Icelandic Olivetti Ico

1948  |  Olivetti MP1 Ico  |  120252

Excerpt from Beowulf

Here is a video of me typing with it:

Sent from my new Olivetti MP1 Ico

And of course you can learn all about Iceland, Old English, eð, and þorn on wikipedia.

Sears Change-a-type (SCM)

Sent from my Sears Citation 2

272 International keyboard layouts

For those of you who aren't lucky enough to own a copy of Beeching's Century of the Typewriter, and those like me who don't carry it around with them every second of their lives, here are the international typewriter keyboard layouts offered by Olympia around 1974, all 272 of them.

It's been a great help in figuring out what country a particular typewriter with an unfamiliar layout is from. Apologies for the sometimes skewed keyboards; I couldn't scan them due to the binding so I took photos.

Afrikaans, American

American

American-Med/Drug,  American-Chemistry, American Air Force, Amharic, Anglo-Iraq

Anglo-Israel, Anglo-Persian, Anglo-Japan, Anglo-Thailand, Anglo-Siamese, Anglo-Universal

Anglo-Universal, Arabic

Arabic, Armenian, Belgian, Bolivia, Brazilian

Brazilian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cambodia, Canada-English, Canada-French

Canada-French, Chile, Czechoslovakian, Danish

Danish, Dominican, Dutch, Dutch Antilles, French Egyptian

Egyptian English, English, Malta English, Finnish

Finnish, French

French, Equatorial Africa, German, German-French, German-American, German DIN

Greek, Greek-French, Greek-Latin, Guatemala, Gujrati

Hebrew, Hindi, Honduras, Hong Kong

Hungarian, Iceland, Indonesian, Italian

Italian, Japan Farrington, Katakana Japan, katakana-Latin, Korea, Laos

Lettish, Library, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonian Cyrillic, Malta, Misra-Hindi, Mozambique-Angola

Mozambique-Angola, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norwegian

Panama, Persian, Paraguay, Pashtu, Philippines

Polish, Portuguese, Romanian

Romanian, Russian, Russia-Ukraine, Siamese

Siamese, Singhalese, Slovakian, Spanish

Spanish

Spanish, Spanish-Hispano, Sudan, Suriname, Swedish

Swedish Pharmacy, Swiss, Tamil

Telegraphy, Turkish, Ukraine, Universal

Universal, Urdu

Venezuela, Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia-Cyrillic