More on Vienna. I had found a thrift mall on Google Maps, so having some time to myself I strolled across town and discovered a Carla thrift store. Note that in Austria they often use English for adverts, as the sign announced “second hand, second chance”. Inside I saw a typewriter brand I’d never seen, JAPY.
Japy P68, a French made version of the Oliver/Patria/Swissa line. I bought it for 30 EU. It was in remarkable condition for being made in 1956, complete in the wooden case, and I was able to carry it onto the plane as hand luggage for the return trip.
Although French made, it has German characters, which is all good but for the Z-Y exchange that slows me down a little. Back at the hotel I sat down and typed a short tale inspired by the current goings on. I was tagging alone with my son, a psychiatrist, who was attending a big conference. He had toured Sigmund Freud’s house the previous day, and was regaling me with other psychiatry trivia, one in particular that involved a well known figure reputed to have always left his room door open in the hope that one day he would encounter a beautiful stranger, or something like that! Well, he might have, but I don’t know if he did….
I recently discovered in Austria, or was it in Hungary? that an Americano is a cup of drip coffee. What Starbucks calls an Americano is actually a doppo longo, made in an espresso machine. But I suppose that as long as Starbucks can sell you a cup of coffee, they don’t really give a crap about being technically accurate. However, it seems that Starbucks is dwindling here, even though they’re still everywhere, only less so these days. They’re even in Europe, which is puzzling, until you realize that anything from here is semi-exotic over there. I saw so many NY ball caps there I was flabbergasted. I wonder of any of the wearers of those caps are aware that the NY stands for the Yankees baseball team?
All that aside, most of the cafes I saw on a recent jaunt to Budapest and Vienna, were not chain stores but locally owned small cafes. Although I no longer drink coffee because it disagrees with my stomach, I nevertheless had a few lattes in Buda and Vienna, which did me no harm and were terribly delicious. Here is a lovely bookshop cafe in Budapest that drew me in to have a snoop. There were a few typewriters in the window, so I couldn’t very well not go in.
Olympia Simplex - never seen that one beforeMercedes, the typewriter! Not a Benz.
As for the cafe life, one could live it to the full in Budapest or Vienna, if one could stand drinking that much coffee, or – heavens! that much lager beer. Yes, cafes sell beer there. Beer is not a crime in Europe it seems. Sadly, it all tastes the same, pretty much, but it is beer after all.
they said this was a sandwich!
Although I had a small sketchbook with me the whole time, I was generally too busy having coffee, beer, langos, goulash, and walking my butt off all day long, to bother to get out the watercolours. But one fine afternoon I was wandering around on my own in the north part of Vienna and I sat down for a beer at a cafe and made a sketch. There were cafes on either side of my cafe, and everywhere there were people in theses cafes. When I returned home I was out downtown walking and I passed a number of sidewalk cafes, all of which were empty. It seems that all we do here is work! Where are all the cafe crowds?
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted about typewriters. I still use them and have a whole bunch despite having sold off many in the last year. Recently I came across a very nice Skyriter that I had to have. These are great machines, although not in the same class as Hermes or Olympia, but still useful. They are the VW bugs of the typoverse I suppose – cheap, flimsy and yet they endure.
my latest typothing
On Wednesdays I try to write a song, whether or not I feel like it. This is what discipline is! Some songs are better than others…like some Wednesdays. Anyhow, this Wednesday was a real pain, as it was filled with aggravation from some people whom I had to deal with. The silver lining is that it gave me some lyrics. Google AI informs me this is a classic country song, but it should probably have at least one reference to mothers, beer, trucks, women, or jail in order to qualify as genuine country. I decided to get out the Skyriter and bang out some lyrics, as I find that somehow having a typewriter is often a liberating experience for my brain.
I recently picked up this typewriter, which was sold by Commodore. It was actually made by the Czechoslovak typewriter manufacturer Zbrojovka Brno NP. It was supposedly assembled in Canada, or was that Jamaica? We may never know the answer! History keeps many secrets.
The shell is embossed MADE IN CANADA – but:The rear frame says Made in Jamaica W.I.
Commodore Business Machines was founded long before the days of the personal computer. Polish immigrant and Holocaust survivor Jack Tramiel moved to the USA and bought a typewriter repair shop in NY city after WWII. Then he began importing typewriters from Czechoslovakia, and assembling them in Toronto, due to restrictive American import laws to do with Commies. Whatever next? Tariffs on Democracies!
