Thermal Receipt Typing

I've written previously in this blog about the old Albertsons grocery store down the hill from our neighborhood. It started out in the early 1960s as a Safeway and Skaggs drug store, then became Skaggs AlphaBeta, then AlphaBeta, then Furrs, then Albertsons, as the grocery store industry went through mergers and upheaval. In all of those changes, the store has remained its usual dingy self. There have been repeated attempts at renovation, but it was always done with the store still open, resulting in a perpetual sense of disorganization and clutter. Even today, it seems every month or so some seasonal change results in some category of grocery loses its shelf space and gets split asunder to the "end caps" of various aisles, making it hard to find things. Since many of the store's customers are older, you'd think it would be smart to keep things in the same location. But I keep shopping here because it's convenient, and I enjoy observing the clients and employees. A people watcher's paradise, for certain.



Besides the grocery store, the local library also gives receipts on 3-1/8" wide thermal paper. This one is from the Tony Hillerman library, formerly the Wyoming Branch, behind Hoffmantown Shopping Center in northeast Albuquerque. I've visited this library since I was a kid. Hang out at the library in the hot summer months (I was on foot or bicycle), with its cool air conditioning and cold drinking fountain, then walk across the street to Hoffmantown and have lunch at the Campbell Pharmacy. Conveniently, the book receipt gives room for a brief book review, this being the auto-biography of Michael Moore, which I enjoyed more than I expected. It also helps the aesthetics to have the receipt coffee-stained and wrinkled.



Since all these receipt were the same 3-1/8" width, it was easy to scan, keeping the left edges even on the flatbed. I like the way the front sides of the receipts slightly show through the thin paper.
Typecast via Olympia report electronic. Other receipts typed via Royal QDL (aka Adobe Rose).

Have I Gone the Way of the Wedge?

Post-Script: My assumptions about how the print wheel and ribbon motors worked, with encoders providing position feedback to the controller board, proved to be essentially correct, as by addressing their decades-old, oxidized connections seems to have done the trick. Every time I fix a difficult typewriter problem like what this machine had, I on the one hand congratulate myself, while on the other hand think of how long it took me to fix the problem, and that I'd never make a good typewriter repairman if I had to "put food on my family" while doing so. I'm a good tinkerer but would make a poor businessman.

Now that I have the correction tape properly installed and have sourced a supply for ribbons, I feel that this machine is finally back in business, as it was intended. I'm even more impressed with it now than what I expressed in the video earlier this week. After getting the correction system working, I found out it has enough memory to correct the entire current line, one letter at a time (but not the whole word erase or line erase functions of later machines). And you can skip around on that line, picking and choosing what letters to correct. Nice.

As for the keyboard itself, I'm typing this post-script using my 60% keyboard equipped with cherry MX brown mechanical switches, into my Mac mini. But that Olympia typewriter keyboard is almost as good, perhaps a bit softer. However, I'm using the typewriter on a small rolling typing table whose main surface is barely big enough for the girth of the Olympia, leaving no room for my forearms or wrists. I feel if it were placed on a proper desk, so I can support my arms better, it might be even more satisfying. I know for proper ergonomics a person is not supposed to plant their wrists; but I find it pretty comfortable with my computer keyboard setup, as I'm actually planting my entire forearms up to my elbows. Whatever works, right?

It's twenty till eleven PM (that's how we were taught to tell time "back in the day") and I'm suddenly thinking of doing a short video on how I fold typing paper in half lengthwise, to provide me a narrow text column for typing into my blog, while also making for an automatic backing sheet. Maybe. Either that, or get to sleep. Okay, until later.

Pushing Up Daisy Wheels

Post-Script: Funny how these things fall into your hands; this is what happens when you gain a reputation as "that typewriter guy." I was also gifted a metal folding typing table, which is now being put to use in my office, as cramped as it already was.

As I wrote in this piece, I feel Steve K. of Writelephant blogger fame has been one of the few pioneers exploring these electronic machines from the 1980s and '90s. Another person to credit is certainly Robert Messenger and his Oz Typewriter blog. For certain, these plastic machines mostly don't ring our aesthetic bell like some classic shiny black lacquered, round key manual from the pre-WW2 era does. But these have the distinction of being the front-line typewriters that served up until the very end, when computers took over the task of writing. And they do have their own technological evolution, from machines like this Olympia that were pretty well made and responsive, to the later models with more electronic bells and whistles but less snappy keyboard response. The good news is, a lot of these long-abandoned machines can be acquired for a song and a pittance, much like prior to the manual typewriter revival that started around the mid-aughts. Availability of ribbon cartridges will be an issue going forward, but even today at my local Staples I saw Selectric II and III cartridges, along with those for Royal and Brother electronic machines.

Should I see the need for more type wheels and cartridges, there's also the Swintek dealer to consider, since their machines are indeed rebranded Nakajimas.

Regarding my idea of purchasing a brand-new Swintek, I really was hoping to get one of those clear-bodied prison typewriter models, which would be a neat item to have in one's collection, to go along with one's toothbrush shank and dental floss garrote. :)

Here's a video I put up today about this machine. It's still a bit cantankerous with the intermittent ribbon lift motor issue, but is entirely useable.



PPS: I experimented with my condenser vocal mic in today's video. I'd purchased that some years ago, but never put it to good use until now. I'd first acquired it with the hopes of podcasting, but that's another iron that needs to be reheated. I like that the mic itself doesn't require a battery, although I'm using a Saramonic mic mixer atop my camera, that takes the XLR-type of input from this mic. The gain control on the mixer enables me to crank up the levels sufficient for the purpose. And I kind of like the tabletop mic stand, that frees me from clipping the lav mic to my shirt, which I always forget about when I suddenly want to go get another cup of coffee and end up stressing the mic cord attached to the camera. I know: boring techie stuff, but that's why there's so many YouTubers that like to do gear reviews.