https://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2022/06/searing-cutlass-typewriter-in-taylor.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf1DfAXFpGE how to identify a typewriter

This is so fascinating I wonder if we could hide modern messages like this.

https://www.thetypewriterman.co.uk/index.html

https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/

http://writingball.blogspot.com/2014/09/mystery-machine-specialized-lc-smith.html

Typewriters had switches to allow the typewriter to use different portions of the typewriter ribbon. Some were utilized to differentiate between colors on multi-colored ribbons (typically between black and red) while others allowed the use of the top or bottom of a ribbon to get more use (economy) out of them. Many also made the ribbon inoperative so that the type struck directly against a sheet to allow for stencil cutting.

p. 12

“The Remington Noiseless Way.” Remington Rand Inc., ca 1940. From the Peter Weil Typewriter Archives. https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/RemingtonNoiseless10.pdf.

AB Dick Model 217G Spirit Duplicator "Ditto Machine" In Action!

Typewriters, Stencils, and Carbon Copies by Tim Covell

What Was the Purpose of the Stencil Setting on a Vintage Manual Typewriter?

Typewriter Stencil as Check Protector

https://www.ribbonsunlimited.com/

It's got some serious Austin Powers 60s/70s swagger, but obviously will need some TLC and a new ribbon. Is it worth hundreds, even in good shape? Probably not, but I'll bet it could be cleaned up/repaired and bring someone lots of joy (either fixing it or using it regularly). YouTube has lots of starter videos of people cleaning/fixing older machines that will give you some ideas. If it's not your sort of hobby, pass it along to someone who might enjoy it, or sell it to your local repair shop or maybe on eBay for a few dollars. Someone could bring it back to life.

The replacement typewriter ribbon for my Smith-Corona Clipper is 1/2" nylon ribbon with eyelets on 2" diameter spools.

https://www.ribbonsunlimited.com/category-s/5415.htm

Some cheap typewriter ribbon spools don't have grommets on them to force auto-reverse of the spool. Without grommets, some machines may sense ribbon tension for reversal, otherwise one needs to switch direction manually.

There are grommet installation tools that one can use, but this often requires getting one's hands dirty to install them.

Ribbons Unlimited has a good reputation in the r/typewriters community for providing good sales and service.

https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/2rru4x/where_can_i_buy_the_key_to_the_case_of_a_smith/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbGUVjOF2uw

He still seems iffy about the value of using WD-40 on crinkle cut finish, primarily because of the smell.

Others use brass bristle brushes for applying the WD-40 instead of nylon brushes.

Hermes Rocket Typewriter Case Cleaning — Crazy Results, Simple Tools

A few hours with some mild soap and water and a toothbrush will clean up most of a plastic typewriter case.

A mild solvent like isopropyl alcohol can generally get the remainder of any tough spots or gummy spills.

DIY Restoring Yellowed Plastic Featuring Royal Mercury Typewriter

Yellowed plastics can be treated with sunshine (or other UV light for several days) and hydrogen peroxide (3%) to repair the yellowing.

WD-40 for Crinkle Finish Typewriters — Does it work??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz1t6QtARyI

WD-40, which has paraffin wax as an ingredient, can be brushed onto the crinkle finish of a typewriter to clean it up and give it some shine. Use a rag to wipe off excess and take care not to get any in the segment comb. The difference on a generally clean typewriter appears to be negligible and primarily results in a WD-40 smell.

Would something like Armor All work better? Car wax might also work as well. Powder coating polish could work, but it may act as a gentle abrasive as it is also meant to lift stains.

Typewriter Cleaning and Repair Basics #3 Bell Fixed

Keep in mind that some typewriters don't have hard mechanical margin stops, but rely on the user to hear the bell to know the margin is approaching and return the line manually.

Bell hammer mechanisms may simply need to be cleaned to get them into functioning order. Dirt and grime may prevent the hammer mechanism from having enough force to strike the bell. Beyond this replacing the spring may be necessary.

Typewriter Cleaning and Repair Basics #2 Type Bars, Case, and Crinkle Finish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82O_iUAI5og

Segment comb cleaning - isopropyl alcohol (gentler solvent) - odorless mineral spirits - Lacquer thinner (maybe a bit too aggressive) - naphtha (lighter fluid) take care for flammability and ventilation

Work solvent into bearing between type bar and segment comb. To dry things out one can used compressed air when done or just air dry.

