Saturday, December 10, 2011

The Great Geneva Typewriter Hunt


The seller puts down the croissant he is busily munching to try to figure out what is wrong with the Facit. No luck.

Taking the ribbon cover off to examine the inner workings didn't make any difference; the carriage remained stubbornly stuck. Given that this was the only new typewriter sighted after visiting two major stomping grounds, it was clear that Geneva was not living up to its usual typewriter-hunting potential.

First glimpse of The Promised Typewriter Land: CSP's large thrift store in Meyrin.

The Adler Gabriele 35, which had a price tag of CHF 25.

Nice typeface! Looks to be the exact one on my Scheidegger Princess-Matic.

Hermes Standard 6, not really functional.

A closer look at the decal - notice anything familiar?

Hermes Baby - elite typeface, and liquid paper painted onto the keys...

The Optima! It's seen better days, but I love the print typeface so I shall overlook its shortcomings. (The electric Brother is in the background.)

A "sky blue" Studio 44, as Florian calls it. Nice, but someone mistreated the carriage return lever and it was a tad shaky.

Continental with broken drawband, which typed reasonably well as long as I held on to the left platen knob and pulled it along. However, we didn't want to risk being unable to carry out the needed surgery.

Orange Olympia Traveller de Luxe. How pretty!

The trolley waits for the tram, laden with an Optima and a Triumph Tippa. A great time was had by all :)

7 comments:

  1. Adwoa, here's the link to my typecast: http://maschinengeschrieben.blogspot.com/2011/12/type-hunt-in-geneva.html

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  2. That typeface looks very much like my Adler Universal. That's a cool machine you got at the thrift store.

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  3. For a low enough price I would have taken the Continental and either attempted the drawband repair or used a bungee cord arrangement.

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  4. Do Studio 44s come in any other color? I've seen a few, but all are the same Olivetti robin's egg blue.

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  5. @Florian: Nice post! I shall refer to these adventures as type-hunts from now on, too :)

    @notagain: You're exactly right, that's the same typeface on your Adler, which I was a bit jealous of now that I think of it :) It seems to have made an appearance on many mid-50s typewriters: Richard has it on a Lettera 22, Lexikon, Voss, Alpina, and also a Byron, I think. I also found it once on a very nice Rooy Racer, but I didn't want to deal with the French keyboard. So this find made my day :P. Yes, I feel the Continental had a lot of potential too, but I think we've had enough of DOA typewriters in this house and I didn't want to risk more heartbreak in case of failure... :(

    @mpclemens: Florian and I both have Studio 44s in taupe, you can see mine here.

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  6. Nice typeface. Good trip. I would love if the local thrift stores here had any typewriters. Other stores are 20 to 30 miles away (32 to 48 or so kM).

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  7. Another exciting outing -- thanks for sharing! Florian obviously had a good time along with his hosts, and got to go home with a new interesting Tippa.

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