Coming up for the next few weeks, the Dan Allosso Book Club will focus on Harari, Yuval Noah. Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. New York: Random House, 2024. The first session will be on Saturday, March 14, 2026, and will recur weekly from 8 … | Continue reading
Over the weekend I stripped down my 1956 Olympia SG1 and cleaned all the body panels thoroughly. I had taken out all the old foam, but I also removed the remaining loosened felt pieces. I flushed the internals out with lacquer thinner and blew everything out with the air compress … | Continue reading
Over the weekend I made a major push on beginning restoration of the Olympia SG1 standard typewriter I picked up this past month. One of the small issues I encountered was finding four crushed rubber bushings between the exterior typewriter shell and the main chassis at the four … | Continue reading
This nearly indestructible black and gray powder-coated 20 gauge steel constructed 8 drawer cabinet with art deco flourishes has 36 linear feet of storage space for over 2,000 Field Notes notebooks. This is enough space for over 83 years’ worth of subscription to the quarterly no … | Continue reading
As rubber replacement is one of the necessary and sometimes more finnicky parts of typewriter restoration, I thought it would be useful to write up the details of a small recent repair for others as well as my future self. Late last May, I did a full clean, oil, and adjust (COA) … | Continue reading
Coming up for the next few weeks, the Dan Allosso Book Club will focus on Cesar Hidalgo’s new book, out this month in the United States: Hidalgo, César A. 2026. The Infinite Alphabet: And the Laws of Knowledge. New York: Penguin. The first session will be on Saturday, February … | Continue reading
For about 7 years Typewriter Muse has been operating out of a home-like space, but this weekend they opened a lovely brick and mortar location in Riverside, CA in a nice sized business park with plenty of Doris Day parking right out front. Their Instagram account has been docume … | Continue reading
Just a few hours ago, Faye shared some sad news. Most of us might only be able to recognize his voice, his patient hands, and his preference for lacquer thinner, but all of us are richer in typewriter knowledge because of Duane Jensen’s kind sharing of his craft by way of his spe … | Continue reading
As I’m watching the Golden Globes, it’s painfully obvious that it is missing some important analog representation. In an effort to remedy the error, shall we collect the nominations for Best Typewriter in a Movie or Television Series? (The only requirement for nomination is that … | Continue reading
New typewriter enthusiasts will very often post to Reddit, one of the Facebook typewriter groups or other similar fora, something along the lines of: “I spotted this typewriter at an antique store. Good condition to buy?” and include a picture of some generic typewriter. It bears … | Continue reading
Someone recently mentioned to me that the small, portable 1,000 index card capacity cardboard box with lid that they use as a zettelkasten felt more like it was for deep storage rather than daily use. Perhaps it’s a result of the fact that this is how most people have been using … | Continue reading
Dan Allosso has been hosting a regular book club since Autumn 2021, centered around sense making, note taking, and topics like economics, history, sociology, and anthropology. (See our list of past books to get an idea of topic coverage.) Our next iteration over the coming month … | Continue reading
The internet is now rife with what I call “zettelkasten method one pagers” that describe what many people rightly (or very often wrongly) think that Niklas Luhmann’s zettelkasten method entails. While doing some research about Luhmann’s numbering system’s antecedents, I recently … | Continue reading
Not surprisingly, I don’t always file away my index cards as quickly as I probably ought to. Every now and then I go through my deck of unfiled cards and try to sort them into my card index/zettelkasten. The end of the year seems like a pretty good time to clear the decks. Becaus … | Continue reading
Notebooks Product Sheet width (inches) Sheet height (inches) pages price Area sq. ft. $/sq. ft. Hobonichi A5 Graph 5.8 8.3 288 $23.00 96.3 $0.24 Leuchtturm 1917 A5 5.8 8.3 251 $25.95 83.9 $0.31 Moleskine Hard Cover 5 8.25 192 $20.00 55.0 $0.36 Travelers Notebook 4.3 8.3 128 $11.9 … | Continue reading
With no advance notice or apparent fanfare, Brodart, one of the major library supplies and furnishing companies in the United States, has quit manufacturing, distributing, and selling library card catalogs and library charging trays. This seems sad news for analog library enthusi … | Continue reading
Dr. Michael Miller, a retired researcher at RAND, has been teaching upper level undergraduate/graduate level math courses for fun at UCLA Extension for over 50 years. This winter, he’ll be introducing hypercomplex numbers to those interested in abstract math: Fundamentals Of Hype … | Continue reading
In preparing for some of my end-of-the-year review from my card index, I thought it would be interesting to choose the “Best Note of the Year”. Then it thought it might be worth choosing a “Best Insight”, “Most Surprising Note”, and a “Best Folgezettel” as well. And if you’re go … | Continue reading
