Two Tin Toy Typists Tirelessly Tapping

On occasion of today's 146th anniversary of the typewriter patent, these two typing ladies recount its history while sitting with their textbook posture tirelessly tapping away. Both of these mechanical novelty toys are made of litho embossed tin measuring only 2.5" wide. By squeezing the mechanism on the reverse, the woman's arm and hand move up and down at the keyboard, producing a loud clicking sound. A small prong at the bottom permits each to stand upright. One is from Germany and designed and printed with greater detail. The second, nearly identical typist with the deco-patterned dress is from Italy. Both were sold recently in separate auctions from Hake's Americana & Collectible auctions for undoubtedly more than their original cost. You go girls!

Planet Type

This ain't no disco ball. No, but it could be, however I actually like to think of it as "Planet Type" orbiting the celestial Typosphere. In truth, it is an IBM Selectric type ball, spinning on its axis, or more commonly known as an "IBM golf ball", so named as it resembles one in size. The type ball was originally engineered for IBM's Selectric Typewriter in the early 1960s, and offered an interchangeable typewriter font which rotated and tilted into position before striking each letter onto the page. The first monospaced type ball fonts came in a variety of styles and two sizes: 10 or 12 characters-per-inch. These features represented an enormous innovation for IBM at that time, and a rather rudimentary introduction to the world of desktop publishing.

Source: IBM100 | Icons of Progress

This sweet little orbital type ball is actually the first of its kind I've come across. If memory serves, the IBM type balls typically came packaged in their own little clear plastic cases, ready for instant installation, so you could switch fonts with ease. I purchased this miniature "type planet" globe from a dealer who knew less about it than I, but presumed it was never something IBM actually distributed. 
     Soon after discovering the little "Planet Type" several weeks ago, my old friend and typewriter devotee, Alyson Kuhn, coincidentally shared the happy news of a recent endowment to her type ball library of fonts, given to her from typewriter "Repair Saint", Gerry Wallace, in gratitude for her many referrals. 

Not only was I impressed with the news of her kind endowment, but I had to inquire about her lovely personal stationery. She responded in kind with a second decorative envelope filled with various examples of her crested notepads which were designed by Michael Osborne, and letterpress printed onto Crane's papers by Judith Berliner of Full Circle Press. For the full background story read her earlier report on Felt & Wire.

The next handsomely engineered enclosure within this mailing, was Alyson's Alphagram (or Alysongram), with letterpress printed alphabet, vertically arranged to match the line-spacing of her typewriter. Her delightful note was typed in the lovely "Business Script", which I find quite expressive and characteristic of many mid-century script fonts in use at that time, such as Brush Script and Kaufmann. 

The last enclosure was a save-the-date promotional postcard for Ex Postal Facto 2014, an upcoming 3-day conference celebrating mail art, faux philatelics and postal modernism, to be held in San Francisco in mid-February. This could be a type ball for postal art people. 

NaNoWriMo ReDo

November is National Novel Writing Month; or NaNoWriMo, for those in the know. Now in its 14th year, NoNoWriMo originated to encourage creative writing "from anyone who has ever thought fleetingly about writing a novel" according to their website. The goal is to complete 50,000 words or less in 30 days. 
     Rob Bowker of the entertaining Typewriter Heaven blog in the UK, recently checked in from the Typosphere to send me his own surrogate version inspired by this annual event. He created his first NaNo typewritten book (NaNoTyBo?), The Micro-Book Typed, and completed it by the 4th of November.

Typing on a 1950s Olivetti Lexikon at 12 characters per inch leaves little room for a wordy text, so Bowker wisely chose to just write a DIY textbook of sorts, on how to type a 16-page book using only a single sheet of paper. Written in concise language, he answers the questions of Why and How to go about typing a small book on a typewriter. Bowker, who frequently types blog posts on one of his many typewriters, also provides helpful hints on formatting monospaced text and creating illustrations using characters, pattern and texture. The Micro-Book Typed is currently available from Issuu as a free downloadable PDF ready to print, fold, stitch and trim. Bowker suggests more of his typewritten chapbooks, possibly with spreads and even illustrations, may be in the pipeline soon.

In more recent posts, Bowker offers a number of other downloadable PDFs of some fun DIY typewriter "Graphikubes" from his personal collection. As an added bonus, he also suggests a beer-of-the-day in many of his frequent posts—though not certain if he advocates drinking while typing however. 

