Well, I was just busily writing a post about how I never plan to be a typewriter collector, and I don't plan to be. I really don't. Ah, but sometimes. . .well, stuff happens.
So the other day my wife and I headed out to Las Cruces to pay a visit to Bob Diven, a local typewriter tinkerer repairer, to let him have a look at my Olivetti and see if he might figure out what is at the root of its ribbon advance problem (In case you forgot, it advances just fine from left to right, but when it goes in the opposite direction, it sometimes gets hung up). And while there, we had a look at some of the many typewriters that Bob has in stock for sale. We looked at some Smith Corona Galaxies and Sterlings, and then a couple of Royals. This was all in a shared gallery space he uses (for doing art). Quite a nice environment for typewriter viewing, I must say.
We were both pretty excited by the Series 5 Sterling, which had such a sound and feel of a real reporter's typewriter, but then we tried out his Olympia SM3s and an East German Optima. And suddenly, I was a bit obsessed with the two of them.
I hadn't expected to like either of them, especially the Olympia since I knew it had a carriage shift, which my pinkies probably weren't going to love. I also remembered using later-model Olympias back in my Uni days, since those were the machines they had available for student use in the Typing Center, and that all brought back a lot of bad memories, so. . .yeah, didn't expect to like the Olivetti. Ah, but I did, as did my wife. I also quite liked the Optima, which is in a sense an East German cousin of the West German Olympia, which might explain why they had such similar keys and to a large degree feel. One thing they didn't share was sound. The Optima had sort of Swoosh swoosh sound when you typed, while the Olympia had a very traditional and clear clickety clack sound that was more of the music to my ear that I love about typewriters.
And so. . . wham! We went home with a beautiful Olympia SM3 Deluxe. . .
Well, I just wanted to share the news with you now, but I will write more about the Olympus in a future post, so please stay tuned.
Oh, and in case you are wondering what became of the Olivetti, well, it's with Bob to tinker with for now. I will let you know how it goes.
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