Type-O-Matic

Tired of that same old forgettable e-mail message in Arial? Nostalgic for old technology and real postage stamps? Want to make a unique impression with your correspondence? Now you can with the new Type-O-Matic monospaced typewriter service. Just feed your text and mailing information into the official Type-O-Matic order form, and your lovingly hand-typed letter will arrive in your recipient's mailbox within days. For just £9.50 (approximately $15 US) your letter will be typewritten (up to 200 words) on white watermarked heavyweight writing paper with matching envelope and can be mailed anywhere (with appropriate Air Mail postage if necessary) to your recipient. Your confidentiality is assured and your letter may be sent anonymously if preferred. Any language using a Latin-based alphabet is available for this service, but spell-checking and silly cat photos are not included. For more details you can read the T-O-Ms' FAQs page.
      The face behind Type-O-Matic is Rob Bowker of Typewriter Heaven in the UK—and  the Typosphere. Rob is a long-standing advocate of the manual typewriter and has a stellar collection of working machines which will be the "print engines" driving the Type-O-Matic mailing service. You can see two of his workhorses below along with a sample letter from Stephen Fry. I'm tempted to place an order to send myself a letter—just to recall the happy feeling of finding a real letter in my mailbox with actual monospaced characters impressed upon the page once again.

The 1955 Olivetti Lexikon Elettrica

Originally published as a poster in 1936, this full page ad found 
in a 1955 Graphis magazine was designed by Giovanni Pintori for the Olivetti Lexikon Elettrica. Pintori was head of Olivetti's graphic design and advertising department at one time, and his name has become synonymous with the brand. So spare, so simple and so wonderful! See more of Pintori's work at SFMOMA and on ninionbooks flickrsite. SFMOMA also has a nice video about Pintori's poster work for Olivetti here.
:: Via the Letterology Archives

The Typewriter Alphabet

Great typewriter sleuthing by this team!
Thanks maschinengeschrieben!

Typewriter Accordion

From the 2005 New York School of Visual Arts exhibit, The Next big...Ding! which took place at Grand Central Station. Will the student who created this gem please come and reclaim it? 
::Via Poetic Home

Accordion in Typewriter Tin

Using an old typewriter tin for the container, Patricia Sahertian created an accordion structure tale of a proficient office typist who could type with lightning speed. The story was adapted from a 1952 educational film from Encyclopedia Britannica Films posted at the Internet Archive titled Office Courtesy: Meeting the Public. You can see more stills from Sahertian's book, Mayor No Match for Girl Typist here. She also has several other typewriter tin books here.

Paper Fashions

Little Women Stilletos.

Postcard SLR camera. 

Detail of Postcard SLR.

Roliflex Box Camera.

Typewriter, (not sure what kind however). 

The work of paper imagineer Jennifer Collier from the UK, who fashions these paper wonders with a sewing machine, much like any other fabric. All of her works are one-offs, but you can find some of it for sale here. I wonder if this is the sewing machine she uses:

::Via Illusion

Yours Truly

If you happen to have made it to the first Cincinnati Type-in recently, you may have seen these lovely letterheads from various typewriter companies. Richard P, featured the letterheads above on his blog Writing Ball. They were contributed by Peter Weil who writes the typewriter Ephemera column for Richard's journal ETCetera: Journal of the Early Typewriter's Association.  They are full-size scans available from himself truly.
      Taking a Q from Writing Ball, the 5 letterheads you see below from various Swiss typewriter companies were recently added by Shordzi on his Sommeregger blog. He kindly made them available for downloading here. Unfortunately there is no way to duplicate that metallic silver of the Baggenstos Hermes letterhead. Thanks for sharing guys!










The letterhead in the IBM Selectric below isn't available for download at this time. Nice display of Gill Sans Light, which would benefit even more from some kerning.

Tina on Olivetti

I don't know how I missed this earlier, but Tina Fey fingers the keyboard of a Lettera 22 Olivetti for the Spring edition of Bust Magazine in 2004. I bet she was right on key too!
Thanks OzTypewriter!

Die Cut Typewriter Booklet

Small die-cut Smith Typewriter booklet.
:: Via Sheaff Ephemera

Tin Types

Great little video on the tin packaging designs for old typewriter ribbons. First come the ribbon tins and then begins the typewriter collecting. Brought to you by Richard Polt, keeper of The Classic Typewriter Page, and owner of nearly 200 typewriters.

Typewriter Logos

:: From Shordzi's flickr collection of typewriter logos and decals.

Notes from the Underwood

Jack Kerouac once used this Underwood typewriter above in his early writing days. Somehow I find it hard to imagine him typing his long scroll of One The Road on this Underwood however. He later upgraded to a mint green Hermes 3000 typewriter. Writer Larry McMurty also wrote many of his novels on a Hermes.

The Swiss-engineered Hermes 3000 was an instant success when it was first introduced in 1958. It was considered to be one of the most sophisticated portable typewriters by many in analogville. My late aunt Frances endowed me with her truly mint Hermes, used only on Sundays for an occasional sharp-witted letter to the editor. She kept it clean and oiled and in the original mint green case when not in use. It still has very low miles for a typewriter of it's day, though lately I am itching to key up some ascii art on it one of these days soon.

       On another keynote, the New York Times reported today that the US Marshall Service recently sold the Unabomber's portable L3 Smith Corona typewriter at auction for $22,025. Granted, it's a handsome typewriter, but I cannot comprehend what the attraction is for this murderabilia as you can get a lot of typewriter on the open market for that fee and one that doesn't have a lot of bad ju-ju goin' on. Even so, I'm sure there are no really bad typewriters—only really bad typists.

Find other typewriters of literary note at Biblioklept, which is where I found the monster typewriter below which personally belonged to another famed Beat novelist, William Burroughs. %^)