Electric Typewriters

[vanhelsing]

These were the next step up (for me) after manual typewriters (One very serios typo on these and you had to type out the entire page again). But at least you could delete a wrd or mistake without having to redo the entire page.

My first was a Smith Corona but with these things you had to have a few extra cartridges for when the one you were using ran out, otherwise you were well and truly stuck until you could get another.

[FLYING SAUCER]

Re: Electric Typewriters

I remember using these at college in around 1985, some were dot matrix and others were Daisy wheel, ours were made by Olympia and had correction ribbon running in front of the print head when you hit delete last character, no more tippex, correction papers or those horrible correction rubbers with the bristle brush at the end.

However, the college did posess an IBM Golf Ball Typewriter (you can see one of these in operation at the start of Gerry Andersons UFO!) Granted it was a 1960s product, it was used well into the 70s though, using it was like driving a Rolls Royce! Fabulous.

[Richard1978]

Re: Electric Typewriters

I managed to salvage an old Daisy wheel typewriter from a clearout at my college. It was fairly simple to use but for some reason the margins seemed to jump around at random.

I didn't have a hand book but it was alright for typing short things like labels.

Eventually it went to the tip when I had a parent enforced clearout.

The college kept a golfball model which was good for typing up forms that were printed on laminated paper with a biro proof coating.

[vanhelsing]

Re: Electric Typewriters

Mine was a daisy wheel printer but when the cartridge was used up. that was it until I got another and when typing in bold, it sounded like a sub-machine gun (but when printing a whole page of one of my works of fantasy-science fiction out it sounded like a machine gun when I upgraded to a daisy wheel world processor).
Weren't Smith Corona great?

[darren]

Re: Electric Typewriters

Mine was a daisy wheel printer but when the cartridge was used up. that was it until I got another and when typing in bold, it sounded like a sub-machine gun (but when printing a whole page of one of my works of fantasy-science fiction out it sounded like a machine gun when I upgraded to a daisy wheel world processor).
Weren't Smith Corona great?

id have thought it was hard on electric mate.
have u still git one of these old typewriters.

and when did u get it and how long had u it before upgrading mate.

[Trickyvee]

Re: Electric Typewriters

I had two second hand ones. The first was one of those Petite toy ones but it had seen better days and didn't really work. The second was much better and got quite a bit of use until I bought a word processor.

[battyrat]

Re: Electric Typewriters

I had a Smith Corona for a few years.It was secondhand when I got it.The only reason I stopped using it was that in the end the cartridges became very hard to obtain as one by one the shops stopped stocking them,and I had to go further afield to find them.Very costly in the end.

[vanhelsing]

Re: Electric Typewriters

I know, its a shame when a great bit of technology becomes obsolete after being replaced by the latest new technology so things stop being made for the older piece of technology. But I admit that my Smith Conona had it's limits.

[michaeljj]

Re: Electric Typewriters

I had a similar one two years back. gift that to my cousin, who was learning typewriting.

[victorbrunswick]

Re: Electric Typewriters

Just last year I needed to speak with a hospital adminstrator and I was in the hospital Admin Office when I saw something I didn't expect to see in a modern office anymore: a receptionist typing on an electric typewriter! I chatted briefly with the receptionist and she said she was working on a document that was required by the state and it had to be typed on a typewriter!

[Arran]

Re: Electric Typewriters

I was with a friend when he was going through old school and LEA correspondence from the 1980s. We chuckled at the phone number for his school 04895 followed by a 4 figure number. It's now 01489 followed by a 6 figure number. The typefaces of the text mesmerised us as the documents had been produced on a typewriter, and in a few cases a daisywheel printer. This was an era when Arial was an obscure font called Sonaran Sans Serif only available on some IBM laser printers and if you wanted to look at Times Roman then look at the Times newspaper. We wondered what typefaces were used on typewriters and whether many had made it into the digital era. Later investigations revealed that apart from Courier and Prestige from the IBM Selectric, most typewriter typefaces were designed by the typewriter manufacturers and are not available as fonts for computers. We have not yet managed to identify the typewriters that were used to produce the correspondence.