How to make your own Selectric Typeballs | Hacker News Reader

How to make your own Selectric Typeballs

github.com

135 points_Microft47 comments

Does anyone have a method for sustainable supply of Selectric II ribbons?

The Selectric II ribbons that I saw weren't like the inked-cloth used by most typewriters and dot-matrix printers -- which could be reused a few times, or even re-inked with a special tool. The Selectric II ribbons were more like a plastic film with a black coating that was crisply and completely transferred to the paper where the typeball struck it. (Not great for OPSEC, incidentally.)

Amazon? https://www.amazon.ca/IBM-Selectric-Typewriter-Ribbon-Correc...

A common supplier for typewriters in general is Ribbons Unlimited: https://www.ribbonsunlimited.com/

The carbon film you're referring to is likely part #1299095 (black correctable). Believe generics of these are still made. I also buy NOS sometimes. So far the 30-40yo cartridges seem to work fine once you get to the spooled film vs the few inches that may have been exposed to the elements. Not sure if the chemistry of them is just that stable (vs ink ribbons) or I've simply had good luck (i.e. I'm not speaking from 40 years of experience or anything).

The tougher one to source is the "bicycle" style of cartridge used on some Selectric IIIs (other IIIs were built/swapped to work with the old II-style carts).

fwiw just got a couple of bicycle style cartridges delivered from ribbons unlimited, along with some correcting tape, and they both work great.

Thanks, Ribbons Unlimited looks like a great resource. A bit like the guy who sells much of the remaining new-old-stock of floppies.

A small wholesaler and retailer I worked for as a kid in the late-1980s did a lot of business in replacement printer ribbons, and there was one third-party brand that offered compatibles for most every printer. Today, I wonder how the manufacturing worked: whether they just sourced from factories that already had the tooling and know-how to make those particular compatibles, or they had to arrange the reverse-engineering and tooling. And whether the same parties still make the ribbons today.

>A bit like the guy who sells much of the remaining new-old-stock of floppies

Kind of like Slide Rule Universe: https://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/sruniverse.html

You're lucky that hundred shot of NOS didn't blow the welds on the intake!

Those were called correctable ribbons. Our old Juki 6100 daisy wheel printer used them.

Piggy-backing on this thread: does anyone know of any open-hardware computer printer you can DIY at home? (Ideally not using any pre-made ink/etc. cartridges; can be a dot-matrix or even Selectric/daisy-wheel printer.)

sort of

https://hackaday.io/project/167446-diy-inkjet-printer

A pen plotter might be the most well-trod path to go. I regularly come across home made ones.

Here's a ridiculous idea: photographic contact printing using a transparent LCD screen! A good result would probably require commercially made photo paper, but maybe this could work with a totally DIY anthotype process? And the LCD could be salvaged from an old computer monitor...

LCD contact prints: https://pierremuth.wordpress.com/2020/04/18/digital-picture-...

Anthotypes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthotype

Salvaged displays: https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Use-an-Overhead-Project...

https://imgur.io/a/ZZXFq#Xr17aEc

If you want to see the typeball for the APL programming language.

Does anyone know a reliable source for purchasing Selectric II typewriters that are in good working condition? I worked on a Selectric II while working on a novel, and I am nostalgic for it and want it to write letters to friends.

Many larger cities still have one or two typewriter repair shops, or business machine shops that handle electric typewriters! You can also ask on the GolfballTypewriterShop group on Facebook.

There's one in the closet of my childhood bedroom in Kentucky.

They're pretty common on eBay and some offer local pickup (they're heavy!) so you could verify it works before buying.

https://typespec.com/ might know.

If anyone’s wondering: the letters on the piece of paper are from the Cherokee script [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary]. I have no idea if it shows coherent writing or just random letters, though.

Nice. Theoretically, I could switch the letter placement in order to make the Selectric have the Dvorak layout. Would be a cool ornament for my keyboard display case.

Sorry, I don't get it. DVORAK is a keyboard layout. What does that have to do with a typeball?

The idea would be that you would replace the "A" on the ball with the character that is in the QWERTY's A position the Dvorak keyboard, etc.

Exactly! A was an ironic choice for an example, however, because it's the one character in QWERTY that's got identical placement on Dvorak.

