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Electronic Typewriters

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byates

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2015
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158
Location
Arkansas, east of Little Rock
Recently I have been fascinated by these. Blend of electronic, electrical, and mechanical in something small and portable and cheap. But I am having trouble finding information about them, does anyone know of any forums or news groups or any suggested places to look?

Manual typewriters seem to be well covered, but electronic ones are unloved.:)
 
Thirty some years ago I had a big clunky Smith-Corona that beyond normal typing, the only features it had were: A return key instead of carriage turn lever, and a character memory, maybe ten characters, that it would back up and retype with a correction ribbon if you pressed or held the rubout key. It made a very distinct sound when it did that, I still remember it well. I think it ended up sitting in storage for a few years and when pulled out it was deader than dead. I wish I'd kept it. It was portable, but not small nor cheap (nor light!).
 
Not exactly portable, but electronic, after a fashion, and definitely vintage: The IBM MT/ST:

us__en_us__ibm100__selectric__selectric_2__900x746.jpg
 
Truly unloved would be the old phototypesetting machines. The satisfying clunk as the typeface changes, the gentle whirr as the lenses adjust the size, and then that awesome buzz as each character gets imaged onto paper.
 
byates said:
Recently I have been fascinated by these. Blend of electronic, electrical, and mechanical in something small and portable and cheap. But I am having trouble finding information about them, does anyone know of any forums or news groups or any suggested places to look?

Manual typewriters seem to be well covered, but electronic ones are unloved.:)
Click to expand...
Olivetti made quite a few models (ETxxx), as did Brother; should be some info out there.
 
I believe that Brother still offers a line of typewriters. Some had software for added floppy drives, video displays, etc.

Pretty much after the Selectrics, the daisywheel typewriters took over (I've got a Brother WP something-or-the other that functions either as a typewriter or WP). I never liked them as office machines--there's a temporal disconnect between the act of hitting a key and the actual sound of the impact of the type hammer that I find unnerving. The delay in a Selectric is so small that it's not even noticeable. But IBM Wheelwriters, Xerox Memorywriters....all daisywheel affairs.

But then, I belong to a different generation. I learned to type on an Underwood Touchmaster:

alert_underwood_five.jpg
 
krebizfan said:
Truly unloved would be the old phototypesetting machines.
Click to expand...

another MAME developer and I had started a simulation of the Compugraphic MCS PowerView 10
which stalled due to not being able to find a keyboard, or any software for it

phototypesetting died with photo paper going out of production, and the obvious improvements possible with xerography
 
Interesting historical tidbit:

Haloid/Xerox's first clients were offset press operators who wanted a quick way to make masters. Plain-paper copying didn't come out until several years later.
 
So far I have a Sharp Penwriter and a Sears that uses the same mechanism to draw characters with a pen
Two Brother word processors that take 3.5 disk, one the size of a standard electronic typewriter with an lcd display and the other with a crt display
and a Brother and a Smith Corona plain electronic typewriters.
I know where I can get a Royal, but didn't see anything interesting about it, no disk drive, no display, no printer port, etc.
 
Some of the Brother word processors used PS/Geos and had a copy of Brother Works(AKA GeoWorks) for use on a Windows system bundled with them.
 
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