![]() Then I sold typewriters before ascending to IBM management ranks. I started my sales career pumping gas at my Dad’s gas station and later worked for Sohio(the Standard Oil Company of Ohio). Interested? It just takes up space in my office.Īlways nice to talk about the typewriter business with old pros. ![]() Some are still in their original shrink-wrapped packaging.Īlso have a pristine 1983 50th Anniversary Selectric III that is in mint condition. Most untrained eyes could not see the difference.Įnjoy talking “typewriters” and still have a collection of Selectric Composer typing elements and Prestige Elite (Legal)typing elements that I’d like to sell. They would buy Selectrics with a “cheater” rachet that produced 6.11 lines per inch, thus putting fewer lines on a page. That typestyle was the standard of the legal profession and appellate briefs in Ohio had to be typed in that style.Įver hear of a “cheater” rachet? Court reporters of old sold their transcription work by the page. Without question work done on an Executive with Modern typestyle was the best looking ever producted. I was an IBM Office Products Division salesman back in the 1960s and made a great living selling IBM Selectric, Executive, Model D and Dec Tab typewriters. Some smart fella with a CNC machine will make a mint fabricating aluminum replacements for certain plastic Selectric parts that tend to age badly, you take my word for it.Īnd now the typestyle offerings of IBM in 1964: Selectrics are *that* important to a lot of businesses. ![]() I imagine someday soon that guys like Bill and Tom will need to make connections with specialty machine shops to fabricate Selectric parts that they can’t get from suppliers anymore. On my own visits to MTE, it’s usually a naked Selectric that’s up on Bill’s rotating work table, and there’s usually a half dozen of them sitting in his work queue. Tom’s right about the Selectric and the Wheelwriters being the bread and butter for today’s typewriter repairman. See? Can you imagine how much table space I’d have to devote to that? It’s clear to me that I cannot fall prey to the siren song of the Selectric because I know where that trail leads. Actually, it would have to be two: a small chromed Selectric 1 with the 11″ platen, and a larger black Selectric III. I myself refuse to include electric typewriters in my own corral, but if I were to own one, it would be a Selectric. It is perhaps fitting that I post the last of my typestyle scans on the day that Tom Furrier writes his celebration of the IBM Selectric.
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