





















 
Other pages on this site:

Collapsing World: a blog
Conley Cameras

a history in postcards

Vintage ocean liner postcards

My non-typewriter photography

Genealogy, with a focus on the Seaver, Bilyeu, Amidon, and Lowell branches
This site is copyrighted. Please don't use any of the materials here without my permission.
|



|
Olivetti Studio 42
Serial #530226
c.1941

Studio 42 ad. (Click to enlarge)
It's hard to believe that this modern-looking typewriter was designed in 1935! The keyboard is definitely made for use in Germany or another German-speaking country (note "Um Schalter" and "Ruck-Taste" for Shift and Backspace, and the QWERTZ layout), but the characters are distinctly English. No umlauts to be found. Yet we find a British Pound sign, dollar and cent signs. Could this be an all-purpose European keyboard, essentially a foreign-language typewriter to Germans? Note, too, that this machine was produced smack in the midde of World War II. What sort of international correspondence was written on this?
|
|
|

Olivetti-Underwood 21
Serial # 708255

By this time in its life, Underwood wasn't really Underwood anymore. This is an Olivetti that happens to have the Underwood name on it. Mechanically, it is based on the Studio 44. |

Olivetti Praxis 48
Serial # 3010813
c.1966

The Praxis 48 is one of Ettore Sottsass's less famous designs for Olivetti. Although not terribly remarkable from a modern perspective, this electric was fairly radical when it was introduced in 1964. One wonders if there isnt a bit of Frank Lloyd Wright inspiration in the cantilevered keyboard and abundant right angles. The ribbon cover comes forward and tilts down in what may be a deliberate echo of the Studio 42. Inside, the ribbon spools are mounted almost vertically. Its power cord went missing long before I found the Praxis on a thrift store shelf, but it's nontheless a significant enough model in the history of typewriter design to merit displaying.
Download the manual for this typewriter here.
|

Olivetti-Underwood Studio 45
Serial # 1308853
1969
|

Olivetti Valentine S
Serial # 5837374
1969

1970 Olivetti Valentine poster.
Not the best specimen, but not a model for which I was willing to pay an extravagent price. Equal to the folding Corona for
the cuteness factor. It's designer, Ettore Sottsass said that the Valentine
was "for use any place except an office, so as not to remind anyone of
monotonous working hours but rather to keep amateur poets company on quiet
Sundays in the country or to provide a highly coloured object on a table
in a studio apartment". This is the only typewriter I know of to have
been sold as a fashion accessory in upscale clothing stores. Sottsass
also designed the Elea 9003 mainframe computer (1959). |
|

Olivetti-Underwood 319
See: Underwoods
|
|