In Mechanica Antiqua

Mostly complete.  Time to install the body  It is not an uncommon occurrence in the world of typewriter repair to be given a selection of parts and be asked to create a whole machine.  This month it has happened twice.  Since I love royals, I though I'd give a short overview in the work that is involved in such a project. Dirty Dirty One of the parts machines The two subjects in question were two Royal Os in gloss black, the first of which was missing all feet, the spacebar, the entire constitution of the carriage besides the frame, and had (as I discovered) a bent rack.  The bent rack caused the carriage to bind on the escapement pawl.  The second O was missing the carriage entirely, which was situated off to the side in a heap.  It was also missing the bell striker and the rear carriage rail, as well as the shift bearings. Post cleaning Really clean Picking and chosing.  I actually had three options including the parts I picked from my own stock...

My 1982 IBM taken on my 1982 Nikon F3/T using Kodak Tmax The renown IBM Selectric II was released in 1971, ten years after the wildly successful Selectric I, which exceeded sales projections by the hundreds in a mere six months.  The IBM was the precursor of personal computer interface, the gold standard of late 20th century productivity, and an icon of the written word.  The first IBM typewriter paved the groundwork for an empire.  It employed a single type element of 64 characters commonly called a "golfball".  An element strikingly similar to the rotating drum of the Bickensderfer typewriter from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.  While the idea of single element typewriters had been toyed with many times before, in regards to the ease of swapping typefaces, IMB was the first to create a truly remarkable single element machine with unparalleled speed and consistency.  It could be related to the Hammond, and the later Varityper, which were both perfected...

Mint is an understatement  I acquired this machine from the hands of another collector January of this year.  It didn't look like much at first glance, it was musty and full of copious amounts of lint and dirt, but the Greek Keyboard interested me.   It didn't actually take much to clean, I knocked it out in a few hours.  The interesting thing that I noticed right away was that the majority of the exposed metal parts that were usually bare steel, were all blued.  I found out later that this was a common naval finish, and the blueing was designed to protect the machine against salt corrosion from the ocean air.  Fascinating. I have listed this one for sale, it comes with a new ribbon and its case, and the paint on this thing is IMMACULATE, save for a single scrape on the lid from the carriage return arm.  It cleaned up a lot better than I ever thought it would.  Run of the mill corona, so nothing terribly fancy, just thought I would share the ...