Underwood at the Fair

Another bit of 'flatware'.

A very clean and optimistic looking postcard showing the giant Underwood machine at the 1939 New York World's Fair. This was I think very much an Underwood thing, these giant machines. Maybe they refurbished their old one to look like a modern machine, but also quite likely this one was built new.

And the reverse of the card here also, with informative tidbits.

The overall optimism for the future that radiates from the fair imagery is quite uplifting. To get a feel for the (very diverse) event, there is actually an amazing amount of color film footage on the net.

Oh. And still haven't got an Underwood :)

This beautiful desk for a dollar

From Popular Aviation, December 1939 this advertisement by Remington:

Around that time, this beautiful desk is advertised quite a lot in several magazines.

Seems a bit off, to sell a desk for such a relatively low sum as an incentive to sign up for the monthly payments for the typewriter that would total to a much more substantial sum than a dollar. Offering the free booklet is one thing, but to list the carrying case as a special bonus of this combination offer is a bit rich. Overall the commercial strategy of Remington here in this ad shows perhaps some similarity to today's shopping channels' methods.

Having said all that, a desk is a desk. For only one dollar. Made from fibre board (sturdy though) in a neutral blue-green and finished with black and silver. In a very modern, up-to-date design too. The illustration is suggestive the desk could be shipped as a flat pack for home assembly. (Ahead of their day, they could've made a business out of this type of furniture.)

Of the typewriter plenty have survived to this day. Likewise for their cases and there are even copies of the booklet floating around still.

Did any of these desks survive?

Given how widely these were advertised, I suspect that Remington did at least sell some of them. On the net there are loads of images of the Noiseless, of its case and even of the booklet. There are of course some images of older Remington desks (purpose built typewriter desks, decades earlier), but none of this beautiful desk for a dollar.

Now I do wonder, are there any photographs or surviving examples?

How to use the auto-brake - instruction card

In addition to the instruction leaflet to be given to a customer with the HMV102 machine, another instruction label was tied to the brake lever. This contains important directions to make sure the user would know how to use the machine with this advanced, new auto-brake feature. (When new, an additional factory inspection 'OK' card would have been attached to the carrying handle also.)

The overall instruction leaflet was loose with no obvious place to store it in the machine, so it is almost always lost. On my machine also; no instruction card. The small auto-brake card however was still attached to the brake lever with its little cotton string. Like the machine itself, the card looked a bit 'frayed'. (The almost always missing 'OK' card was also no longer on the carrying handle.)

Whilst the machine itself cleaned up very well so far, the instruction card still looked its age. Even after trying to straighten and iron it out, still a bit tatty.

Now I do like to get a machine back complete and clean looking, including the instructions. So scanned the aged card and with some basic cleaning up in an image editing program, a pristine new card was printed. Printing the image (PDF) on thin card stock, double sided gives four cards. These can be cut out using the outline guide around the text-side.

With a hole-punch and two small squares of paper glued on for strength a new card. A loop of new, similar string to loop over the brake lever. The His Master's Voice 102 gramophone again with clean and readable (yet somewhat cryptic) instructions on using that advanced auto-brake feature. (The string just long enough for the card to hang safely in the horn opening, where the original probably survived all these years.)

For a British machine the label is a surprisingly metric 4.0 x 8.0 cm with 1x1 cm chamfer. The re-enforcing square is again a reassuring half-inch square patch :-)

Playing!

The machine's now been entirely taken apart, cleaned up, oiled and put back together again. It really does look the part now. Having a blast playing with it!

A lot of the techniques for cleaning and bringing back typewriters and their black leatherette or rexine cases can be applied here as well. It basically is a 30-ies portable's carrying case with a very robust mechanism bolted into it. The motor of course has a spring that is more scary than the average typewriter carriage spring and the reproducer or soundbox is tricky, but otherwise pretty straightforward mechanics. (The auto-brake takes some puzzling though, very very clever.)

His Master's Voice portable model 102 wound up, filled again with new needles, ready to play records.

Looking at it like this, there is some similarity to the arrangement of a recent, popular music player. That recent electronic portable music player has the same rectangular shape and a wheel in the lower square.

Then thinking of the later models with the large touch screen, there also is a theme there. Black with chrome seems to go well with portable music players :)

Dalton Adding Machine mechanism and operation

Pictures of the digital mechanical adding machine.

The machine now viewed from the front, operator view with the large lever at the right. After entering a number, pulling the lever all the way forward enters it into the machine and records it on the paper. The printing mechanism is of the rising segments type, as would I think be fairly common in cash registers and similar machines.

The insides of the machine viewed from the right-hand side. The body panels at the sides come off by sliding forward to unlock. The rear panel comes off also by sliding. This gives access to the main parts of the mechanism. The part that looks like a carriage (it actually is a carriage) surrounded by a frame that takes centre stage in the picture is the number buffer that records the digits as they are entered. When new the mechanism would have been very striking, all shiny and polished with a circular swirl pattern. (Edit update: in 2024 refurbished a Dalton that is all shiny with the swirly Damaskeen finish.)

