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Waynesville! Party time! Excellent!
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To West Virginia!
Let's go to West Virginia!
What's in West Virginia?
Oh, just a few typewriters ...
Herman Price is hosting his yearly collectors' meeting at his Chestnut Ridge Typewriter Museum.
I've already seen things of great beauty ...
And names never seen before ...
It's going to be a great day.
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The great West Virginia typewriter meeting of 2015
A few highlights from today's big meeting.
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There was a good crowd this morning for various presentations, including mine about my book:
Our gracious and loquacious host, Herman Price:
All eyes turn to Gabe Burbano, winner of this year's QWERTY Award for excellence in promoting typewriters:
Peter Weil describes his conservation process for his Universal Crandall No 3.
The results:
Bob Aubert showed us a Hammond for use by the blind. Its original owner won a Hammond typing contest in 1904.
This is a poor photo, but you can see the six special keys with raised rings that served as home keys for the blind user:
Bryan Kravitz of Philly Typewriter Repair gave us all copies of a fun brochure on typewriter care that he wrote in the '80s. You can download a PDF of it here.
Brian Brumfield told us about his experiments casting replacement parts, such as Hermes knobs and Smith-Corona carriage release levers. The general moral: flat parts are easy, complex 3D parts are not.
Dave and Will Davis showed us their "Harry A. Smith" Victor and pointed out that many "outlier" features of typewriters — parts or characteristics that seem surprising for the time when they were made — probably were added when the machines were rebuilt. Just one rebuilder had rebuilt over 300,000 Underwoods by the mid-1920s.
Plenty of typewriters came out of trunks and were swapped and sold before rain came along:
Here's a Remington made in Italy and branded Commodore:
There were several Underwood electrics lying around:
These delicate, feather-light typewriters make excellent laptops:
Above, Ian Brumfield is practicing for the five-minute speed typing competition. We were given a text about Herman's ancestor Henry Francisco, who supposedly joined the army at age 91 and lived well past 100. I managed to edge out Ian by just a couple of words per minute, working on the Purple Prose Producer:
The PPP was also an entrant in the beauty contest, but it didn't get far.
The beauty contest winner was Herman's restored experimental Remington Telegrapher.
Finally, I had a good talk about minds and machines with Oliver fan and fellow philosophy professor Marty Rice, who brought this wonderful ad I hadn't seen before:
That sure is an aggressive writing machine!
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“Can this be real?”
I couldn't ask for a nicer unsolicited book review from a reader in Chicago.
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“The revolution will be typewritten”
Read the story here. (I'm happy to report that I don't only remember my Remington fondly, but am looking fondly at it as I type these words.)
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More stories and events
Here are some more examples of media attention that The Typewriter Revolution has been getting, for readers who may be interested. The marketing phase is in full swing, and it's exciting but also quite new to me. (Books about philosophy don't generally get this treatment.) I wish I had time to type some intelligent thoughts for this blog, but at the moment I am consumed with book promotion—not to mention trying to be a scholar, teacher, chair, husband, father, magazine editor, and companion to our two new semi-Siamese cats. Good problems to have, all in all!
The Typewriter Revolution is Underway (Amy Brownlee, Cincinnati Magazine)
Viva la Typewriter! (Ron Charles, Washington Post)
I was also interviewed by Marc Bernier at WNDB in Daytona Beach, Florida, which was a pleasant experience. The audio is no longer online.
On Nov. 11 at 7 pm there will be a signing and type-in at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati.
Then I'll be traveling to Miami and appearing at the Miami Book Fair on Nov. 21 at 11 am, together with Marvin Sackner, who recently published The Art of Typewriting with his late wife, Ruth.
Whew.
The Typewriter Revolution is Underway (Amy Brownlee, Cincinnati Magazine)
Viva la Typewriter! (Ron Charles, Washington Post)
I was also interviewed by Marc Bernier at WNDB in Daytona Beach, Florida, which was a pleasant experience. The audio is no longer online.
On Nov. 11 at 7 pm there will be a signing and type-in at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati.
