Monday, July 13, 2015

A Blickensderfer by any other name would be a Remington

With the radio put on hold so that I may read up on vacuum tube theory and early electronic repair, my newest acquisitions finally showed up at my doorstep.

I have long desired a Blickensderfer, but they always either go for just a bit too much money, or don't have a qwerty keyboard. But, out of sheer dumb luck, I found a machine which fit both categories nicely.



Its missing some things, such as the wire paper bail and (due to my inadequate knowledge of Blickensderfer design) maybe some other things that are not apparent to me yet. The carriage currently slides freely from side to side, the space-bar doesn't work, and the L key depresses with any key press on the right side of the keyboard. But for the price I got it for, I don't mind tearing it apart to clean and fix it. I saw a video of a Blickensderfer in action over at Oztypewriter (The ultimate source of typewriter knowledge on the internet), and was surprised by the visual smoothness of the action. Having now one of these in my possession (They are tiny as hell, by the way), I must say the action on these small machines could not be any more smooth or snappy. A pity there are no Blick-Electrics around to be had, as I can imagine they would have been so easy to use, a single secretary could do the work of one hundred others.


The Rem-Blick was not the only machine I gained today, however. I also was able to snap up this lovely blue Underwood 4 bank for a very affordable price, and I must say it is in very nice condition. Blue being my favorite colour, I couldn't resist anyway.



As a side note, why is blue so hard to photograph correctly? It always ends up looking black.

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