Tramiel turned Commodore into a billion dollar computer enterprise, then eventually left the company in a dispute with the guy who had taken control when they had run into financial problems. In the interim, Commodore invented one of the first micro computers, the PET, and then followed with the VIC-20, which sold over one million units long before Apple was a force to be reckoned with. Commodore went on to build a number of successor models like the C-64 that might well have conquered the world and prevented Apple Computer from becoming what it is today. Who knows what really happened? But Commodore ran into trouble, and went bust. Meanwhile Tramiel founded Atari! Where did that go?
A few wrong turns and some bad luck is all that stood between a world full of Commodore computers and the omnipresent iPhone. Commodore even had their own microchip production facility! Apple had to purchase chips from outside sources.
Well, sometimes little things like timing and one bad decision can make the difference between failure and world domination. Sic hodierna historiae lectio finitur.
I picked this old camera up at a Sally Ann today for $12; only $2 more than the same thing cost me in 1968. The Argus C-4 was my first 35mm camera, and I bought it from my Dad for $10 when we went on a cross Canada train trip from Montreal to Vancouver. Those were the days when trains ran across Canada for the purpose of taking passengers to destinations. Nowadays this same train runs for the sole purpose of luxury sight-seeing at a ridiculous cost! I was fortunate to have had the experience in the days when it was “affordable”. I’m sure it was expensive, but not like a cruise on the QEII.
These days, nothing is affordable, by most definitions. But a classic camera for $12 was irresistible, especially since it was in working order. I used the Argus for a year or two before my mother bought me a far better camera as a present with her inheritance from my Grandpa, a Minolta SRT101. Like the Argus, I eventually sold that, but not until I had used it for 25 years and worn it out. Years later I acquired another SRT101 as a nostalgic replacement for the original, and it still takes great pictures. Film costs are high however, so I don’t indulge very often.
1968 Canadian family on vacation (me with Argus C-4 camera)
That’s me, here in Victoria BC on holiday with my Mom and sister, about to take a photograph with the Argus C-4. One had to be careful to set the shutter speed and aperture correctly as everything was done manually. I soon learned how to take pictures. It was expensive to use film, and one didn’t take ten shots to ensure that one was good. One shot had to suffice. Everyone on the planet now has a far better camera in their pocket, but most of them have no clue about the underlying function or science or what “exposure” means, etc, so they take dozens of pictures when one would do.
That said, there are many skilled photographers, and lots of them use phones to take great pictures. But we lost something along the way, and hence my nostalgia for the old camera. This camera was a treasure in its day, and it still feels like a treasure now, looking at it and taking empty photos, using the split image rangefinder, winding the shutter and pressing the release button, not only hearing the shutter but feeling it snap open and closed. These tactile sensations have been lost with the miracle of digital tech, which now produces a fake shutter sound when one “snaps” a photo with a phone.
One more observation; this was made in USA. I bought it anyways. Canadians and Americans should be friends! It has been said that this camera was the poor man’s Leica, even though it sold for $90, a good sum of money in the 1950’s by any measure. So at $12 today it’s a heck of a bargain.
An old camera has similarities to old typewriters; they both rely only on mechanical parts, and they seem to appeal to people who appreciate their aesthetic qualities, despite the fact that these old machines are obsolete technically and in general are either impossible to get repaired, or else very expensive to maintain, if a repairman can even be found. The old sleeping cars have gone away too, and only a few remain. How great would it be to go on a trip on a train with a portable typewriter and an old rangefinder camera loaded with film. One could write a book, and fill it with photos!
Me with the Argus in my hand, Mom and Sis, in front of the traintop view of the Argus C-4
If you’re wondering what has happened to this blog, fear not, I have been hard at work writing and recording songs of late, among other things. The typewriter collection is down to a mere 57 machines as I slowly sell them off to new enthusiasts just beginning their their typing odysseys. Selling typewriters is a great way to meet interesting people! However, I am no longer buying typewriters for the moment, although that may change when there are only a few left! I need only one with which to write the current novel on, but that is also stalled due to the switch to songwriting. My typewriter is right here beside me though, and whenever I get going again I will complete this book. Here is a musical excerpt from the book, where the hero goes to see the gypsy Madame Zora for the 2nd time.
