint Literary Licensing, 2012.
He’s not happy that it ignores measure theory as a means to introduce the Lebesque integral, so he’ll be supplementing that with additional notes. I’ve ordered a used copy of the 1st edition, but there are also versions from AMS as well as a more recent reprint from 2012.
He also suggested that Debnath & Mikusinski was pretty good, albeit more expensive than he would like in addition to not being a fan some of their approaches to topics.
It’s been a dog’s age, but I spent a few minutes this afternoon updating my Now Page. One of these days I might actually automate it…
True Wednesdaycore: Even Wednesday Addams is checking out my Corona flat top! Hey Thing! Wanna come over and type with me?
On Wednesday the 6th, I finished up most of the rest of the clean/oil/adjust of my new (to me) 1971 Olympia SG-3 standard typewriter. The carriage was probably more involved than the main body, though the main body seems to have made the most difference to have been cleaned out.
Surely there will be a few subtle adjustments I’ll continue to make as I use it over the coming days and put it thought its paces, but it’s definitely ready for prime time use now.
While it functions much better now, its action isn’t nearly as fast as some of my other standards. Somehow it manages to be more ponderous, though some of it may be the tremendous size of the 6 CPI typeface. Maybe increasing the tension on the mainspring will help out here, particularly with the oversized platen.
While I love having a larger face typewriter, I can already tell that I’m likely not going to be using this one as frequently as I do my elite and pica machines with more traditional typeface sizes. It sure is fun using it though. I can tell it’ll be a hit at the next local type-in.
I’m including some revised photos of it to compare with the previous “before” photos.
The custom 6 CPI Basic Writing No. 67 typeface.
Tonight I spent about three hours disassembling and cleaning the carriage portion of my 1971 Olympia SG-3. I really love the fact that flipping two levers inside the shell allows the entire carriage to lift up and off for easier servicing.
The grinding/sticking I was originally getting mid-carriage was due to a piece of the right carriage cover being bent back and over itself. Removing it and forming it back remedied the situation fairly quickly. I cleaned and treated the rear body panels which show signs of rust developing underneath the paint. (Rust on other portions of the machine indicate it was kept in a less-than-ideal location for years.)
Just as I was nearing completion, the draw band managed to slip off its mount and the mainspring’s unwinding broke the draw band at the metal attachment to the carriage. It took a while to remove the old material, form the cleat open, reseat the draw band and then close it back up. Fortunately re-tensioning the mainspring was pretty simple and straightforward.
The platen action is now so smooth that with the variable lever in the open position, the entire platen will spin freely in a way I’ve never seen a typewriter manage before. Sadly it shows that the right platen knob has a small eccentricity, though it’s so minor I think I’ll leave it alone for now.
In cleaning it, I also noticed that the carriage return arm apparently used to be chromed, but it was done so badly it’s all been peeled off at this point. As a result, the return arm has a galvanized appearance which isn’t ideal. I’ll have to consider some options to improve it in the future.
The toughest part of the operation was the insane amount of degreaser (acetone tonight) it took to clean off the margin rail to get the margin sets to work properly. I have a feeling that someone managed to get Scotch tape stuck up underneath the left margin set, and it took 20 minutes to flush it all out. Now they’re as smooth as butter. I really appreciate the easy-to-use form factor of these margin sets.
The hardest part about typewriter restoration is that you’ve got the machine taken apart and in pieces and you’re three-quarters of the way through cleaning it when you’re instantaneously struck with the irresistible desire to quit cleaning so you can rush it back together so you can type on it right now.
I’d purchased this in 2024 as a late Christmas present for myself, but it took several weeks to be delivered due to our neighborhood being closed off by the National Guard for the Eaton Fire. It finally arrived on January 23 in true “barn” condition. The carriage took a hit and is off about 1/2″ and is going to take some careful forming to attempt to salvage it. Otherwise this will sadly be a parts machine. Beyond this issue it appears to be reasonably restorable.
Serial Number: KMG-4294086
4 bank, 42 keys / 84 characters, tabulator, Magic Margins, Royal standard elite typeface
Back on March 7, 2025, I picked up my second Royal KMG for the pittance of $21. The first was in pica, but this one has my preferred elite/12 pitch size.
Today I pulled it out of the office closet where it’s been waiting patiently since the Eaton Fire for some restoration attention. I acquired it with the drawband disconnected, but in under five minutes I was able to get it re-connected and re-tensioned. The ribbon was a total loss, so i swapped it out with about 22 feet of black/red bichrome cotton ribbon from Baco Ribbon Supply Co. A few tweaks later, and I’ve now got this machine up and running with some pretty reasonable alignment.
Future work
It’s a bit slower than it ought to be, so it’s definitely going to need a full clean/oil/adjust. The rubber feet are completely shot on this, so they’re going to require complete replacement. The platen has pretty much lost all of it’s “give”, so it will need replacement too. There’s two dents in the paper table that ought to flatten out with some care. Beyond this, I suspect I’ll be able to get this lovely machine shined up and running with less than a day’s worth of modest work.
Presuming that I can tune it up to the same standard as my other KMG, this one will replace it as my daily driver, though the pica version will still get lots of attention.
I continually think I have written about gutting books in the past, but have only mentioned it and alluded to it. When I bring it up I often get asked about and want to point to my explanation, as there are few resources elsewhere (there is one that surfaced in 2009 from Naomi Standen guiding her students How to gut a book).
For those looking to delve in deeper to gutting books, Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren go into greater depth in How to Read a Book (Touchstone, 1972, 2011) in which they discuss various levels of reading books with which many students are less familiar. They break reading down into various modes including inspectional reading, analytic reading, and syntopic reading which are the sorts of reading one should be able to accomplish by late high school or certainly by the college level. Unfortunately not too many people are reading this way anymore, if they ever did.
Umberto Eco’s How to Write a Thesis (MIT Press, reprint/translation 2015 [1977]) goes into greater depth on taking one’s guttings and turning them into new material.
Thomas Vander Wal (vanderwal.net)