If sticking keys not due to being gummed up, bend portions slightly for better alighment.

Do not lubricate the segment comb.

Only lubricate the carriage rails when necessary.

Exterior cleaning

Brass bristle or nylon bristle brushes (toothbrushes) can be used to clean the exterior of the typewriter and/or cases with mild detergents or other solvents. Depending on the finish, try the brush and solvent on a small portion to determine colorfastness and potential scratching first.

Typewriter Cleaning and Repair Basics #1 Assessment and Testing

Recommends against any lubrication on the key mechanism, just keep it clean. Lubrication in some cases may actually gum up the works and cause the keys to return slowly.

He suggests Krud Kutter as a cleaner/degreaser.

https://thetype.space/

Sales, service and repair of typewriters. Also has some parts access according to some.

https://www.reddit.com/user/Dangerous-Ratio6448/

From 2012: A typewriter renaissance

Typewriter mystery game

Typewriter Tips: Budgeting (AKA How to get cheap typewriters!)

• antique malls (look in unconventional places (like luggage))
• estate sales (everything must go)
• yard sales
• auctions
• facebook marketplace (negotiating)

Hunting tips - look for cases, folks they often don't know what's in them or think they're luggage - look under things - negotiate<br /> - bundle items as a group to negotiate<br /> - Tell friends and you'll get an army looking for you

TYPEWRITER TOUR: How I ended up with 17 typewriters (story time)

California Typewriter got Sara into collecting.

She names her typewriters.

She likes the consistency of the Corona Pacemaker, the IBM Selectric II, and the Olympia Electric.

• Smith-Corona Corsair Deluxe Aqua/Blue Travel
• Royal Futura 800

How to Clean a Typewriter

Rubbing alcohol or WD-40 for cleaning out light rust, oil, dirt and grime.

Use Rem-Oil for oiling typewriters

Toothpaste and toothbrush is great for cleaning crinkle paint on typewriters.

Why Tom Hanks Loves Typewriters—And You Should Too<br /> by Barbie Latza Nadeau

For Joan Rivers scraps of paper, receipts, laundry lists, and matchbooks served the function as waste books. She would eventually transfer them to 3x5" index cards using a typewriter.

Some of the claims for the revolutionary effect of computers on humanistic study have clearly been exaggerated or wrongly formulated. Seen from a certain point of viewm a computer, even one connected by modem or Ethernet to the Wolrd Wide Web, is, as many people would claim, no more than a glorified typewriter, though one should not underestimate the changes this glorification makes. An example is the new ease of revision, the facility with which things can be added, deleted, or moved from one place to another in a computer files as opposed to a typed manuscript. Such ease gradually encourages the adept in computer composition to think of what he or she writes as never being in quite finished form. Whatever is printed is alsways just one stage in a potentially endless process of revision, deletion, addition, and rearrangement.

Harpers 1873 the telegraph, pp. 359-360

Discusses the future importance of the telegraph in terms of its impact on knowledge: will free language from philology and allow us to make improvements on that. Mentions the beginnings of the typewriter.

"The immense extension of the general telegraphic system, and its common use for business and social correspondence and the dissemination of public intelligence, are far more important to the community than any of these incidental applications of the system. The telegraph system is extending much more rapidly than the railroad system, and is probably exerting even a greater influence upon the mental development of the people than the railroad is exerting in respect to the material and physical prosperity of the country. It has penetrated almost every mind with a new sense of the vastnessof distance and the value of time. It is commonly said that it has annihilated time and space--and this is true in a sense; but in a deeper sense it has magnified both, for it has been the means of expanding vastly the inadequate conceptions which we form of space and distance, and of giving a significance to the idea of time which it never before had to the human mind. It lifts every man who reads its messages above his own little circle, gives him in a vivid flash, as it were, a view of vast distances, and tends by an irresistible influence to make him a citizen of his country and a fellow of the race as well as a member of his local community.

