Out-of-Doors

Commemorating spending an afternoon outside with polaroids and a typecast? Shows how much things have changed since I was growing up.

 

Sent from my Underwood Standard Portable

"Typewriter" in 44 languages other than English

Sent from: Soemtron KsT (German), Torpedo 18a (Dutch), Hermes Rocket (Russian),

Underwood Standard Portable (Croatian), and Everest Mod 90 (Brazilian Portuguese).

These are all the languages in google translate that I have a typewriter that can type, or else I can very closely approximate. I actually didn't mean to leave English out, but I forgot it. XD Here is the text again, fresh from google translate (showing what the languages are) in case if I made any errors in the typing.

"teeb" in Somali seems to just mean "type", so maybe that's not quite correct.

tikmasjien - afrikaans
makinë shkrimi - albanian
makina - azerbaijani
idazmakina - basque
пишеща машина - bulgarian
màquina d'escriure - catalan
pisaća mašina - croatian
psací stroj - czech
skrivemaskine - danish
schrijfmachine - dutch
kirjutusmasin - estonian
makinilya - filipino
kirjoituskone - finnish
machine à écrire - french
Schreibmaschine - german
bugun tafireta - hausa
írógép - hungarian
ritvél - icelandic
nkumigwe - igbo
mesin tik - indonesian
clóscríobhán - irish
macchina da scrivere - italian
rakstāmmašīna - latvian
rašomoji mašinėlė - lithuanian
машина за пишување - macedonian
mesin taip - malay
patotuhi - maori
бичгийн машин - mongolian
skrivemaskin - norwegian
maszyna do pisania - polish
máquina de escrever - portuguese
mașină de scris - romanian
пишущая машинка - russian
písací stroj - slovak
pisalni stroj - slovenian
teeb - somali
máquina de escribir - spanish
tapureta - swahili
skrivmaskin - swedish
daktilo - turkish
друкарська машинка - ukranian
teipiadur - welsh
ẹrọ itẹwe - yoruba
umshini wokubhala - zulu

Kolik jazyků znáš, tolikrát jsi člověkem.

1929 Underwood Standard Portable 4B222405

*and also so-called dead keys

On inspection, the keyboard appears to have been modified after production (and quite thoroughly too because 6 typeslugs and keypapers had to be changed from the standard layout). This probably explains the oddities of the special characters not always matching up!

Sent from my new Underwood Standard Portable

Dreams / Platens

Which platen belongs with which typewriter?

In the following type specimens, you can compare the difference before and after. Yes, I changed the ribbon in the meantime but part of the improvement is you can now run a ribbon through more than once without having to use 3 backing sheets!

Sent from my Underwood Standard Portable

Portable typewriters of the 1920s

Royal Model OT

Underwood Standard Portable

Remington Portable 2

Corona Four

The best portable typewriter available in the late 1920s, by a narrow margin, is the Underwood Standard Portable Typewriter with Standard Four Bank Keyboard. So what is the actual model name for this thing?

Both the Royal and the Underwood are actually from the 1930s, I know…but they both could have been bought in 1929.

Sent from my Royal Model OT and my Underwood Standard Portable

Swan in (initial reaction) duck's paint

1930 Underwood Standard Portable 469029

The paint looks a bit weirder in person, I think, than in photos. / Mercedes portables were licensed from Underwood. I can't wait to find out some day what German manufacturing precision did to this already excellent design. (!)

Sent from my new Underwood Standard Portable