Yay #1
☆ July 28, 2010
New typewriter ribbon!
My typewriters, from left to right:
Underwood Champion, late 1930’s, garage sale score
Royal Parade, 1960’s, thrift store score
L.C. Smith, early 1920’s or earlier
Mike brought this one home for me one day.
He found it in an old abandoned junk pile in out the hills.
He’s the best.
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33 Responses to “Yay #1”
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July 28th, 2010 @ 8:54 am
Adore your collection! You are the most fascinating person I’ve never met…
July 28th, 2010 @ 8:55 am
Oh I have a 1930’s Underwood at home too! Love it!
July 28th, 2010 @ 9:09 am
There’s something so sexy about old typewriters.
July 28th, 2010 @ 9:20 am
I love, love, love old typewriters. I even have (cover the ears of your machines) jewelry made out of old keys. It so happens I’m wearing my “X” bracelet today–nine of them are strung together, some yellow, some black, all of them reminders of another era.
I’m old enough to remember typing term papers on a compact manual with a sheet of carbon paper behind the top page. That lovely typewriter saw me through my undergrad and graduate studies.
July 28th, 2010 @ 9:22 am
Gorgeous!! I adore old typewriters. Maybe you could use those to write some nice letters/cards to people.
July 28th, 2010 @ 9:43 am
Since you love old typewriters I thought you’d also appreciate this look at “Vintage Computers & I-Phones: LOL!
http://pinkpackratatplay.blogspot.com/2010/07/vintage-look-for-computers-and-iphone.html
July 28th, 2010 @ 9:51 am
OMG so cool! Where do you find typewriter ribbon these days? I have an old portable that types in cursive.
July 28th, 2010 @ 10:15 am
I got the ribbon for mine at staples! It was a calculator ribbon, I think. I just brought the old one in and they matched it.
Mine types in a lovely cursive font…bliss.
July 28th, 2010 @ 10:40 am
Neat! We loved our mom’s old manual typewriter when we were kids, I typed a lot of stories on that thing. You could type in black or red, and if you tried to type too fast the keys got tangled up in a clump and had to be separated one by one to start again. We had a ton of fun with it!
July 28th, 2010 @ 10:40 am
I found a typewriter from the 1930 in a thrift store in the middle of the Mohave. I just stopped and stared at it for a while, I could still hear the sound of my mother’s typewriter , typing bills, with a duplicate fitted in there. She would type with a cigarette hanging from her mouth. Proustian memories…..
Mike thinks of you, it is nice to have someone who plans on giving you joy in everything he does. He saw the typewriter and he saw you. How great to be in someone’s head 24/7.
July 28th, 2010 @ 11:13 am
Last summer we were walking through a museum when my then 7 year old came running up from around a corner. He was so excited. “You’ve got to come see this! They have an old fashion computer over there! You know the kind that goes click, click when you push the buttons!” It was too funny. Especially when we asked him how would he see what he was typing.
July 28th, 2010 @ 11:20 am
I’m also crazy about old typewriters. I wish I had the one I learned on, so so long ago. If I had room to display a few, I would love it!
July 28th, 2010 @ 12:07 pm
mmmmm… a display of typewriters and old cameras would be soo nice
July 28th, 2010 @ 12:52 pm
I knew my husband was the man for me when one day we were walking to the farmers market and saw a pile of stuff with a “free” sign on the curb.
In with the broken down chairs and pulp novels was a fabulous 1920’s typewriter. Instead of asking me why in the world I thought I need an old piece of junk that weighed 50 pounds, he said “I’ll take it back to the car and meet you at the market, honey.”
Ten years later and I still have the typewriter and the man!
July 28th, 2010 @ 1:03 pm
wonderful! you are really lucky to have those! (err. . . the machines – and the man!) i had an old old machine, couldn’t get ribbons for it & it didn’t work any more – wish i still had it, nonetheless . . . it got me thru grad school (i was apparently the last person to hand in a typed master’s project!
July 28th, 2010 @ 4:46 pm
Can’t wait to see what/or if you will do something with them, like make earrings from the keys… or would that just be a sacrilege?
