A GPO 741 dialphone was a wall mounted version of other dialphones from the General Post Office such as the 746, infact the 741's internals were based on the 746 with the chief difference being the handset cradle. Of course this has to go on top!
Dialing the 741 is very similar too though you are facing the dial instead of looking down.
Of course, the Brother Deluxe 1350 was the first typewriter in my collection, but i do have another Brother (typewriter that is!)
My Brother Deluxe 800 is not quite as aesthetically pleasing as the 1350 but is another very good typewriter. It works very well, except for the bell though warning you you are nearing the end of the line. This doesn't sound but otherwise there isn't anything wrong with the 800 which is a good solid feature rich portable typewriter.
I have bought carbon paper before but one of my recent typewriter purchases came with a pack of carbon sheets, British made for typewriting and cost 99 new pence. Which seems a lot to be honest relatively?
It is 1976 and you are an executive in a top international business, but you need one of those new fangled pocket calculation machines. Well Accuron have the machine for you, it's even called the Executive! It has the four basic mathematical functions plus percentages (important for executives no doubt) and a memory. Numbers are displayed using LEDs. Unfortunately my Accuron Executive does not seem to work anymore though i'm not an executive anyway so no harm done!
Time for a new arrival, this month it is another telephone from the General Post Office. This is a GPO 741 dialphone, which is intended to be mounted on the wall (indeed due to where the handset rests it can't really be used any other way!
Another updated typewriter video (i have a much better tripod now compared to when i did my earlier videos). Here is my Olympiette, my favourite typewriter.
Now this is not a mysterious key to everyone. The sign is often included on a Mac keyboard, though PC keyboards i have and use do not seem to have it. Not all typewriters have this sign either, but what is it? The section sign is used to reference individually numbered section or paragraphs of a document, often used with legal documents. Thus a reference to section 6 in a document may be written as §6. Double it up if you want to refer to multiple sections, for example §§2-5 means sections 2 through 5.
Below is the section sign on my Triumph-Adler Tippa.
I went the Birmingham Museum Depot open day today, tucked away in one of the storage lockers was this early IBM Electric typewriter.
We have had the latest typewriter to join the collection, a Silver-Reed Leader II, for a couple of weeks now. The first impressions were that it was a very good typewriter in an almost as new condition, and second impressions back that up. Indeed, if it wasn't for the ribbon being almost worn out then it feels like the typewriter has been hardly ever used. An excellent addition to the collection therefore. but obviously it does need a new ribbon!
Everyone has heard of the Yellow Pages of course and is used to letting their fingers do the walking. Inside the telephone directory there was also the Green Pages! These pages listed the products and services available from the General Post Office Telecommications. These included the various kinds of telephone you could rent, special services such as radiophones and the very far-sighted confravision. A selection of pages from the Birmingham 1980 directory is below.
As well as the typewriter, some calculators also have keys which have some sort of esoteric mysterious function which we will examine in this new series. Lets start with the lozenge! Not all calculators have this key, those that do in my collection are some of the larger mains powered printer calculators which are designed for heavy duty number crunching.
So, what does this key mean? Quite simply the lozenge means subtotal, important when you are doing the wages on a Friday morning for example. A couple of examples from our collection:
On the Silver-Reed 1250PD at least, a lozenge is generated on the print out when you press the lozenge key. Unfortunately i can't tell if this is also done on the other printer calculators i have yet as they all need new ribbons!
The Casio J-1 was a nice chunky handheld calculator from about 1978. The calculator had the basic four arithmetic functions as well as square roots, percentages, negative numbers and a memory. The cancel buttons are a rather nice orange while the others are white, black and beige. A very late 1970s colour scheme and quite frankly wonderful.
The J-1 had a NEC D1877C processor and an eight digit VFD display. Our one seems to work pretty well.
It seems like every time i buy a typewriter these days that i say this will be the last one for some time... and then a few weeks later buy another. Well lets say that again, i have just received a rather lovely Silver-Reed Leader II which is number 31 in the collection. I don't intend to get any others for now, but you know how that works out!
Time to fit another ribbon, this time the lucky recipient was my Silver-Reed SR10 one of the two typewriters received this year so far. Actually a third is now on the way but i may slow down a bit after that. Of course i always say that. The SR10 now types nice and clearly, a good little machine.
I'm on a bit of a roll with printer equipped calculators at the moment (no pun intended). The latest is this Ibico 1212 which looks like it might be an early 1990s machine, so not as old as some in the collection though does have a rather tasty VFD display. It powers up though seems to have some bit rot so can't do anything with number entered. The printer makes a sound but as there is no paper roll yet i can't tell you if that works or not!