As digits are entered, the buffer carriage indexes towards the left, to be ready to take another digit in the next decimal position. Here the carriage is moved all the way to the left, the buffer is full.

The serial number NO201609 is on the frame below the lever spindle. From what I've been able to find on the internet, this serial number is towards the end of the range for these machines making this a machine from about 1926. (Edit: more likely from 1930 - 1931.)

As the lever needs to be pulled with some zest and force to operate the mechanism, it is quite long and has a large spring and/or dampener as well. This buffer (the large diagonal tube) almost fits inside the machine, needing a cut-out in the top covering. The totals register is toward the top of the machine, almost visible behind the tube.

When entering a number on the keyboard, there is a display that shows how many digits were entered. Not the number that was entered, but the number of positions. This is by dots, behind a transparent window (now less transparent than it was when new).

(Edit update: having learned a lot more, a new post on how to operate these machines in 2024.)

Here with 4 digits entered (e.g. 24.95 - the machine assumes a decimal currency format).

Here with a full buffer, 8 digits entered.

And again with an empty buffer, no digits. The buffer is emptied when entering the number by pulling the lever. It can also be emptied by pressing the large 'correction' key, this slides the buffer all the way back to the right and clears all digits. (The black spot shown at the left in the window is corrosion or dirt, not one of the dots.)

The keys are labeled with the numbers in black, when entering a number to subtract the complement numbers need to be entered. These are labeled in red on the keys. Press down the subtract key to do subtract the number from the total.

The keys on the front panel of the machine set the machine for doing a total or a sub-total. The sub total does not clear the result buffer when entering the next number, so you can keep adding numbers. One thing that takes a while to figure out with this machine, is that it needs one extra pull of the lever before it is ready to do a total. This adds of course an extra line on the paper (extra paper feed) and I think it is needed to clear and align the mechanism for the printing of the total that is kept in the sum register. Having done one 'enter' without any digits entered, the totals keys are unblocked and can be pressed down. The next pull of the lever prints the calculated total on the paper, the digits are printed with an asterisk behind it to indicate it is a sum.

The release key is the 'undo' of selecting to do a total.

The multiply on the keyboard is a bit of a misnomer, this simply allows for multiple additions. Keep count and pull the lever repeatedly. Pressing down this key prevents the input buffer and the sum-register from being cleared after an addition.

The simple printing mechanism has a key that disables the printing. The printing is actually the only way to read the calculated totals, so that is a bit of an odd option.

The printer has 9 segments that slide upwards to select the correct digit. The right-most does not print digits, but the extra symbol to indicate it is a total or sub-total. It really needs a fresh ribbon, but faintly it shows the sum of 25.92 and 6.10 to be 32.02.

Probably there's an operating instructions booklet for this machine out there on the internet somewhere, but haven't found any yet. Actually the service and repair manual for this machine should be an order of magnitude more complex and interesting. For now, just hope nothing breaks.

Digital machinery

The inside of the Dalton Adding Machine looks slightly better than the outside. Only slightly.

On the plus side and impressively - it still fully functions. No stuck keys or stubborn carry, the printing unit still works fine even. Doubly impressive because it is a very complex mechanism and an early piece of digital information technology. It has a worrying amount of springs to keep it all working. Compared to this machine, a typewriter is simplicity itself.

The drawings of a couple of patents for the machine really illustrate the complexity inside of these digital machines. These pictures also are much easier to view than the machine itself. (I'm not going to dare to dismantle the mechanism from its frame!)

A top and rearview of the machine from this same US patent publication 517,383 are equally dazzling.

Not that is obvious at first glance at the drawings, but it is a rocking-segment adding machine with a mechanism to enable 10-key entry. This '10-key' keyboard means the machine does not have 10 keys for every digit position, but actually does move the entered number up when adding a digit. At every adding (pull of the lever), the number entered in the buffer is added to the accumulator register. All done by the rocking segment gears with proper carry and correct.

The 10-key entry also means it has a backspace key. A backspace key that actually does erase! Pressing backspace deletes the last digit from memory (the buffer) and moves all previously entered digits one position to the right again.

Several more patents were sought and published for the Dalton machine. Some pictures from another, later publication show the outline of the machine filled with the mechanics.

Just hoping nothing will snap in there; this would be a repair job that is way beyond adjusting a carriage :)

Keys to Electri-conomy

Promotional film by Remington Rand.   (Came across it on the Archive, hadn't seen it before there.)

A short (~25 mins) movie with lots of period office scenes, I'm guessing it is from around 1950. Also lots of typewriters of course with the machines being used in ernest; there would be of course - the reason of the whole movie is typewriters.

Even though the full 25 minutes of it tried to convince me of the merit of electrics, I still quite like the manuals.

But then I'm not needing them to do 'production typing'.

:)