1971 Hermes 3000 #7091042

Status: My Collection
Hunter: Christopher Bailey (cbaile19)
Created: 04-04-2023 at 04:07PM
Last Edit: 04-04-2023 at 04:16PM

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Description:

Cursive type. This is very pleasant to write with and produces beautiful text. People who’ve used the Swiss 3000s say these plastic-bodied French ones aren’t as well made as the earlier Hermes machines, but this is still a well-made typewriter. This particular one seems to have been used very little—possibly because the cursive type was not as useful as the purchaser hoped it would be.

Just as I was writing this, I picked up the typewriter and heard something metal sliding around inside it. It didn’t sound good. But it turned out to be the key to the case. I’ve had this thing for more than ten years and never knew the key was lurking in there. It must have been stuck somewhere until now.

Google Lens is able to transcribe the cursive text written with this machine without a single error.

Typeface Specimen:

Photos:

The keyboard.

These margin-scale ribbons are a remarkable feat of engineering. The margin settings work like Royal “Magic Margin,” with the clever addition of a red line on the paper bail that shows where the margin is set. The engineer who made these work reliably is a hero of technology.

From typing position.

Under the hood.

Quite a cluster of controls on the right-hand end of the carriage. In addition to the platen knob, top to bottom: paper-feed release, carriage release, right margin setting, carriage lock.

With the plastic lid closed.

Hunter: Christopher Bailey (cbaile19)

Christopher Bailey's Typewriter Galleries [ My Collection ] [ My Sightings ]

Status: Typewriter Hunter
Points: 867

I’m a writer who often writes with a typewriter to get away from the computer for a while. I think I became a typewriter collector when I bought my typewriters some industrial-grade wheeled steel shelving from a restaurant supply house. Before that I was just an accumulator, but now I’ve spent more on shelves than on all the typewriters put together. (They were all cheap.)

I have steel pens, too, which I also write with regularly. Both collections started at the same moment in 1990, at the liquidation of the head offices of the old G. C. Murphy five-and-dime chain, where I bought a Woodstock typewriter, two gross of Esterbrook Jackson Stub pens, and three bottles of Carter’s green ink.