In other respects its influence, though less obvious, will probably prove equally profound. So long as the mysterious force employed in the telegraph was only known in the mariner’s compass, or by scientific investigations, or in a few special processes of art, the knowledge of the electric or magnetic force had, so to speak, a very limited soil to grow in. By means of the telegraph many thousands of persons in this country are constantly employed in dealing with it practically--generating it, insulating it, manipulating it. The invention of Morse has engaged some one in every considerable town and village in studying its properties, watching its operation, and using it profitably. Nothing could be better calculated to attract general attention to this newfound power, and to disseminate that knowl edge of it from which new applications may be expected to result.

The tendency of scientific pursuits to promote the love of truth and the habit of accuracy is strikingly illustrated in the zeal and fidelity with which the minute and long-continued investigations have been pursued that have led to the development of this new realm of knowledge and this new element in human affairs.

But perhaps the most extended and important influence which the telegraph is destined to exert upon the human mind is that which it will ultimately work out through its influence upon language.

Language is the instrument of thought. It is not merely a means of expression. A word is a tool for thinking, before the thinker uses it as a signal for communicating his thought. There is no good reason why it should not be free to be improved, as other implements are. Language has hitherto been regarded merely in a historical point of view, and even now philology is little more than a record of the differences in language which have separated mankind, and of the steps of development in it which each branch of the human family has pursued. And as a whole it may be said that the science of language in the hands of philologists is used to perpetuate the differences and irregularities of speech which prevail. The telegraph is silently introducing a new element, which, we may confidently predict, will one day present this subject in a different aspect. The invention of Morse has given beyond recall the pre-eminence to the Italian alphabet, and has secured the ultimate adoption through-out the world of that system or some improvement upon it. The community of intelligence, and the necessary convertibility of expression between difl‘erent languages, which the press through the influence of the telegraph is establishing, have commenced a process of assimilation, the results of which are already striking to those who carefully examine the subject. An important event transpiring in any part of the civilized world is concisely expressed in a dispatch which is immediately reproduced in five or ten or more different languages. A comparison of such dispatches with each other will show that in them the peculiar; and local idioms of each language are to a large extent discarded. The process sifts out, as it were, the characteristic peculiarities of each language, and it may be confidently said that nowhere in literature will be found a more remarkable parallelism of structure, and even of word forms, combined with equal purity and strength in each language, than in the telegraphic columns of the leading dailies of the capitals of Europe and America. A traveler in Europe, commencing the study of the language of the country where he may be, finds no reading which he can so easily master as the telegraphic news column. The telegraph is cosmopolitan, and is rapidly giving prominence to those modes of speech in which different languages resemble each other. When we add to this the fact that every step of advance made by science and the arts increases that which different languages have in common by reason of the tendency of men in these pursuits the world over to adopt a common nomenclature, and to think alike or in similar mental processes, we see the elements already at work which will ultimately relegate philology to its proper and useful place among the departments of history, and will free language from those restrictions which now forbid making any intentional improvements in it. With the general use of the telegraphic system other things begin to readjust themselves to its conditions. Short-hand writing is more cultivated now than ever before. The best reporter must understand both systems, and be able to take his notes of a conversation while it passes, and then by stepping into an office transmit it at, once without writing out. There is now in practical use in the city of New York a little instrument the size of a sewing-machine, having a keyboard like the printing telegraph, by which any one can write in print as legibly as this page, and almost as rapidly as a reporter in short-hand. When we consider the immense number of people that every day by writing a telegram and counting the words are taking a most efficient lesson in concise composition, we see in another way the influence of this invention on the strength of language. If the companies should ever adopt the system of computing all their charges by the number of letters instead of words, as indeed they do now for all cipher or unintelligible messages, the world would very quickly be considering the economic advantages of phonetic or other improved orthography.

These processes are in operation all the world over, and in reference to the use of one and the same alphabet. By the principle which Darwin describes as natural selection short words are gaining the advantage of long words, direct forms of expression are gaining the advantage over indirect, words of precise meaning the advantage of the ambiguous, and local idioms are every where at a disadvantage. The doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest thus tends to the constant improvement and points to the ultimate unification of language.

The idea of a common language of the world, therefore, however far in the future it may be, is no longer a dream of the poet nor a scheme of a conqueror. And it is significant of the spirit of the times that this idea, once so chimerical, should at the time we are writing find expression in the inaugural of our Chief Magistrate, in his declaration of the belief “ that our Great Maker is preparing the world in His own good time to become one nation, speaking one language, and when armies and navies will be no longer required.”