All Saint’s Day/The Gypsy
As if that ain’t enough, here is my Christmas song for 2024. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!
A recent thrift shop find was a very unusual 60 year old Japanese guitar. I bought it because I liked the funky look of it. A search by photo turned up some amazing facts that led me to this clip above of an Australian band from 1959 that featured rhythm by typewriter. That band was led by it’s star singer, Col Joye. He had a line of guitars made in Japan with his name on the label. This is one of them.
My Col Joye guitar after repairs.
It resembles a French gypsy style guitar in construction, having an arched top with ladder bracing as well as a fret marker at the 10th fret. It sounds like a gypsy jazz guitar, very bright and loud. The rosette is a work of art, with delicate inlaid mother of pearl, seriously fancy for a presumably low cost item. The neck has no truss rod, but it does have an inlaid wood bar that acts as reinforcing. The neck did not warp or bow, but slowly bent from the heel over 60 years, as even the best of guitars often do.
I removed and reset the neck, made a new bridge and did a lot of fret levelling to make it playable. One site stated that Tommy Emmanuel owned a Col Joye as his first guitar. How this came to Canada beats me, as they were not sold here.
Neck removal by steam injection. Lucky for me they used hide glue. I used hide glue to reassemble too!Rosette and pick guard detail
I found numerous videos of Col Joye and his band, but the one that amazed me was the performance of Oh Yeah, Uh Huh, which had a guy typing rhythm. The song is forgettable, to be kind, but the video should be priceless to typewriter aficionados. As for the guitar, it is the rarest guitar I have ever owned, and likely one of the few left in the world (just guessing).
Page from an archived Australian website that once had the same guitar for sale.
Tommy Emmanuel, if you are out there, I will gladly trade you this guitar for one you own!
I found this ancient Royal 1 that was in terrible shape cosmetically, but upon inspection I wagered that it was fixable, so I bought it. Liberal applications of Deep Creep penetrating oil helped free up many sticking parts, along with some elbow grease and a wire wheel on my Dremel to remove the surface rust. There were two broken parts; the advance lever linkage and the “ear” of the yoke that limits the travel of same. I made a new link from a piece of aluminum, which fixed that issue. The ear proved to be unnecessary. I took off the platen and all the cover plates and did what I could to adjust the inner gears and so on. The spring motor needed a string and winding, which had to be done by winding the thing up and fastening the cord to it. The engineers designed a spring winding mechanism, but I was unable to free up the rusted set screw that locked the winding shaft. Other than that, the thing still works!
I glued the rubber sleeve back onto the wooden platen shaft, and saw that the shaft had been stamped with the date Aug 19, 2012. By the serial number this was the 77,879th of these made. They started production in 1906 and it increased yearly by large leaps. The machine weighs exactly 10kg, and the frame is made of heavy plate steel that is almost indestructible. I put a new spring on the bell, which rings brightly now. All in all this is a very impressive unit, and a testament to the skill of the designers and builders.
I kept notes about the process in a notebook I had, in which I had previously made notes about an interesting book called Fermat’s Enigma, about the history of mathematics. Hence some ruminations on that, typed on the “refurbished” typewriter.
side view
new feet made from wine bungs size 5.5under renovationribbon reversing gearshift leverthe motor housing teeth drive the ribbon winding transmission – like a huge wristwatchmainspring
Olivetti mechanics in an Underwood body: Italian engineering, American design, made in Spain
Bought this Underwood 450 the other day. It was all stained and dirty but Brasso and Meguires plastic cleaner polished it up nicely. I naturally assumed that since it was an Olivetti inside, it had to be Italian design, but it was not. It is an American design! However, Underwood was owned by Olivetti and so the design had to be Olivetti approved, hence I call it Italian Style! Concurrently, I also found a Borsolino cap at last, as well as an Italian merino wool cardigan. I wanted a Borsolino hat for years but never found one until today. Perhaps if I sit down at the “Italian” typewriter in my Italian Borsolino and Italian Merino (sweater), I will write about how I once saw a dead dog in Venice, and how my life was forever changed.
Me and my Italian clothesBorsalino- accept no substitute!
nathanguitars 