The Collection: Optima Elite

*The color of the Optima Elite is a fresh green - it doesn't show up well in the photos.

The collection: Optima Elite in the series "The Collection", we present the type- writers on the selves of masdinengeschrtben. Ihis Eriday‘s machine is a green optima nlite i saved from the trash bin. At the meeting of the SWiS€ typewriter collector's club, there were “serious” collectors, men well advanced in years, many of them former typewriter repairmen or in some other relation to those machinery, with malling—nansen in their collection and the younges' pieces older than my oldest machine. slack machines, from the years before l92u. one of these rare writing irons can easily cost more thn the entire collection of a typospherian. From time to time,thdgh, they get machines - or are asked if they want them - thm;they don't even consider wort collecting. ihis Optima Elite, in fresh green and the round, later design was one of them. Apart from a dent on the left side of the top cover and some around the carriage, it was in pristine condition, the type- bars are clean, there is no smell... It even came with its original (germab manual. And it is surprisin- gly quiet. The only problem was the spacebar, where one screw was missing, so it wasn't fixed on the left side. I corrected that with a drop of hdt glue. ' After world war II, Olympia engineers fled from the soviet-occupied part of eastern germany, where the Olympia typewriters were being made until then. They brought their know-how to western Germany and after a few stages in between, production of typewritrs started again, in Wilhalmshaven. Meanwhile, in the soviet zone, the original factory had started po pnfl- uce typewriters, too, and a few years later, there was the court decision that the western Olympia could keep their name and the original factory in the east has to change it. They renamed it Optima, after a font. Still, the Olympia SM—2, 3 and 4 and the Optima.Elite have shared ancestors. Numerous designs remained un- changed, not only in my earlier Optima Elite, but also in this later one. In terms of typing action, there is a cenin change, though. This machine is not as snappy as an Olympia SM—3, but is stillquite snappy} Therd is a certain tehdency 0£.th3rtypebars to stiqk toegther_thoRuh. but I'm not sure if this is a technical problem of , this machine, or if I just needed tp get used to th- ese keys more. ’ - ‘ maschinengeschrieben.blogspot.com Optima Elite. ' 1054087 This awesome post was brought to you by the mighty Typosphere