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Just bought myself a Seletric II off of Ebay a couple weeks ago. The thing is magnificent. The only electrical component is the motor running the driveshaft, ot

Just bought myself a Seletric II off of Ebay a couple weeks ago. The thing is magnificent. The only electrical component is the motor running the driveshaft, otherwise all of the operations are mechanical. For example, pressing a key makes the type head pitch and yaw to the proper character, then lifts and slams it against the paper, all within a few dozen milliseconds, and that whole process is done with just levers and pulleys (clutching off the driveshaft, too, I'm sure). There's even a buffer mechanism, so that if you hit a key while the type mechanism is in the middle of printing the previous character, it's actually "stored" in this buffer until the print head is done with that cycle. AND, if the buffer is full (I believe it only stores one character), then all the keys are locked to prevent any mishaps. And the maintainability of the thing is pretty nifty - you can take the cover off, and then lift and slide the guts up from the base[0] to stand upright with the bottom facing you. All by-design, since of course such mechanical objects require regular lubrication and other maintenance. [0] See this video (I linked to 3:35, but the whole thing is cool): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=uB3sM2cA6Wk#t=215s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

adestefan 14y ago
The guts sliding out of the case was pretty common for typewriters. Most of the cases where nothing more than decorative shells while the actual mechanisms were built into a rectangular metal frame and pretty easy to get around in. Most of these things were fully mechanically linked and manufactured by hand. My grandfather had a weekly Italian music radio program and every week he went through the same process. First he'd hand write his cues, then add in any commentary, and finally type up the entire thing double spaced so he could easily follow along. I have fond memories of helping him rip apart various type writers to fix them on Friday afternoons during they type up the notes phase.
kps 14y ago
The "buffer" is actually a narrow trough containing a row of bearings, with just enough slack to hold one key plunger. The next key can't push the balls aside until the previous one has raised enough that the mechanism won't have conflicting signals.

adestefan 14y ago

The guts sliding out of the case was pretty common for typewriters. Most of the cases where nothing more than decorative shells while the actual mechanisms were built into a rectangular metal frame and pretty easy to get around in. Most of these things were fully mechanically linked and manufactured by hand. My grandfather had a weekly Italian music radio program and every week he went through the same process. First he'd hand write his cues, then add in any commentary, and finally type up the entire thing double spaced so he could easily follow along. I have fond memories of helping him rip apart various type writers to fix them on Friday afternoons during they type up the notes phase.

kps 14y ago

The "buffer" is actually a narrow trough containing a row of bearings, with just enough slack to hold one key plunger. The next key can't push the balls aside until the previous one has raised enough that the mechanism won't have conflicting signals.