Another selection of typewriters for sale, this time from the Littlewoods catalogue for the Winter of 1990 and 1991. This time two manual and two electric machines were on sale. The Smith Corona XL 1500 looks very similar to my XE1630. The Maritsa looks a nice machine, i must see if i can get one in 2024...
In this series as well as examining keys which typewriters have and computers do not we also look at the opposite. We have already established that many typewriters, usually small portable ones, did not have a key for the number 1. Therefore, as it is common for the exclamation mark to share the number 1 on computer keyboards, it should be no surprise that many typewriters also did not have a way to type !
So, how could angry letter writers of their day make their points without liberal use of the exclamation mark? Well there was a clever way to cheat. Unlike on computer screens, on a typewriter multiple characters can be printed in the same location. So to create a ! you simply type a full stop . then backspace then type a dash '.
In HTML there is the TT tag which displays text using the "teletype font", though some assume this also means typewriter. It is sometimes assumed that typewriter "fonts" or typefaces are all the same, or very similar in any case. Something like the Courier New font used in this blog.
In fact every manufacturer tended to have their own typeface, even individual typewriter models could have a unique typeface. Below are a few examples from some of the machines in my collection. They are all pretty similar (except maybe the Tippa's) but all were different in size, width and strength.
I have had the Olivetti Lettera 32 for a while now so how is the typewriter like? It is a fine machine that works pretty well with just the occasional slow return by a typebar, the typing is pretty clear and crisp though there isn't a lot of excitement i.e. noise. Aesthetically i am not a big fan of it, though it is the most 60s/70s colour you can imagine, but there are uglier machines in the collection so i can live with that.
There are two Boots branded typewriters in the collection, so why not a Boots calculator as well? The Boots 224 Memory is a nice late 1970s machine with a square root and percentage functions to go along with the basic four arithmetric functions. As the name implies, the calculator has memory too and works fine, numbers displayed using an eight digit VFD display. This is in fact a rebranded Casio Memory B-1.
