1969 Olympia SM9 #3868296
Status: My Collection
Hunter: Michael Hoehne (mhoehne)
Created: 06-20-2019 at 03:34PM
Last Edit: 06-21-2019 at 04:16AM
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Description:
This one was presented to me as a Spanish typewriter. I took that to mean it has a Spanish keyboard, since the only Made in Spain typewriters around here are certain Olivettis. The owner’s daughter said that her mother used it in preparing lessons for the Spanish classes she taught.
When I saw the keyboard, though, I did not see an Ñ (enya, if your browser doesn’t show it) key, so how could it be Spanish? Eventually I found the ~ (tilda), but then I also saw a cedilla, so, huh? Portuguese? When I saw the umlaut, I gave up.
The invoice (dated 1973, though that does not accord with the serial number), cleared it all up: this is a universal keyboard. Diacritics for German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, OK. No Scandinavian or Eastern European, though.
But wait. A Universal keyboard without a £ (pound) sign?? It has an exclamation point but no pound sign? Well, maybe they thought they had to make an exclamation point to match the Spanish inverted exclamation point, which the old single-quote/period wouldn’t do, but you can still make a pound sign with an f typed over an L.
And the punctuation in the top row is all rearranged. I would love to have been in on this whole discussion back at Olympia...
Typeface Specimen:
Photos:
Hunter: Michael Hoehne (mhoehne)
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While I find all of mankind's inventions interesting, I am most enchanted by the human-scale arts and devices, the ones that can be created (and repaired) in a home workshop or studio; the ones that can be understood by looking at them; the ones that do something useful or stir admiration. Typewriters work for me.
RESEARCH NOTE: When researching the Olympia SM9 on a computer with lots of screen real estate, you may find that launching the Olympia Serial Number page and the Olympia SM9 By Model/Year/Serial page in new browser windows can give you interesting perspectives on changes throughout the model series.
