Monday, May 19, 2014

May 19, 2014 - The Machine That Started It All




14 comments:

  1. Good to see just how the madness began. :)

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    1. Ha! Yeah, this is it. This also begs the question, do you recall your typewriter epoch machine? :-)

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  2. Ahhhhh! My blog is actually named after my originator. Well, after my first online question about repair when I discovered that I had a platen that seemed infinitely filthy and took hours to clean.

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    1. I love it. While this sexy little Underwood is the key to a lot of typewriter madness, but my real inculcation into typewriterdom was the Selectric. If I had named my blog based on that experience, the title would not be fit to print. :-) LOL

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  3. I have a feeling that many of us have nearly identical origin stories about a situation where we see some machine languishing unwanted (about to be tossed out, sold for some absurdly low price, whatever) and something just clicks in our heads:
    "I don't even know what that is good for, but it's beautiful and it must be saved."
    Then the real Kool-Aid moment happens when you roll in a sheet and type for the first time...

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    1. Yesss! As I recounted the memories of having that machine in the house, but almost being afraid to touch it, I just have to chuckle. I was really concerned about its fragility ... I just didn't give it any thought. Thanks to my son, what was a thorn in on our shelves became a rose.

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  4. My 'problem' started when I somehow stumbled onto Polt's "Classic Typewriter Page" site, sometime in 2005 or so. Not sure how I got there, but my life was never the same afterward...

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    1. That's great. I know that Ian's mania was fueled by Richard's Classic Typewriter Page as well. Funny that we're all geographically so close, when in Internet terms, that is certainly not a factor. :-)

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  5. great origin story. I love that the typewriter has reached across multiple generations in your family.
    and I have to also admit that Polt's website was my rabbit hole as well.

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    1. So ... Richard is kind of like Morpheus in the Matrix. :-) Hmmmm.

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  6. Mine was seeing an Alpina that reminded me of an elephant's head. Still to own one though. :)

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    1. Heh - yeah, I can see that. Ahhh ... the elusive Alpina. :-) Best of luck on your quest!

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  7. Oooh, I like these origin stories! Thanks for sharing Brian. And how great that it has become a family addiction!

    I can still remember mine (http://blog.spiderwebz.nl/?p=914). And the excitement! Finally I was getting one! And then discovering the Typosphere really made it a true addiction.

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    1. Awesome! Yes, the Typosphere is certainly helpful in amplifying the addiction. :-) We just got our first Olivetti Lettera 22 - and that machine certainly lives up to its hype... and that 45 does have that "retro" attraction, for sure.

      As for the family, I was probably the biggest skeptic, being a techno-hungry guy, driven by the latest digital gadgets, micro-controllers, computers, and such. It has been a real grounding experience - grounding me back to my roots... hardware. I love hardware. I love the physical - and the typewriter is the only machine I know of (within reason) that augments the human mind in the way that it does. Simply fascinating.

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