This gif was made by Ryan (Magic Margin) Adney within an hour after Bowker 
originally posted his first typewritten micro-book. 

A Trip to Typewriter Town

American poet William Jay Smith learned to type at Brown's Business School in 1935 and later began playing with typewriter illustrations (often referred to as ascii art) to amuse his young children. In 1968 he was appointed the 19th Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress and wrote over ten collections of poetry, of which two went on to be nominated for the National Book Award. He published over twenty books of children's verse during his career, illustrated by many such distinguished artists as Caldecott winner Roger Duvoisin and AIGA medalist Ivan Chermayeff. In 1960 he wrote the children's book of verse, Typewriter Town, peppered with his own keyboarded typewriter illustrations. It is a visit to a world filled with monospaced glyphs and characters of every sort.   

::Images via Arthur Van Kruining's Flickrstream and the yhanblr tumblr.

The 1952 Typewriter Type Issue

In June 1952, Print magazine devoted an entire issue to the typewriter, "a machine to supersede the pen." The front cover, designed by George A. Shealy, cleverly illustrates the concept of an "imprint" from the artwork on the back cover. The endsheets are a nice pattern of alphabetical U&lc typewriter text. The design and layout of the remaining interior pages are far less interesting, but the content compensates for this shortfall. It begins with a short historical background of the typewriter, including an amusing letter Mark Twain typed for his brother in 1874, about "this new fangled writing machine." Historical sidenote: Twain's letter was typed just prior to his investment in the Paige Compositor, an early keyboard-operated typesetting machine that was soon overshadowed by the Linotype machine.

Because of the variable widths of the letters in our Roman alphabet, monospaced typewriter fonts have always had their limitations. I thought it was interesting to learn that the Crandall Typewriter Company was working on a proportionately spaced typewriter as early as 1881, but it was over fifty years later before even a modest success was achieved. In 1941, the legendary type designer W.A. Dwiggins spelled out some of his own challenges in designing new faces for the modern typewriter. He acknowledged the typewriter was for writing letters and not for composing books, and therefore shouldn't parody them. 

   

Companies could choose to have their trademark assigned to a customized key on their keyboard. Is that a real trademark, or the first smiley face emoticon above?

Ornamental typewriting was "used as training practice for aspiring stenographers." Had I known that artistic stenography was part of their job description, I might have considered this vocation. I do especially love the decorative borders created by the overlapping characters.

Remington Rand developed The Dual-Rite attachment to apply the first bold-weight strokes to specific typewriter characters, giving seniors everywhere even more an incentive to type everything in boldface ALL CAPS.

The Justowriter adopted the use of code for aligning text on a page, a complex maneuver at the time.

Inspector Remington here had the envious job as a poison pen typewriter sleuth. Below is a vast range of showings of the many faces designed for Remington and IBM typewriters.

Concrete Poem

Long-time Letterology fan Rob Bowker of Typewriter Heaven, home of the Type-o-Matic, sent me this lettres trouvées link today which gave me a good laugh. He stumbled on this cap H on what passes for a hill in his part of the Typosphere. It could be an H for Hazard, or for Hill as he suggests. Or maybe it's just a minimalist concrete poem. 
     Bowker can frequently be found test-driving one of his many typewriters and tasting local beers (is this legal?) Occasionally he will post some great typewriter ephemera such as this recent gem he entitles Magic Fingers. It is a keyboard template from a Halda Portable Typewriter owner's manual.

Bowker recently shared some of his own keyboard handiwork at Typewriter Heaven, which he calls Spiralcast. It's a story about belt-driven turntables and typing, but I think it qualifies as a concrete poem. Since Bowker happens to be a member of The Society for the Ethical Treatment of Typewriters, I trust he wasn't drinking and driving when he put his Olivetti Lettera 32 through all of the tight curves. I can't even read it without getting dizzy.  

Winter Poetry

From the top...as the snow flies:
"Jack Frost" by Lisa Park on Bēhance.
"Play This" by Geof Huth from Notation Notes.
"The Roof" by Cathal McCabe in The New Yorker, November 19, 2012.
"Il Pleut" by Guillaime Apollinaire, from Apollo13Art.
"hail, rain, snow" from swissserif.