One of the great pleasures of having an Olympia SG1, other than the fact that it is a great typer with neat features, is how easy it is to take off the carriage and to remove the body. This makes it easy to clean and easy to adjust (uppercase and lowercase alignment, for example). My…

I stopped by the antique mall on my way home from work today. I ran into Eric, from whom I’ve purchased a few typewriters at great prices. In fact, I bought my favorite machine, an Olympia SG1, from him. It was dirty and missing a tab key, but it’s in tip-top shape now and I…

I’ve had some recent luck with typewriters. My new Hammond Multiplex is my prized possession. I had wanted one of those for quite some time. Sometimes, however, one stumbles on a typewriter that was never on the radar. I picked up this Urania Model 4 (or 5?) today. It was manufactured in 1924 or 1925….

The mechanics of the Hammond Multiplex are fascinating. It came with four exchangeable typefaces, which can be switched out with ease. One can see why they stuck around for a while as Underwood, Remington, LC Smith, and Royal took over the world in the 1920s. I’ve cleaned it up a bit, and I re-stained the…

Correction: “Energized,” not “enervated.”

Olympia typewriters, which are more numerous in the United States than other German machines (due to their West German origin), offer a range of typefaces (i.e. fonts). I’ve had good fortune in finding machines in excellent shape. I lugged another SM5 back from Texas. The SM series is portable in terms of size, but carrying…

We drove down to Bandera, Texas to meet Gary Taylor about his Hammond Multiplex, his last typewriter from his father’s (George Taylor) typewriter business (repair and sales). Gary runs the Western Trail Antiques. I ran into him the other day at the antique mall. We started talking typewriters (no fish biting at the mall). He…