Typewriter hiccup (1928)

With old typewriters, the escapement may sometimes skip a space - the age of the mechanism I've always thought. Hence with some surprise I noticed what I think is a machine 'skip', in a proper document too. (Top line.)

This would surely have been typed out by the secretarial staff of the mayor's office, in any case by a professional typist. It may not have been noticed at the time, or too minor/late to justify a re-type. It is in the first line, so maybe the typist was still getting into the 'rhythm' of the machine - or it was an old machine. There are no obvious typo's in the actual text, but the year '1917' is remarkable for using the capital 'I' instead of the lower case 'l'.

This page was typed in 1928. The document from city archives is the transcript of the speech of the deputy mayor at the dinner held for the festive opening of the rebuilt town hall of Reims.

Seeing evidence of contemporary typewriter 'hiccups' makes it a bit more 'normal' when an 80 year old machine will occasionally skip a space today - it's just part of how the machine works :-)