@pratik I'm curious what statement you're making here? I can see an argument you might make on the appearance of the headline alone, but this editorial is far from what the headline may imply.

Today’s office. We’ve got a newly finished Shaw-Walker filing cabinet and a 1955 Royal HH standard typewriter.

A fascinating looking class that ostensibly will have no required textbooks or the need to take notes. Michigan State, Fall 2024. Via Sara D. Miller.

Forget gasoline. Dismiss lighter fluid. Let slip the idea of lacquer thinner.

When I clean my type slugs, I only use bourbon.

Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their party.

@velocykel What'd you get?!? Let me know if you need help in bringing it back up to speed.

I love the smell of mineral spirits in the morning.

You see photos of standard typewriters, but you’re never ready for what shows up. To provide some scale, here are my 12.8 pound 1949 Royal Quiet De Luxe portable and my 29.8 pound 1955 Royal HH standard next to each other. The Royal HH is a substantial typewriter. (I think I’m in love. 😍)

Spending part of the day cleaning up the 50th birthday Olympia SM3 typewriter. It’s “fuzzier” than I thought it would be initially.

@the If it helps to be able to say that Tom Hanks taught you to change a typewriter ribbon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBbsNKaVAB0

@the I started out with reading Polt's The Typewriter Revolution (Countryman Press, 2015) which has some good basics. Consulting his basic typewriter restoration page was very helpful too. Beyond that and knowing the names of some of the basic parts, the rest is just following along with YouTube videos and practicing on getting my own machines up to snuff. It's almost amazing what you can do with a single screwdriver, a squeeze bottle of paint thinner, canned air, and a toothbrush.

I did just get a copy of The Manual Typewriter Repair Bible, but have yet to really crack it. Hopefully it'll up my game for this upcoming repair.

It's been a very satisfying and useful little hobby these past 4 months. If you want to crib from my notes...

@patrickrhone @bradenslen Thanks for the birthday wishes.

@KimberlyHirsh I suspect some Duolingo courses know about the quirkiness of the repeated use of odd words and do it on purpose for the whimsy. From a language learning perspective, hearing bizarre, but common words out of general context makes your brain work harder to capture the subtleties of the grammar and usage. The repetition helps to drive less common words into your brain.

Perhaps there's also a hidden lobbying element too? I'll admit, I do eat leeks way more frequently now than I ever did before starting Welsh.

@herself @KimberlyHirsh In the Welsh lessons it's always leeks, parsnips and sausages. Use of both everyday and bizarre items like these in language lessons go back to the Ollendorff method. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeinrichGottfriedOllendorff

Starting off my second half-century with a shot of Penderyn Single Malt Whisky and some work on an Olympia SM3 manual typewriter.

@odd Congratulations. I've yet to add a Hermes to my collection yet. Is there any truth to the rumor being spread by @patrickrhone that one has to be an excellent father to own one of those? If I recall, you started out with an Erika, right? How large has your collection become?

I’m hoping this 8’x10′ non-slip rug pad can be cut down into enough typewriter pads to accommodate the segment of typewriters in my collection. They’ll both help protect my wooden tables from scratches as well as to keep my typewriters from “travelling” during use.

@hutaffe Ha! It is very lush...

I may have just acquired a 1958 Olympia SM3 portable typewriter. I suspect it would make a good 50th birthday present come Monday. I’ll spend some time over the weekend cleaning it up.

@hutaffe Is your affliction so bad that you picked up Marcin Wichary's recent multivolume history?

@richardcarter Those were good friends indeed!

@hutaffe just be careful not to slip down the slippery slope into the wonderful world of typewriters... 😍

@Gabz I love fuertes which are fattier than the standard, but what variety are those, and what sort of texture do they have?

@aa I was just at Sea Bags in both Maine and Mystic, CT. Most of their stuff veered toward simplicity. A few of their pieces had side pockets, but not many. Those bags account for at least 80% of their business.

@richardcarter hooray! Have you ever held a first edition copy of Darwin's paper?

@the I took me a trip across country and some digging to find my old Smith-Corona Clipper at my parents' house. I'm glad they kept it. Hopefully yours will pop up soon.

I spent a chuck of the early morning and the past hour finally cleaning up my Shaw-Walker filing cabinet. I can’t wait to move it into the house and start using it. Photos of the finished product soon…

@bradenslen Thanks. I am hitting the upper limit on collection space as well as bandwidth to use them all in a regular rotation. I did manage to pick up an Olympia SM3 for $11 recently and I'm on the lookout for one or two bulkier standards, so one or two are going to have to go sooner or later. At least they'll leave me in far better condition than they arrived. If I keep this up at my recent rate, I'll have to open a typewriter repair/sales store.

@mattypenny Based on reports (read: complaints) from family members, most mechanical keyboards are quieter than these old typewriters. When it comes to mid-century typewriters there are varying levels of what they considered "quiet". Many manufacturers added felt padding and custom rubber washers to their machines to dampen things down, especially for companies that had dozens of machines in a typing pool which could be quite loud.

Alternately, I have heard stories of companies piping in typing noise into their workspaces as a means of creating both ambience as well as trying to help up the level of productivity—presumably as an aural form of "body doubling". I won't bother to mention the ever-growing ASMR space...

@the Oops! I wasn't watching the context and presumed you had made your comment on this post from a few days back which pictured an earlier 1948 Royal portable and it's younger brother, a 1949 Quiet De Luxe designed by Henry Dreyfuss. It was the later 1949 version in light gray with chrome which I referenced with respect to Nabokov.

@the If it looked like this one it was probably either a 1949 or 1950 and either a QDL as pictured or possibly an Arrow (if it didn't have tab functionality). I suspect that the all light gray/chrome model was the same one that Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Vera had for much of their work and which Carl Mydans photographed them with in 1958.

@manton I was at the Aldrich Mansion in Providence just a few days ago... We should have swung out to Newport, but went out to the Berkshires instead. Trekking over to Portsmouth, NH now.

@patrickrhone Someone must be a very good father! Let me know if you need ribbon.

@JohnBrady Thanks! That's awesome, not just for the typewriter, but for the Little Free Library as well. This August my own Little Free Library will be celebrating its 9th anniversary. Now that I know it's a thing, I might have to ensconce a typewriter into it somehow...

@JohnPhilpin I remember learning learning in college that Silverstein was a regular writer for Playboy back in the day...

@JohnPhilpin You've probably missed a few if you had to go back that far. 😁 Half the fun of typewriter collecting is spending some time tinkering on the machines to bring them back up to full speed or modifying them (something I'm about to get into). Eventually I'll either run out of space or it'll turn into a typewriter repair business. ¯_(ツ)_/¯