Hello My Pretty

Though it's not as loud as other electric/electronic typers I've used, the typebars do hit the platen with force, as if you were typing on a manual 5-series with a heavy hand. And the shifting is spindle-activated: as you press the shift key a small amount, the spindle engages to lower the segment with authority. This machine doesn't mimic the action of some nimble-fingered dillentante. But the payback you get is a dark, even imprint, and a wonderful touch, as you'd expect from an electric typebar machine.



The keyboard layout on this machine is nice. It has the number 1, unlike the earlier 5-series machines, but the thing I like most is that the apostrophe is lower case, and to the right of the semicolon, just like it is on a modern computer keyboard. I've said this before, but that's the one thing I miss on manual machines, the apostrophe position. I've wondered why manufacturers kept manual keyboard layouts like that, even into the 1970s and later, when their electric/electronic counterparts had the more modern layout. Perhaps it had as much to do with tradition as anything else? Older typing instruction manuals, written for the manual era, did teach the apostrophe as a shifted 8. But, that can't be the only reason.

If I were a writer in the mid-20th century, I would have been tempted to get one of these electrics as soon as I could, if cost were no object, and lack of portability a non-issue. Perhaps for secretarial use the apostrophe was little-used in formal business correspondence, hence its position on a manual machine as a shifted-8 might be less of an issue; but for the fiction writer or playwrite, who might work with lengthy dialog scenes, contractions and their requisite apostrophes are the normal way realistic characters talk. Having the apostrophe in its modern location would be a boon to such a writer.

All of the electric/electronic machines I mentioned earlier I've been cautious about using late at night, while the rest of the family is asleep. This one I expect to be less of a problem with noise. Perhaps I would move it to the patio room at the back of the house, away from the bedrooms, just like I would with a manual typer. I say this in the hopes that I will give it more use, now that it's back in my hands.

Before I loaned it to Bill, I'd not given it much attention. I certainly under-appreciated its finer merits; but just the other day my oldest brother came over to get a new ribbon put into his Remington Quiet-Riter, and I offered to let him try one of the Nakajima daisywheel machines. He declined my offer, but just in the process of testing it I simultaneously envied its clean imprint while lamenting the loud clank of the daisywheel print solenoid, along with the machine's large footprint. I'd kept that machine on one corner of my office desk for months, and all it served as was a place to stack papers. Never once did I use it. But that taste of electrified keys, with its featherweight touch, is what I like about this blue beauty. And, it's quieter and smaller than the daisywheel machine.

Last year I replaced one of the drive belts due to breakage. I used a new-old-stock orange silicone VCR belt I found in my parts bins. Probably won't last as long as the original, but I do think someone is selling replacements online, somewhere. Perhaps I should do some looking and get a spare for both belts.

Now that I've had time to cogitate on electric/electronic typers, their size and noise is what I most object to. Having to drag an extension cord out to the patio is less of a problem. Perhaps this blue beauty will get more winter use, as I expect to do less outdoor typing. Regardless, I'm glad to have it back in the stable.

Ephemeral Images

Here's a still shot of Jorge Otero's Lumenbox camera:


Here's a recent video about the wooden tabletop tripod:


Here's how I used an experimental bellows project to make a 5x7 format lumen box camera:


Here's a video on recent experiments on tinting lumen print negatives:


And here's how I converted a cell phone packaging box into a pinhole camera:


Typecast via Smith-Corona Electric (with blue ink ribbon) onto Strathworth erasable typing paper.

"Time"

Post-Script: My submission for Typing Assignment # 12, on the subject of thankfulness.

Found Photograph: Two Men

Post-Script: I can't help but think about the film Blade Runner when I handle prints like this. I think of Harrison Ford's character Rick Deckard meticulously examining the snapshot photos from the android Leon - photos that were intentionally made deceptive by the Tyrell Corporation who manufactured Leon, photos from Tyrell's neice, but serving to give the android some semblance of a real human past. Though we aren't mere androids, I can't help from feeling that, somehow, these old snapshots serve much the same capacity, helping to fill in the missing bits of our understanding of a past that remains in many ways just as mysterious to us as Leon's did to him.

I found this print at the same thrift store, on the same day, that I found this blue Smith-Corona Electric.