Are these hot new satirists dueling on Olympias?
(Typewriter) Key (& Peele) make Time
Filed under Olympia SM 3, public typewriting, Type-IN, Typewriters in the media
RIP Joe McGinniss
Here’s the “sig” cartoon of Joe McGinniss, at his start, banging out a Metro Column
on an unidentified typewriter for the Philadelphia INQUIRER. For a story about the days when a
Metro columnist could say, “I’d rather cover the Viet Nam war than City Council…” and
wind up on a plane for Saigon in short order, click here.
March 16, 2014 · 1:34 pm
IBM in the Ivy League
Matriculated! Or curated, at any rate…. The Institute of Contemporary Art ( icaphila.org )at the University of Pennsylvania wanted visitors to their 50th Anniversary Exhibition (now through Aug. 17.) to be able to type their thoughts. Left an Olympia SM-9, a massive Olympia SG-1, and an IBM Selectric II to choose from… They went with the Selectric–still period correct, certainly a design classic worthy of the ICA and impossible to jam. Will monitor the scene and see what gets typed….
Filed under IBM SELECTRIC, manual typewriter, Olympia SG-1, Olympia SM9, public typewriting
Manual Reporting, ca. 1962
Here’s a double row of newspaper pros clacking their stories backstage at the 1962 Academy Awards. Photo by William Lovelace/Express/Getty Images–as seen in AdWeek’s 3/24 issue, which noted that West Side Story won Best Picture back then. There must be two dozen machines; bet that made an awesome sound.
Singapore a typewriter haven? Who knew?
Richard Polt knew, that’s who. A while back, sold a typewriter to a young gal who said she was from Singapore, which prompted RP to observe that that that city-state is a global center for typewriter collection.
An idle search found lots of proof that typing machines are finding favor in a place that thinks nothing of balancing a cruise ship atop a skyscraper:
Such as this site, “AITYPE” http://aitype.wordpress.com/about/
To me, typewriters are not “cute” things, but a few minutes on this mega-cheery site, and I started to think, hmmm, maybe some Hello Kitty stickers would make my SG-1 easier to carry–then a few minutes more, and saw there was much more to this site; Aitype eloquently expresses the deep connection to the past that these machines embody–and young as she may be (at least compared to me or her machines!), she’s already working to make sure that people younger than her dig the clack.
And she may have coined a lovely new word–at least I personally haven’t seen it anywhere else before– here it is, as Karen of Singapore puts it on Aitype:
<<<< Bring a laptap (typewriter) instead of a laptop to a family picnic… >>>
LAPTAP. It already brings to mind a variation– desktap — for larger typing machines.
What think’st the typosphere — is this a new noun for an old machine? Should it get into usage? Has she coined this word or has she simply acquired it from elsewhere? (yes, PC maker Micromax is selling something they call a Laptap–but good luck with that!)
As far as its noun status–my mind has set like lime Jello in the fridge; must fetch the laptap (which word currently requires a quick backspace to foil the spellcheck which of course, keeps saying, “you must mean lapTOP” and must learn “lapTAP” is what I in fact meant) and impress some words on wood pulp; Cheers and happy tapping.
mcget/ phillytyper
phillytyper 