July 28th, 2010 @ 5:12 pm
@Heidi – that is the best story I have heard in a long time. :)
July 28th, 2010 @ 6:49 pm
Oh my gosh, I love that red one… that’s my dream typewriter right there… although I’d settle for a red computer, too :)
July 28th, 2010 @ 8:20 pm
Have to have three to make it a true collection. Yay indeed!
July 28th, 2010 @ 8:53 pm
My first thought is….. I wonder what fingers typed on this machine and what was their job/life like? In the late 70’s I bought a brand new orange typewriter with block font type that I thought was so awesome! You’re fun Shreve!
July 29th, 2010 @ 8:11 am
I was learning how to type for the first time on one of those old Underwoods when my husband came in and “two fingered” , Elvis died today, in the middle of my lesson. When those ‘where were you when’ questions came up I always think of that typewriter.
July 29th, 2010 @ 8:40 am
Sometime before or after WWII – not sure – my dad worked at the Royal Typewriter Company in Hartford, CT. I’m not sure what his job was there, but I do know that he was a regular participant in and sometimes winner of typing speed competitions on those old machines. During my pre-computer working years, when women still pretty much did the typing, my dad would proudly demonstrate how he could still type at somewhere around 80 wpm. We always had an old manual machine at the house. Until she could not longer carry on, my mom still typed envelopes on the old Underwood.
July 29th, 2010 @ 9:10 am
I have an ancient typewriter that has what I call a “triple shift”. The keys, as they do now, typed in lower case. You had to shift once to use upper case, which is also normal, BUT you had to shift *again* for punctuation marks, numbers, etc. None of the top row on today’s keyboards exist, they are all incorporated in the main keyboard. (Hope that makes sense!) I learned to count to five on that machine, as it didn’t have tab keys either!
July 29th, 2010 @ 9:29 am
Great blog. You have chosen the right life. My old hat off to you. I had a coyote mix as a kid in cntral Wyoming. What an animale.
I knew Johnny Underwood in his later years who was a cowboy at heart in the Dubois, area where he had a small ranch. A beautiful spot.
{of Underwood family}
July 29th, 2010 @ 9:31 am
OOPS. SHOULD HAVE PROOF READ WHAT I WROTE. MISSPELLED MY OWN NAME
July 29th, 2010 @ 6:54 pm
Gary – your artwork is beautiful! Makes you feel like you’re right there.
July 30th, 2010 @ 9:00 am
what a purty collection, Ms. Shreve!
August 1st, 2010 @ 7:36 pm
Oh, my goodness…. when I see typewriters, all I can ever think is, “what did they say?” and by ‘they’ I mean the people who wrote on them: did they type up death notices?
Dear John letters?
award-winning novels?
acceptance letters?
Endlessly fascinating!
Love,
Allison
August 2nd, 2010 @ 6:28 pm
Don’t correct this.
“He found it in an old abandoned junk pile in out the hills.”
In out the hills.
That is an amazing combination of words.
August 4th, 2010 @ 1:48 pm
I’m kind of glad to see this, because it assuages my guilt over my own small collection — one roughly parallel in ages but capped with an IBM Selectric II. The electric was king of the hill when I was in high school, and my acquisition of it, even in its obsolescence, still feels penultimate. It was the last pure typewriter because the next evolutionary step was typewriters with a one-line digital readout.
Nowadays a clean typewritten note has an air of authentic presentability exceeded by only a handwritten note, and then only in prestige if one’s penmanship is sublime. Old typewriten notes, with their bumpy baseline and poxed strike strength, telegraph the quirky soul of an old pickup. (Of course I’ve got a ’52 International to match.)
September 24th, 2010 @ 8:36 am
Hi, I found a Royal Parade at a Garage sale cheep, $5 . Believe it or not it is my grandaughters request for her birthday, even though she is super computer skilled at age 10. Do you know where I could find an instruction book for this model ?
September 24th, 2010 @ 8:48 am
Ooh! What color?
As for ribbon & manuals, a google search will bring up lots of sites and even youtube videos – maybe try “royal typewriter” and “royal parade typewriter”.
September 27th, 2012 @ 5:01 pm
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