Nit: 'm' matches as well. I think it's those two only.

Keys are mapped to specific locations on the typeball. When you rearrange the letters on the typeball you remap the mapping between keys and the actual letters that get printed. So you get a different effective keyboard layout.

Were Daisy-wheels ever used in typewriters, or was that just a printer thing?

I believe there were many daisy wheel typewriters, but I (correctly or incorrectly) tend to associate them with true electronic typewriters as opposed to electric ones. IBM Wheelwriters and such.

There were a lot of early typewriters that experimented with interchangeable type wheels, shuttles, and sleeves. Hammond and Blickensderfer are two of the better-known brands among collectors, but here's a whole list: https://www.officemuseum.com/typewriters_single_element.htm

Amazing! Isn't there also a single element one that uses an inverted cylinder with the type on the inside?

In general, I'm discovering what a deep rabbit hole I've dug myself into. Last weekend I was trying to decide between a Corona Silent, a similar-vintage Remington I haven't yet identified, and an SCM Corsair. Looking for a nice portable contrast to a Selectric that isn't fatiguing to use.

Edit: Re. that first point, believe I was thinking (somewhat backwards) of the 1878 version of the Malling-Hansen Writing Ball: https://www.officemuseum.com/typewriters_hansen_writing_ball...

If you're looking for a typewriter with a light touch, the Olivetti Lettera 32 and Underwood Universal are some of my favorites. I love my Remingtons, but all of mine (all of which are 1940s models) are pretty heavy.

Yep, I had one, might still have it somewhere. Most of my friends had the Triumph Adler Gabriele which had a RS232 serial port and could be used as printer, but mine definitely did not and was a pure electronic typewriter without display and any interfaces.

Back in the early 1990s I typed my papers on a Smith-Corona typewriter with a daisy-wheel (Smith Cornoa called them "printwheels" but same thing.

They were produced by the million by Smith Corona for electronic typewriters and “wordprocessors” in the late 80s/early 90s. Those things had the worst fucking keyboards imaginable https://youtu.be/R2rhOUk-dsM

We had a Brother (I think) typewriter with a daisy wheel, it had a 16 character LCD panel so you could preview what you were typing and catch mistakes before it printed, but also had built in correction tape to erase mistakes. We had a couple wheels in different typefaces.

But I still preferred the Selectrics at school, that kerchunk with each character typed gave it a good feel and I could type much more accurately than the brother where the printing was disconnected from the typing.

The rural high school I went to had these instead of computers until 1996 or 97.

Electronic ones, yes. I have a couple of AEG/Carrera ones with daisywheels.

I wonder how many actuations per character it can take.

The precision of the Selectric II must help with longevity, but the crazy-powerful feel when using one makes me wonder how much force is hitting the ribbon, page, and platen.

To deepen the wonder, I'd be interested to see the longevity per material (PLA/Nylon/metal/...). I'd expect a lot of trial and error to deal with shrinkage and the probably high precision needed by the Selectric.

But this is a great repository, thanks a lot!

P.S. excellent short video by Bill Hammack on the Selectric internals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCNenhcvpw

Before opening the link I thought it was going to be something to generate statically typed code based on a DB schema or something. Fun name either way.

The Selectric remains the world’s best feeling keyboard.

It's what I've internally compared every keyboard to ever since; I also miss the hum.

You are correct, but bear in mind how much those keyboards cost. This is why you don't see their equivalent today.

The selectric ii at $900 in 1980 is about 3,300 today.

Probably can get a pretty nice keyboard for that.

The more accurate way of looking at it is using the "Office and accounting equipment” deflator, which puts it at $1291 in 2022 dollars, about the price of a decent laptop, which makes sense to me.

https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/?isuri=1&reqid=19&step=4&categor...

We had a couple of these when I was a young child. I wish I still had them... they were awesome.

Me too, I think my parents still have their Selectric at the ready in their study. My mom used to fill out carbon-copy forms a lot on this thing and my dad wrote a book on it. It's a rock-solid machine.

Loooong ago, I had work that required APL. It felt very cool when IBM sent me a Selectric APL type ball! Wish I still had it.

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