Tortured poets Dylan Thomas and Patti Smith both used typewriters. I still use several too.
Statuses
I saw hundreds of images of the eclipse today, but none remotely similar to mine. While thinking back on how I imaged the eclipse with my “pinhole colander camera”, I realize that so much of my life is informed not only by science, but the science of cooking. If you’re an analog zettelkasten fan, I just bought a few bricks of 500 index cards for $6.08 each at my local Amazon Fresh. Most brands list for $12-$16 for this many; even Amazon.com is currently listing them for $10.50. Sadly it doesn’t match my all-time-best of $2.06. What’s your best? 🗃️📝
I’d mentioned that my Steelcase card index came without the traditional card stops/follower blocks at the back of the drawers. Needing a solution for this, I’ve discovered that my local Daiso sells small, simple bookends for $1.75 for a pair and they’re the perfect size (7 x 8.9 x 9.2 cm) for the drawers. These seem to do the trick nicely, though they do tend to slide within the metal drawers without any friction. Giving them small rubber feet or museum putty from the hardware store for a few cents more fixes this quickly.
This book from 1908 by J. Kaiser seems like a fantastic instruction manual for how to use Obsidian, Logseq, Notion, Evernote, OneNote, and most other note taking tools for just about any application.
I think I’ve bought yet another typewriter: a late 60s/early 70s Remington Streamliner. I bought it in part because it looks beautiful, but also (I’m not going to lie here) because it’s very similar in color to my mint blue TWSBI Eco-T fountain pen and my General Fireproofing Co. desk.
I swear this is my last one for a while… at least until I find a reasonably priced and superb condition late 50s Olympia SM3 preferably in either green or maroon.
Having the best tools does you absolutely no good unless you’re going to use them.
Collecting notebooks, fountain pens, or even typewriters is useless (other than their inherent beauty) without their use.
The Europe PKM Summit 2024 coming up on March 22 – 23 looks like a who’s-who of the tools for thought crowd. I’m putting together a few ideas myself… https://pkmsummit.com/
How the typewriter collection is coming along.
Irked by the overinflated prices on Ebay for typewriters, I’ve been casting about for other sources of reasonably priced machines to purchase. Today I purchased two I saw at auction:
- Smith-Corona Classic 12 in metallic green for $18.00
- 1969 Smith-Corona Galaxie Deluxe in steel blue for $23.00
Both appear to be in good shape and functional though one is going to need some reasonable cleaning and repair of a few linkages. I can’t wait for them to ship to see what I’ve got. They both look like a lot of fun…
On a quick front-of-the-index card calculation, I realize that with the recent Steelcase cabinet acquisition, I now have 8 boxes comprising 61 drawers and 103.25 feet of storage space for approximately 172,296 index cards. Having spent a total of $786.52 on them over the past year this comes out at about $12.89 per drawer, which is fantastically under the $14-25 ubiquitous 11″ cardboard boxes for such a massive step up in quality and longevity.
One of the drawers on the Steelcase card cabinet was sticking. After 10 minutes of comparison and troubleshooting, it turns out one of the rails on the chassis was bent enough to jam the ball bearing from rolling. Unsticking it and then a quick hammer to put the rail back in place has fixed it.
I may have just purchased a really hot, two-tone black and silver powder coated Steelcase card index with space for 60,000 cards….
On average, the typical A5 sized notebook (Leuchtturm, Hobonichi, Stalogy, Moleskine, Midori, Clairefontaine, Apica, Kleid, etc. ranging from 192 to 368 pages) has an equivalent square footage of writing surface to the front (only) of about 420 4 x 6 inch index cards. On a cost basis, for the same amount of money, on average one can buy 1,200 index cards for what they’re shelling out for equivalent notebooks.
Shift Happens tells the story of keyboards like no book ever before, covering 150 years from the early typewriters to the pixellated keyboards in our pockets.
It’s a book about typists competing during the Shift Wars of the 1880s; Nobel-prize winner Arthur Schawlow using a laser to build the best typo eraser; August Dvorak – and many others – trying to dethrone QWERTY; Margaret Longley and Lenore Fenton perfecting touch typing; Soviet agents listening to American keystrokes; women pouring into offices, eager to do more than typing and re-typing; people aspiring to make the best mechanical keyboard today by blending the past and the future.
This is the only book that connects the world of typewriters to the universe of computers. Whether you’re into vintage typewriters, classic clicky IBM keyboards, or modern mechanical wonders, it will have something for you. None of the above? Get ready to become a keyboard nerd anyway, and look at an everyday boring QWERTY slab with newfound respect.
You’ve never seen a book on technology like this. Shift Happens is full of stories – some never before told – interleaved with 1,000+ beautiful full-color photos across two volumes. This edition features an extra volume of additional illustrations and “making of” material, and everything comes wrapped in a slipcase. It’s a great gift for keyboard or typewriter aficionados, but also suits everyone who cares about design, the stories of everyday objects, or tech history.
This is easily worth thrice the price. So glad I managed to snag this.