Then I'll be traveling to Miami and appearing at the Miami Book Fair on Nov. 21 at 11 am, together with Marvin Sackner, who recently published The Art of Typewriting with his late wife, Ruth.
Whew.
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On objectification
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De typemachine afgestoft
De typemachine afgestoft (The typewriter dusted off)
Many thanks to Dutch author and typospherian Dirk van Weelden for his contributions to this radio piece about typewriters and my book! I can understand maybe 7% of the Dutch (aside from the recording of my own voice) but it's a lot of fun to listen to, if only for the music and typing sounds. Dirk is featured in the book as the author of a novel narrated by typewriters, the inventor of "typewriter portraits," and the visionary behind The Phoenix Typewriter Project.
A tip o' the typebars to a true insurgent.
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Signing at Joseph-Beth
This was my first bookstore reading and signing event, and I was pretty nervous, but I think it went well. It was nice to see friends, students, fellow volunteers, colleagues ... and even some strangers!
Manager and fellow WordPlay volunteer Michael Link gave me a really nice introduction:
I read from the introduction and from the section on street typing:
There were four typewriters available for the public to try out, and I asked for volunteers to try typing poems on request from the public. My suggestion, since we were in a bookstore, was for people to talk about some of their favorite books, and the poets would write poems about the books. Surprisingly, more people were willing to type than were willing to provide topics for poems.
The typists did get a couple of requests, and also found other ways to engage with the Roxy, Kolibri, Hermes 3000, and Alpina:
Poet Sam McCormick (and she truly is one) wrote this piece for my wife about the book Alan Turing: The Enigma.
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On conspiracy
A thought from correspondent Hans Boersma:
I don't know. I would like to agree, to believe that some glimmer of truth gives terrorists a bad conscience, but human beings have vast capacities for self-delusion fueled by resentment and hate. Maybe these people die at "peace" with themselves.
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Heading for Florida
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Rosso, rosso, rosso
It's time for a gratuitous picture of an Olivetti MP1.
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Typecast from Miami
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Miami typecast no. 2
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Going (briefly) off the grid
Meanwhile, if you'd like to anticipate what my next blog post may be
about, take a look at this ad. I feel a good, old-fashioned typewritten rant coming on!
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#WhyWait: On the Internet of Everything
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VisOmatic Electrite font
I hadn't made a typewriter font for a while, so with an hour to spare last night, I did.
I don't think I've seen this typeface on another typewriter. Isn't that ampersand a beauty?
Download the font here.
Also available: VisOmatic, with more regular alignment.
You can make your own font, for free, at paintfont.com.
Also available: VisOmatic, with more regular alignment.
You can make your own font, for free, at paintfont.com.
Here's a closeup of the type.
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“Typewriters and the art of self-sufficiency”
“It's possible to spend a fair length of time doing something intuitively, just because you can sense somehow that that thing is good and right and beneficial for you; then there is an added pleasure that can be gotten after someone else comes along and articulates — using clear language and beautifully reasoned arguments — what you had so far only felt on instinct.
This unexpected but entirely welcome articulation is what typewriter expert and philosophy professor Richard Polt's new book, "The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist's Companion for the 21st Century," came along this fall and did for me and my roughly four-years-and-counting intuitive love of writing on typewriters.”
This lovely essay / book review by Kathleen Rooney of Poems While You Wait appears in today's Chicago Tribune.
PDF version here.
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Signing in San Francisco & Failure interview
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Remington Fleetwing
I thought readers might enjoy some shots of a machine I just cleaned up for sale at The Urban Legend Institute.
What a difference a few years make. What used to be a metal-clad, bulbous Quiet-Riter is now a plastic fantastic, angular '60s creation made in Holland—but the interior mechanism is the same, sturdy design.
This is the color known as Sapphire Blue, although the plastic has yellowed a bit.
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Here's the user's manual.
What a difference a few years make. What used to be a metal-clad, bulbous Quiet-Riter is now a plastic fantastic, angular '60s creation made in Holland—but the interior mechanism is the same, sturdy design.
This is the color known as Sapphire Blue, although the plastic has yellowed a bit.
Here's the user's manual.
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