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.

Typewriter Blues

Post-Script: One effect of typing on the roll of teletype paper is getting long-winded, like I'm apt to do, and not having room on my flatbed scanner to get the title and signature in one scan.

I like this blue ribbon, it's darker than I thought it would be at the time of order. As I indicated in the piece, the slightly yellowish tint of the teletype paper works well with blue, since they're complimentary colors, if I recall.

I'm not yet sold on the idea of liquid correction fluid, even if it is dispensed in this neat applicator pen. It's certainly slower to use, and requires care to avoid a mess. Yet this teletype paper does not work at all well with any of the brands of correction tape I've tried. So perhaps for this specific paper I'll continue using it for a while.

It's been fun working with these varieties of correction methods, something essential if we are to continue typing via cloth ribbons to paper; or, become entirely faultless in our typing technique (that ain't happening!). I am looking forward to using the correction tabs.

Typecast via Facit 1620.