spring quiz: first quiz

The first quiz is here! Which typewriter has this nice design? Leave your comment.

spring quiz: prologue

Do you know what typewriter is pictured here?

If yes, leave a comment with your answer.

If no, you'd still have the weekend to train:

On Monday, at 7:00 AM, a new typewriter quiz starts!

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

User Interface

User Interface I've been blogging for 4 years now. In this time, I changed my Blogger user interface once. At first, I thought it wasn't a change to the better, out then, I was very satisfied with the current "old" design. The photo uploading funcitonality made a great leap forward. The only drawback I know at the moment is the missing possibility to enter font sizes in percent. Now, Blogger is about to intnoduce an entierly new user interface. I think they first offered me to switch last autunm. I tried it, but didn't like the thing. I only switched to the now-old layout back then! Now, the free blog-hoster from Google wants to force me to switch. The longer the more, I see boxes pop up everywhere, telling me to change my interface. I think I won't do it until there's no other way anymore. Every time Pacebook or other major sites roll out a new layout, there's an outcry of the internet community. In early 2009, when the Internet Explorer 6 was about 8 years old, about every fifth internet user still used the zombie-browser. Version 7 had bee n available for about 3 years at that time. I have no idea why people often hesitate to update. But typewriters never needed updates, and their functi- onality remained the same for decades. Were they a perfect design? maschinengeschrieben.blogspot.com Remington Deluxe Noiseless. This awesome post was brought to you by the mighty Typosphere

guest post: Typewriterspotting

typewriterspotting.tumblr.com

English Translation & Deutsches Transkript
After the break / nach dem Unterbruch.


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Video: Rhythmic Typewriting, 1923

Footage from a "Rhythmic Typewriting" course at a secretary's school in the Netherlands, 1923. Notice the letter-less keytops on their Continentals. I am a bit disappointed, though, that they didn't return their carriages all at once.

This awesome post was brought to you by the mighty Typosphere