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Other pages on this site:
Collapsing World:
a blog
My
photography
Conley Cameras
A Trip Through Sears, Roebuck & Co
Greetings from
Rochester: a history in postcards
Vintage
ocean liner postcards
The
Seaver/Lowell Genealogy
This site is copyrighted. Please don't use any of the materials here without my permission.
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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?
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Olivetti-Underwood 21
Serial # 688187
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.
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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 Scottsass 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. Scottsass
also designed the Elea 9003 mainframe computer (1959). |
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Olivetti-Underwood 319
See: Underwoods
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