x over it: June 2015

30 Jun 2015

Mapmaking

Earlier this month, I posted on the map I created from the sketch I made while spending the afternoon outside. While those outside activities have had to be curtailed due to a stretch of uncomfortably hot weather (to anybody from the south this is going to sound silly, but it's been in the mid-80s [~30°C] for the past 2 weeks) I've continued creating maps of places both fictional and real.

This was done in black pen on a 5" x 8" Rhodia pad. It's some of the best paper for fine pen work, though if you're sloppy, it can sometimes smear a little. I scanned it in and colored it digitally to simulate a 3-color printing process. The area is loosely based on northwestern Michigan.

This map was created in the same way as the previous one, except it was based on central Nova Scotia. I used Sakura Micron pens for these two. Click to enlarge.

And this is a full-color (9 colors, to be exact) map of southwest Michigan, done with Sakura Micron (black) and Marvy Le Pen (colors). It's accurate for driving with and nothing on it is fictional, unlike with the others. Errors are therefore less forgiving because I can't just imagine a road or a differently-named city.

This gif shows the process of creating a black and white map of a fictional place.

1. Sketched out the coastline and major cities, and connected those with main roads and added small towns and county borders.
2. Added minor roads and sketched the names for major cities. Added highway shields to main roads.
3. Inked main roads and highway shields, adding road numbers.
4. Inked major city names and filled in the main road patterns denoting highway surface. (you'll notice here that I smeared the ink on the highway above White Cloud, the first error I made)
5. Inked small town names, then the coastline and water features. (my second mistake was inking a minor road near White Cloud as a river)
6. Added decorative lines to coastline and lakes, and inked county lines. Fixed both mistakes by turning the smudge into a minor road and re-routing the river. (this is why I like creating fictional maps based on reality rather than maps of real places!)
7. Inked minor roads, added hills, and added compass and title. Erased pencil sketch.
8. Scanned and colored digitally.

I just got this new old stock Berol RapiDesign general mapping stencil which will help out a lot!

27 Jun 2015

Three kinds of Remington Mark II

The Remington Mark II was a Torpedo 18b (or 18s) in a plastic shell rebranded for the American market. To my knowledge, it exists in three versions, spanning 3 to 5 years of production (if it went from 1964 to 1968). They all come in an oddly Olympia-like case made in West Germany and have annoying Remington core spools.

The first date, 1965, is a guess. The two later Mark IIs have been dated from the date stamp inside the ribbon cover. This post compares a few points showing the changes in the exterior finish and the change from Remington Rand to Remington and finally to Sperry Rand as the manufacturer.

1965? - 1345954 (West Germany)

September 1966 - 819493 (West Germany)

August 1967 - 1377313 ("Holland")

I would like to thank my friend Scott for letting me use his camera to photograph his two Mark IIs.

25 Jun 2015

Us and them

from Estonian SSR to Estonia

I think Russians are seen as the oppressors and my "wanting the country to themselves" bit is not truly accurate. They don't want Estonia to themselves so much as they don't want to have to share it with historical oppressors, and are therefore oppressing people for what their ancestors and government did.

Sent from my Speedwriter

23 Jun 2015

Roads to the Factories: International Typewriter Day 2015

This year for International Typewriter Day I thought it would be fitting to make an internationally-themed blog post in celebration. Happy 147th birthday, first patent of Sholes!

I've chosen 43 of the most important and well-known typewriter factories around the world corresponding to typewriters I've owned (with the exception of 5) and found in my road map collection a map of the area around each of the factories from the same era as the typewriter.

Now, you won't be able to pick out the exact locations of the factories (I don't even think we know the street addresses of several of these) but you'll be able to get an idea of the landscape the factory is set in. As you may have noticed before, a surprising number of typewriter factories were located in small towns a fair distance away from main roads. (of course, rail access would have been most important).

I've placed the map and city name first, then followed by a photo of the typewriter built there around the time of the map's printing so you can play a guessing game if you like.*

Note that I am not 100% sure on a couple of these, but I have made my best guess.