Pencils making the grade

Personally i always use a HB pencil (a Staedtler one natch) but what does HB actually mean? This code refers to the hardness of the pencil graphite. The grading (in Europe at least, the US and elsewhere use different grade classification schemes) runs from at least 9B - which are the softest pencils - useful for artwork shading - through to 9H or beyond - these are so hard they can puncture holes in plate armour. B stands for Blackness and H for Hardness. There is also an F which is between HB and H in hardness, the F refers to the fact the graphite can be sharpened to a fine point.

This code has been used since the early 19th century. However, there is no standard for pencil hardness. HB or 2H from one manufacturer might be slightly different to another manufacturer. I find the Staedtler HB suits my purposes perfectly, as you would expect from a grade which is right in the middle!

Commodore 887D

This is a typical mid-1970s calculator, and can be compared to the Commodore 776M also in the collection. The 887D is a very similar calculator in many ways though noticably wider. 

That extra girth allowed for an eight digit red LED display. The calculator was powered by a Commodore GRBP-89 CPU. As well as the four standard operations and percentage the calculator also had an Exchange key (EX) which reversed an operation. My 887D still has it's box, though fairly worn. The box has kept the calculator in good condition though.

SEVENTY update

An updated video of me typing on my Silver-Reed SEVENTY typewriter.

Operator?

Before new fangled digital telephone exchanges, people had to have their calls connected by hand. Telephone exchanges would have teams of switchboard operators (usually women as men were found to not have the patience and personal skills to deal with the general public!)

The operator had a high panel in front of them with rows and rows of female jacks (holes basically). When a telephone user made a call then one of the lamps above a jack would light up. The operator would insert a plug into the jack to speak to the caller and find out whom they wanted to call. The operator would then insert another plug into one of the other jacks to complete the circuit and allow the call to be made. 

Although this worked well it did not scale and was quickly overwhelmed by demand, especially in big cities were there were soon thousands of telephone lines by the early 1900s. Automatic exchanges began operating in Britain in 1912 though the last manual exchanges were not turned off until the 1960s, and continued in use on a smaller scale in internal business switchboards for longer.

Below are two examples of this kind of exchange switchboard seen in the Birmingham Museum collection.

Why these paper sizes?

Whether you use A4 paper in your typewriter, or - as God intended - quarto, the question remains: why are paper sizes... well this size? The answer to this (well in the case of US 8.5 x 11 inch paper anyway) lies in the history of how paper was made. In the early days of paper making it was largely done by hand. Workers dipped paper mold frames into vats of wood pulp. Once dried, the wood pulp in the frames was now a sheet of paper. It was found that frames which were forty-four inches wide were best for the workers to handle with their outstretched arms.

Each 44 inch sheet was folded into four to give four eleven inch wide sheets of paper. Naturally use of the typewriter and later printing technologies helped to standardise paper sizes but basically it is largely down to how long people's arms are!

Maritsa

Time for a new arrival to the typewriter collection, and it is a Maritsa 30. The first Maritsa machine i have bought and is a fine late 1980s typewriter. I've now got both of the manual typewriters which were on sale in the 1990 Littlewoods catalogue!

Galfa 80/3

This is a mid-1970s calculator which looks very similar to Rockwell's offerings of the period such as the 24RD-II. Well that shouldn't really be a surprise, if you turn it over you will see a Rockwell sticker on the back! 

The calculator is a bit battered but works perfectly well. It has the four arithmetric functions and percentages, though lacks memory. Numbers are displayed on a vacuum fluorescent display.

Typing on a Brother Deluxe 800

Time for another typing video, with a new overhead camera angle which i think works quite well.