An Olivetti Tropical portable typewriter. Not a name I'd seen before, looks a bit like an Olympia Traveller. The touch felt very light and everything seemed to work fine. Very likely a fine writing machine with many decades of use in it - however this is not a styling that appeals to me at all. A far cry from the first Olivetti portable machine indeed.
Small surprise at the rear of the machine. Despite its beige-box styling, there perhaps is something tropical about the machine.
I'm not a fan of the styling either, but I would have picked it up on the basis of the mystery keyboard alone. To wit: the only currency symbol appears to be the Dutch florin, but there's no Dutch ij digraph key. It has accent marks used in French, but not in Spanish or Portuguese, but no cedilla, which is needed in French (and Portuguese). All that delicious weirdness, and it's a rarely-seen model.
ReplyDeleteHere's a mind-blower for ya: it's not an Olivetti at all - it's a latter-day Hermes Rocket. :D
ReplyDeleteHow did THAT come about?
DeleteFirst one I've seen.
ReplyDeleteWoo - a Swiss machine, disguised as a German machine, under an Italian brand from Brazil with a Dutch keyboard. Globalisation typewriter!
ReplyDeleteThe keyboard is afaik fairly regular Dutch. The 'ij' key was uncommon later, is mostly on older pre-war (German) typewriters and not always then. Accents are also used in Dutch, and of course good for typing foreign languages.
Interesting! While I don't doubt you, my own typewriter with the ij key dates from 1961.
DeleteNeat! That machine traveled a long way :)
DeleteYou may like a browse round marktplaats.nl ,this Tropical is I think now listed there too (for a single-digit asking price).