Old Bob's Old Typewriters | Hacker News Reader

Old Bob's Old Typewriters

oldbobsoldtypewriters.com

20 pointsmooreds9 comments

Love this share, I just watched the 1955 vs 1957 Royal Quiet Deluxe video. Learned a couple of fascinating things:

1. 1955 model did not have the number "1" or the "!" - as I guessed, you can get the 1 with a lower-case L. But the exclamation point stumped me - turns out you had to use apostrophe, then backfeed a character, then use a period over the same space to recreate the "!". 2. Different typewriters had different typesets that could result in dramatically different script lengths for writers. It forced one of the screenplay writers of Star Trek to have to tighten up his script substantially after they realized it was too long.

The character set we got with the advent of computer keyboards is the result of a lot of random selection since the creation of the first keyboards (both the QWERTY typewriter but also the ETAOIN Linotype keyboard and Monotype’s keyboarding unit, not to mention the earliest input keyboards based on piano keys).

My Olympic 3000 uses the same key for 1 and l as well.

Not sure if any of you have typewriters but Tony Casillo is closing up shop in April. He does have inventory ledt if you need supplies https://www.typewritercollector.com/contact.htm

Got a type written letter yesterday from an old friend. It has a really different look than anything from modern printers (is there a font that mimics manual typewriter with maybe old ribbon type). My father would type my papers in high school on an old manual typewriter. I was amazed at how fast he was.

The site looks well done and I think the Manuals and Repairs section might come in handy.

A while ago I wanted to make a poster for something with an authentic "typewritten" look... unfortunately my 90's Nakajima is much too hifi, and looks more like a bad computer font than a typewriter. Shame, it's got that lovely clunk when you type on it.

There are loads of old typewriter fonts. Just try googling “typewriter font.”

Not the same really. A typewriter is analog. Every character is essentially unique because the ink it lays down depends on the ribbon condition in that place, how fast the arm movement placed the letter (you can get occasional overlapping letters if you type fast) and even how squarely the paper was aligned when inserting it. The margins are variable unless you are carefully aligning those too.

So a quickly typed letter on an old ribbon has a unique character that can’t be reproduced by a font.

GNUTypewriter is a realistic-looking one.

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