Henry Dreyfuss Royal Quiet De Luxe Typewriter showdown. Which do you like better, the black and gray 1948 or the grey and chrome 1949?
Statuses
Oxford seems to have quit manufacturing the 1/5 cut tabbed 4 x 6 inch index card guides, but yesterday I scored a bundle of 100 along with some 5 x 8 inch A-Z guides. The big win here was that the lot came for a total of $3.50!
A full reel of 660 yards of black and red nylon bichrome typewriter ribbon just landed on my doorstep in the morning mail from Baco Ribbon. Who’s up for a type-in in the Los Angeles area?
Variable line spacer surgery and some clean up on the 1950 Remington All-New.
Phoenix Typewriter from YouTubeThis is a fascinating find. Thanks for the tip.
In looking at my own ’49 5 series Clipper I notice that the manual adjustment with the H 6-5-4-3-2 L lever attaches to a short spring, then a small plate, and from there to an arm attached to the universal bar. None of the settings on my machine effect any actual change because the entire assembly is loose from start to finish. Your machine in the video does much the same as I can see the spring attached to that lever hangs loose as you move from the L to the H settings.
Given the screwdriver settings you’re showing, I’m wondering if that Touch Selector is a vestigial appendage from the 4 Series days? I do notice another nearby unused arm on the universal bar with a hook-like end on it that the spring might have been attached to to provide actual tension. Unfortunately I only have a few 4 series machines to compare with (and their assemblies are dramatically different) and don’t have any other 5 series machines to see what the proper connection setting for the manual touch selector should be.
As far as I can tell, no one’s done a proper video of the manual touch selector assembly on the 5 series machines, if in fact they ever worked at all. Perhaps something to add to the list of videos to produce the next time a 5 series Smith-Corona comes through?
More details when it arrives…
Swimming with Ideas. This is yet another opportunity to share with your friends what you are working on.
In the past year, I’ve re-acquired an old manual typewriter from my youth and begun using it again for first drafts of some writing work as well as some notes. In the past few months I’ve added a few new (to me) machines to the collection and have been continuing to use them in my reading and note taking practices to see what changes, if any, the modality brings to my daily practice versus computer and/or handwriting.
Richard Polt (see below) has some interesting things to say about getting the writing out without worrying about editing or deleting when using a typewriter which makes for some interesting changes in my process.
Currently reading:
- Kaiser, J. Systematic Indexing. The Card System Series 2. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1911. http://archive.org/details/systematicindexi00kaisuoft.
- Polt, Richard. The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion for the 21st Century. 1st ed. Woodstock, VT: Countryman Press, 2015.
- Mattei, Clara E. The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2022. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html.
- Zakaria, Fareed. Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2024.
A photo of the burgeoning typewriter collection so far.
I’ve seen many references comparing the use of typewriters in an overstimulating technology space to the slow food movement. Since one regularly pairs wine with their meals, it only seems right to extend the typewriter analogy to liquor as well. Today, I’m pairing this smooth 10 year single malt Glenmorangie Scotch with the 1949 Royal Quiet De Luxe.
Surely Hemingway would approve?
Type-o-sphere, what are you pairing with your typewriter today?
Richard Polt (writingball.blogspot.com)This is Tom Furrier, owner of the beloved Cambridge Typewriter in Arlington, Massachusetts. Tom is ready to retire, and he'd like to find someone who wants to take over his small, busy shop.
I’m terribly tempted by this and even have a planned trip to Boston in June. Sadly, I don’t think my wife would approve the career change or the move from Los Angeles…
![White index card with the following quote typed onto it in blue elite typeface:
If I had to keep only one typewriter, if I had to get rid of them all and only had one left... There is a version of this Smith-Corona which is the the Silent Smith-Corona. [...] Somewhere around whenever they started making this, the Smith Corona Silent and various other models that have the same silhouette. The rise on the keys is just almost perfect—going from an N to a Y requires almost nothing. The size of the type is not too big and not too small. But listen to the solidity of the action [types]. This is a solid, solid piece of machine. That's got beautiful highlights like the stripes here and there. The colors are good. I love the green keys. I would probably say that this with a good case would be the one typewriter I would take. And that's why it's kinda out [on my desk] right now. I rotate this one into use an awful lot. [He types: clack, clack] I confess. [clack, clack again as he types.]
—Tom Hanks, in California Typewriter, 2016](https://i0.wp.com/boffosocko.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/wp-17151265045807229784091795759502.jpg?resize=660%2C440&ssl=1)