In an age of planned obsolesence and our tools lasting not very long before breaking (and often not being repairable), typewriters are reassuring long-lived and resilient. Some of the machines in my collection date from the early 1960s and still work perfectly well, and other collectors have machines which are much older still. Some typewriters have had a hard life, millions of keys pounded, treated poorly in terrible conditions and yet are still working fine after a clean-up and a bit of oil.
The first typewriter in my collection was my Brother Deluxe 1350, a late 1960s or early 1970s machine, which i bought in 2013. I took it out of storage a few days ago and used it for the first time in a couple of years and it still works perfectly.
Now of course this longevity really only applies to manual typewriters, electrics suffer from the same bit rot and electrical decay issues as other electrical items. However, it is reassuring that even in the event of a global nuclear armageddon we will still be able to use our typewriters in the smouldering ruins of civilisation. Though getting replacement ribbons may be tricky.
LCD display calculators from the 1980s and 1990s are not as interesting as the LCD and VFD display machines of the previous decade but i like this simple little Radio Shack machine. It reminds me of the vogue in my latter school days for machines with solar panels, it seemed like we were entering the future with free power! The EC-458 is dual power so has a battery as well, and still works fine.
It has the basic arithmetic functions plus square root and memory. A basic machine, with a solar panel!
An important skill it was always useful to have was how to dial the emergency services on a dialphone if you couldn't see the dial (such as in the dark during a power cut, in a smoke filled room or you had been blindfolded by a bunch of big lads in balaclavas). I feel this is still an important skill to have so here is a quick guide to calling 999, if you can't see.
Take your first two fingers and locate the dial, put your fingers in the last two holes next to the metal prong.
As so, now you have your fingers in 9 and 0.
Remove your right most finger (which should be on 0). Now dial with your other finger (which should be on 9).
Go all the way around until you reach the other side of the prong and release. Do this two more times then hopefully you will get the emergency services operator. Good luck!
The latest typewriter in the collection is the Boots PT400 which arrived a few days ago. This is a very similar machine to the likes of the SR10 and Red Fox but the format just works so well. This machine in particular seems to have been very well maintained since it was originally bought in Cambridge in 1988 (the manual came with it with the purchase details on it). One of the best working machines in the collection in fact!
This fine small portable machine is from early 1960s was the first typewriter we received with German language keys such as Ü and the eszett. The typewriter is in good condition though feels like one which has worked hard in it's time. The typewriter has received a new ribbon and has a good clear typeface (see below).
The Tippa range of typewriter was originally from the German manufacturer Gossen. The Tippa range was sold to Adler in 1956, later it was produced by Triumph-Adler (Triumph taking over Adler in 1966). Our example is an Adler Tippa 1 likely from about 1964.
A typical calculator from Japan in the mid-1970s. The CX-8131 offered the basic arithmetric functions plus square roots and percentages. Plus there was a key to switch the sign of a number and memory. All results were displayed on a nice green Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) display.
The calculator works pretty well, maybe not very exciting but the red, white and blue colour scheme for the keys is pleasing.
A new arrival to the typewriter collection, and the thirtieth in the collection. I wasn't planning on getting a second typewriter this year so soon but have been a bit unwell so this is to cheer me up. And it is a rather pleasing Boots PT400. More of which in the coming weeks.
Have you see how small the telephone directory is these days? Its more like a pamphlet than a directory! In the olden days the telephone directory was a weighty tone, so thick that it was used as one of the tasks in televised strongman competitions, to tear directories in half! Even i could tear a current one though i'd struggle with the Birmingham directory from 1980 (as below).
The directory is mostly just lists of numbers, in alphabetical order of the phone line owner. It was interesting to look through at numbers i remember from decades ago (yet i still struggle to remember my own mobile number!) In the centre of the directory is the rather fabulous Green Pages detailing the various services of the General Post Office telephone service - Post Office Telecommunications (soon to become British Telecom) which we will look at in further detail at a later time.
As we saw earlier in this series, the margin-release key allows you to override the margin stops on a line, handy if you just need one or two extra characters to finish a word. However, there is no standard way to represent this function, Olympia used four dots on the Olympia SF Deluxe which isn't very descriptive but i suppose once you know what it means...
The latest typewriter in the collection, a Silver-Reed SR10, is a rather nice one. A new ribbon has been procured so we will fit it soon.
This recent addition to the calculator collection was manufactured in about 1976 and has a very pleasing 1970s beige and brown look. The calculator supports the four arithmetic functions only though displays numbers with a lovely red LED display.
The calculator does turn on though is pretty flakey. The slightest movement can clear the display. Like many calculators of this vintage the logic of the CPU seems to have suffered bit rot. It can display entered numbers but not really do anything with them.
