The sound of words on paper

There seem to be quite a lot of websites out there about retro bits and pieces for use in the modern world: typewriters, telephones, cameras, cars, even furniture and clothing.

I wonder if it's a bit like the SCA's unofficial motto of The Middle Ages as they ought to have been, with colour, pageantry and all the other Romantick frills and furbelows, but not forgetting the sort of minor comforts summarised by Cohen the Barbarian as "Good dentistry and soft toilet paper". Not having to worry much about Black Death is a definite plus, too.

So now you can live vicariously in the Film Noir-ish 1930s and '40s, and when it gets boring, the 21st century is just a change of stuff away. But there are some objects that have an appeal beyond being a refurbished vintage shell around a modern digital interior; inside and out, they still do exactly what they were originally built for, thirty, sixty, ninety years ago.

Manual typewriters…

They haven't changed too much since they took on their present recognisable shape - although the really early machines were, let's put it diplomatically, distinctly idiosyncratic. Almost all the websites I've looked at concentrate on the manual variety, with electrics, and even more so electronic word-processors, relegated to little more than a footnote. That's probably because a computer can do the electric/onic side so much better than even the most advanced late model WP, although for some people typewriters ancient or modern all share the advantage of having no Internet connection permanent distraction attached to them. The essays on Richard Polt's Classic Typewriter Page are good examples of this viewpoint, and rather less acerbic than another opinion I've read on the same topic.

I wouldn't mind getting a manual typewriter sometime next year, just for the hell of it, and one rather more solid than what Diane discovered, cute though it is. One of the ones I used when I started writing - and no, not a toy "Petite" (does anyone remember the "just like the real world but Petite" TV ads of some years back?) Anyway, my kid sister had a much more impressive "Lilliput", with metal casing, metal chassis, metal type-bars - not so much a toy as a portable in potentia. I'm thinking more of something like my Dad's massive Remington Noiseless desktop machine, which I could barely lift, never mind wobble on the desk as I typed, or the neat little Hermes Rocket portable my parents bought for my 21st birthday.

MyTypewriter.com has them both, at least as I post these links, and a bunch of others besides - but I can't help noticing how the prices have increased more than somewhat since each machine was new. Well, that's not quite fair; adjusted for inflation over the years, they're probably about the same in terms of relative cost. But the transatlantic shipping charge for that Remington is likely to be scary, and so far I haven't found a source in Ireland or the UK for something reconditioned to a similar high standard.

In the meanwhile, I've already got a whole bunch of Typewriter fonts and a neat little program that makes all the right noises. All I need now is some virtual Tipp-Ex and we're all set…