Reply to Orga A 38 1908 r!!<br /> by Neat_Substance_2084 at https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1wsmhar/orga_a_38_1908_r/
From what I've seen, your only evidence of your claim are a poorly hand scratched marking and some metallurgic tests.
You need a lot more evidence than what you're presenting to prove your claim, particularly given the decade and change of the passing of time.
I can scratch a 1940 date onto my Olympia SM3, but it doesn't mean that it's a prototype from 13 years earlier. Your presumed date is also of the form of an accounting ledger and not one that a mechanic would have scratched in.
Do you have any provenance on your machine? (Who owned it and when?)
Do you have any paperwork from the designers? Patents?
The material tests only show a difference in the metal content, they don't indicate a date of any sort. If they could, you'd need a lot more material research on manufacturing methods and timelines from the historical record to back it up. Typewriter manufacturers were constantly changing their manufacturing lines and designs to make them more efficient and less expensive to improve their bottom lines, so your material science differences would seem par for the course. Can you show similar changes in materials from the companies toy lines over the same period?
You seem to be only sharing blurry photos of screens rather than direct documentation of your material difference claims. Where are the direct documents and which company did the testing?
Given the tremendous amount of focus on design changes and patents in early typewriter manufacturing and sales, how does the design of your machine fit into the early aughts from 1900-1910 versus 1920 and on? Typewriter designs had settled down significantly by the early 1920s, so there should be some reasonably significant design differences between a 1908 machine and one from 1923. Where have you documented those?
What company history physically exists? When did they begin design? When were they producing prototypes in general? 13 years of R&D is a tremendous amount of time to pass in typewriter design in the early 1900s before manufacturing of any sort, even if you discount stoppages for World War I. Are there extant notebooks or corporate papers from the time period you're claiming? They were manufacturing toys for decades prior, so surely they've got some reasonable corporate documentation and correspondence somewhere. Do any of the descendants have papers, receipts, or diaries that could be consulted? What were the market conditions that suggested to them that a move from toys to typewriters was a brilliant idea? Often in a prototype situation, a factor may not have all the manufacturing capabilities in-house or they'd need to make changes to equipment to make a new line. Are there pieces of your typewriter that were outsourced from other factories? Is there evidence that all the parts of the later machines were made in-house?
Think like an archaeologist. Think like a historian. Bring some more research to bear if you want to convince anyone (experts or otherwise) of your claims. It should seem painfully obvious to you by now that what you're presenting is not nearly enough. No one is attacking you. We're just asking for more if we're going to be convinced.
