Showing posts with label British Typewriters Ltd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British Typewriters Ltd. Show all posts

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Eccentricity

Anyone passing through Oxford? Not sure what's eccentric about typewriters, but the Eccentricity Exhibition promises a few and it might be worth a look at some 'museum pieces' before it closes.  If I get to see it, I'll post some photos.

Full museum collection listed here.

Monday 1 August 2011

The wee fellow

I'll typecast from the Big-O when I have fixed the left margin and got the paper table/scale properly reinstalled, and I'll try to include an appreciation of the 'feel' for notagain. That's if I'm not too distracted by each seismic shock when the escapement releases a ton of iron southwards, one character at a time.



Meanwhile, here's a better photo of that other, smaller Brit - a 1962 Empire-Corona s/n 4Y 664648. Uninspiring in silver Hammerite, but interesting to see it listed on tw-db under British Typewriter's Empire brand. In production immediately after the 'I-can't-believe-it-isn't-a-Hermes' Aristocrat. If I have it correctly, the Baby begat the Aristocrat which begat the SMC Empire-Corona et al. It is a familiar format but this one looks like it is built to a price. Imagine, a 1962 typewriter with no bichromatic option. Maybe they saved the frills for the De Luxe? The nearest in layout to this one in the collection is Antares Parva - the SMC looks and feels cheaper by comparison. I'll check under the hood sometime for similarities - it has the same slotted alloy billet with keys secured by a dowel.

The platen is very spindly, so it has a tendency to put a curl in the paper causing it to feed back in. Then again, it has been pretty humid lately - which can't help. The good news is that a couple of pages typing and a drop of oil seem to have freed all the keys and got the line return ratchet engaging properly. This machine appears to have many incarnations so, if anyone wants a copy of the 6pp A5 instructions, just yell and I'll post a pdf. I suppose the copyright holders won't be paying much attention.