Flea Market Treasure: The Remington Travel-Riter Typewriter (A Type-Cast)
Steemit's first Typewritten Typecast
I think it's time to bring the type-o-sphere onto Steemit.
If you'd like to explore the world of typewriters, typecasting, and really old technology in general, you couldn't do better than to start with Richard Polt's amazing blog: The Typewriter Revolution. (It's a thing, see? I'm not the only weirdo who types things out and then scans them in to share online.)
Right now I'm excited to share the story of my latest typewriter find with you all. Oh boy, has it got characters and characters!
Merry Christmas to everyone!
I hope your holiday is full of the noises and the stories you love best.
This was the most awesome blog ever! I loved its original typewritten form. Have you done a blog on your entire collection, I would love to see them. I usually sell a couple of typewriters a year. Fortunately we are in different countries!!!
Not yet - maybe I'll try to do an "eight typewriter challenge". It would give me an excuse to get them out of the closet!
Do you usually sell the typewriters mail-order? They're hard to ship. I've had a couple arrive damaged from poor packaging.
Yes I do, I've never had a problem, but I do pack very well. (Or rather, my packer does!) I buy bubble wrap by the 100m!
Typospherians around the world salute you!
I am a typewriter fanatic, and I have two electrics and two manuals right now. I make zines so I like to use them for the wonderful fonts and inkiness, and I also use typewriters for writing poetry.. it does something different for me creatively than computers. Off to go see the other typewriter person you mentioned! Following!
I remember the zine craze of the 90s - what a fun creative time that was. There used to be a magazine called Factsheet Five about all the self-published magazines people were putting out.
Good to see someone's still doing zines. Instant follow from me!
They still exist! And yes my zine was advertized in Factsheet Five back in the day. I never quit :). . from like 2005-2010 I had a bike-powered bookmobile with front facing shelves and i sold zines in the streets ! :) I am on vacation right now but when I get home I will be doing tutorials. I made one video just talking about how Steemit is like zine culture, so far.
You're a veteran, then. You'll do just fine here.
And that bike sounds amazing.
It is a rather bulky hobby you have! I well remember how awful the typing class back when I had to take it in high school. I swore I would never do anything that required any proficiency and preferably nothing that would make me use a typewriter ever again and then... computers!
My husband, however has a portable typewriter that he bought back in his university days that he refuses to get rid of despite the fact that he probably never used it much since then and definitely hasn't opened it in 30-40 years. I'd have a hard time guessing which closet's depths it is in now!
We do get attached to these machines - there's something about them that makes a person sentimental.
Did you know that Tom Hanks is a typewriter collector? He has hundreds!
They also come in awfully handy when the power goes out!
Hundreds? And that's why people with money buy large houses!
I guess I'd need to be more of a writer to fully understand the necessity of writing when the power goes out instead of just slowly going crazy due to internet withdrawals! Quite honestly, I go for art instead of the pen... I do seem to get a lot more results in a large variety of other projects when I'm internet impaired.
Yeah, the internet sabbatical does wonders for focus and attention. (That's another reason the typewriter is handy.)
Very true! Typing on the computer has a lot of distractions that end up being very time consuming.
Love the story! Where do you get replacement ribbons for your typewriters?
Staples sells them, believe it or not.
But I've had the best luck ordering from "Discount Printer Ribbon," who I found on eBay. They've got all kinds of colors and combinations (for the typewriters that do have a ribbon selector - you've probably seen the black and red ribbons before) and the weave of the fabric they use is tighter, so it makes a better impression.
I'd avoid the ones with the correction stripe - that stuff falls off and gunks up the works faster than you can type "The quick brown fox."
I've got an old one of these sitting in the basement. It's so heavy you could use it as a ship anchor. :)
Believe me - every time I've had to pack and move, I've thought about tossing the lot overboard.
What model typewriter do you have? Do you ever take it out and use it?
Oh man - i'll have to go dig around in boxes to find out! I never take it out - don't really have the space for it, i should though - there's something romantic about writing on one.
Don't go rummaging around on my account!
But if you do ever dig it up, why not make a post about it?
I find this kind of thing really cool. I wouldn't mind owning a typewriter myself! I was born too late to ever be in a room full of people typewriting like a press room or something of the sort and I feel my life needs some of that.
This was a really interesting kind of post, too. I had never seen typewritten content uploaded this way. It's creative.
Happy holidays! Steem on!
That really must have been an experience - can you imagine the noise of those old newsrooms? I'm sure it's easier to romanticize from our perspective, though. For the people at the time it was just a noisy workplace.
But surely that's when writing felt like you were really forging something.
Glad you like the format. It's satisfying to do, even though it's time consuming and makes the page impossible for search engines to index!
Yeah, that last bit does make it troublesome, but worth it, I think.
It must have been really annoying for a lot of people working in those hectic newsrooms full of clickety clacks, but I'm sure some people were able to appreciate it for what it was. Every click a hammer forging the blades of the truth (back when not everything was, as Lord Fanta would say, "FAKE NEWS!!!").
But yes, to be honest there are a lot of things we can romanticize nowadays that must have been terrible for someone actually living it. It happens. Glory is something we want to actively preserve, while the not so positive details have a way of preserving themselves.
Right. Everyone remembers the "Wild wild west," for example, but no one wants to talk about the outhouses!
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