Briar Levit on making Graphic Means from Briar Levit on Vimeo.
Month: August 2015
How to use a Selectric Composer Font Ball that has a broken top
The font elements for Selectrics come in 3 basic types: First Generation (Rabbit Ear): 1961 to about mid-60’s. 88-Character Selectric I/II elements only. These are the simplest design, just a bent wire held in place by a plastic half-cap. You pinch the rabbit ears to open. Delightfully easy and super-durable. They almost never break. Why […]
How the Gacillia Nut saved me a sh*tstorm of grief…
Hey, it’s been a slow summer, so when an email comes in promising a high-dollar job for what looks like simple HTML formatting of existing content, I give it consideration despite the prospective client’s atrocious command of the language. Not *much* consideration, though. Sounds suspiciously like a certain Nigerian dialect common to form letters distributed […]
Eleven Dollar Galaxie Deluxe – who could pass that up?
This machine at the TWDB.
Mechanical Calculator: 1963 Underwood-Olivetti Summa Prima 20
Couldn’t resist this one when I saw it on the shelf at Deseret for $3 a few weeks ago, so I snatched it up. The thing was *filthy*, but seemed to be intact, although it was so gummed up that the lever wouldn’t pull. I’ve currently got it working now, but it still needs another […]
Why it is impossible to keep cat hair out of typewriters…
Polaroids: 10 Years Expired
I found a pack of Polaroid 600 film the other day at Deseret, and having had no luck getting a vintage 1981 pack I found some time ago to work, I was only mildly hopeful that this pack, which expired in 2005 might actually work. I dug up my One Step Flash and tried it […]
Raybestos Manhattan: The Space Age – The Age Of Reliability
Ahh, 1961 – how optimistic America was at the dawn of the Space Age, especially a certain leading manufacturer of Asbestos products called Raybestos Manhattan. I found this one at the last record show that Wayne Butane dragged me along to a couple months ago, and the guy at the booth had it marked at […]
Smith-Corona Presents the greatest success story in Portable Typewriters…
Tom Robbins’ Remington SL3 Typewriter from “Still Life With Woodpecker”
… was as far as I can tell, a work of fiction. It doesn’t exist and never has. This was surprising to me, as it seems commonly reported as fact that Tom Robbins used a Remington SL3 to write “Still Life With Woodpecker“. Wikipedia proclaims this and even Richard Polt’s “Writers and their Typewriters” page […]