1930 Royal Portable Typewriter, Chestnut

Gentleman and Gentlewomen of the Vox Chaotica Council! LOOK! LOOK AT IT! IT IS SOOOOO PRETTY! SOOOOOOOOO PREH-TAY!

I've talked a bit before about how much I enjoy typewriters, and I think I even said that my favourite model was the 1930s Royal Model O Portable. [Editor's Note: Cutter took a few minutes to check this, and can confidently say that it is true]. Semi-unfortunately, my new (old) typewriter is not a Portable Model O, but rather its predecessor. I am speculating that the Model O was named such because the Portable was technically Model P (according to the serial numbers), and our forefathers were terrible at naming things, so they picked a letter close to P. Yep.

So I took it in to a local repair shop about three weeks ago for a number of reasons. First, the number 9 key is not fully connected. If you hit the key, the carriage will move one space over, as if it typed, but the hammer does not move. So a small linkage parting happened sometime in the twenty to fifty years since this was last used. Second, it's freaking 80 years old. it needs oiling, dusting, and a whole heck of a lot of general maintenance. Third, the carriage is a bit tight when returning—even Mr. Bill Wahl (the repairman) was like, "Yeah, I'm not sure what's causing that right now, but if you want to use it for any period of time, you're going to want to fix that." Then we learned a couple new things from his brief overview of this lovely machine: the platen has dried out enough that continued use would make the hammers pierce the paper rather than imprint ink onto it, the pressure rollers underneath have dried out to the point where they're nearly hexagonal (and therefore will not push the paper through well), and the rollers on top—which are evidently called paper fingers, but I don't believe that—are in the same condition, and will not allow paper to feed (I have to tug the paper back into place after each return so I don't end up writing slanted or over my last line).

Anyway, I am super excited for this genius piece of mechanical engineering to be returned to its former glory so I can proceed to get kicked out of every coffee shop in the greater Phoenix area. Yes, even the hipster ones.

tl;dr Cutter really likes typewriters. He also wants to know if you have or are interested in typewriters! Send him pictures or whatever if you do, or ask him questions about it? It's one of the few things he can talk about at length without noticing how glazed his conversation partner has become (the others being Norse mythology and the Legend of Zelda).