“Like a jam session for people who like typewriters. You had unions do sit-ins and hippies do be-ins, so I thought, ‘We’ll do a type-in.’” —Michael McGettigan, 56, bike shop owner who coined the phrase With attendees from 8 months old to over 80, our Spring type-in was so success … | Continue reading
It’s really an over-asked question: What do you use your typewriter for?. (tl;dr: writing). To make things more interesting and entertaining in the middle of the week, let’s turn it on its ear and ask only for the wrong answers today. Whether it’s use in food preparation: Throw a … | Continue reading
For fans of the Juwel 3 typewriter that appears in the Netflix series Wednesday, there’s a tiny little simulacra in LEGO set 76781 Wednesday & Enid’s Dorm Room. With the recent drop of the second season and Halloween around the corner, I was surprised to see the set on clearance … | Continue reading
I noticed that just like Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein in All the President’s Men, Chevy Chase portraying the titular Fletch (Universal Pictures, 1985) has a Royal HH typewriter not only at his Santa Monica apartment, but he also has a matching one at his office at the Los An … | Continue reading
The Walking Typewriter It’s a very common complaint/worry/issue when people new to the typewriter world get their first machine and realize that as they’re typing, their typewriter slowly moves or “walks” across the work surface upon which they’re typing. It’s often easy enough t … | Continue reading
Looking for some serious entertainment with an intellectual bent on Tuesday nights this fall? Professor Michael Miller has got you covered in multiple dimensions. Dr. Miller has now listed his mathematics offering for Fall 2025 at UCLA Extension. It’s Introduction to Hilbert Spac … | Continue reading
The Useful Line Indicator The metal bar often with either grooves or embossed with white lines or in later century models the clear plastic Perspex card guides often with pre-printed white or red lines and/or hash marks on either side of the a typing point are called the line ind … | Continue reading
On Thursday, I broke down my recent Royal KMG typewriter for a full clean/oil/adjust. I spent some time cleaning most of the removed body panels and auxiliary parts. Yesterday, in the cool of the morning I blew it out and flushed it with mineral spirits. Then re-assembled it all. … | Continue reading
Published by Chris Aldrich I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment indu … | Continue reading
The next book for the Dan Allosso Book Club is Roland Allen‘s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (United Kingdom: Profile Books, 2023). For those interested in intellectual history, here’s a chance to join a long standing book club full of inveterate note takers/zettelk … | Continue reading
An observant friend knew I was looking for either an Olympia SG-1 or an SG-3 typewriter and got an SG-3 for me for my birthday on July 8th. It arrived on Friday the 11th. Naturally I was excited to open it up, but I was even more surprised to discover that it was hiding a … Conti … | Continue reading
Anna Havron recently mentioned that she had a Bates Hummer punch from years back, so it only took a second’s thought to pick up this $3.99 purchase at the local Acts Thrift store when I ran across it on June 28th It was in pretty solid shape with some heavy dust, light pitting on … | Continue reading
During my evacuation from the Eaton Fires, I picked up this 1957 Royal FPP on March 5, 2025, for $31.00. Apparently it had been previously owned by Luke Legg. While it was in somewhat workable shape, it needed a massive clean out. It may be one of the dirtiest machines I’ve clean … | Continue reading
How do you keep track of your typewriter collection? Do you keep a simple typewritten list? Do you use a spreadsheet? The Typewriter Database? A period-appropriate card index? Tags on your machines on the shelves? Via your blog or web page? All of the above? Keep track?!? I enjoy … | Continue reading
My commute patterns changed dramatically last year and the Eaton Fire catastrophe has decimated the first half of 2025 for me, so I’m trying to get back to my old Huffduffer habits for more focused content consumption versus doomscrolling. Sadly, it seems the tagging system has b … | Continue reading
Negroni paired with a Royal HHE for tonight’s writing. | Continue reading
In season 4, episode 3 “Scallop” of The Bear (FX, 2025), the inimitable Rob Reiner shows up as a business consultant by the name of Albert Schnurr. In his introduction, he’s wearing a black baseball cap featuring a typewriter. A line drawing/outline, it looks a bit like a Corona … | Continue reading
Swung through the thrift store today and found this fantastic beast. $3.82 was absolutely too little for such a lovely vintage piece. Not sure of the age, but definitely manufactured to last. Twenty minutes of cleaning and a light oiling and it’s almost as new as the day it came … | Continue reading
I often see people asking questions about the value of vintage typewriters. Questions like: Is it really worth $550 to buy a clean, oiled, and adjusted typewriter from a repair shop? What about the cheap typewriters I see for $20-50 on Facebook Marketplace? Are they any “good”? W … | Continue reading
Happy International Typewriter Day! Today commemorates the date in 1868 when Christopher Latham Sholes was granted a patent for the first commercially successful typewriter. What are you doing to celebrate? I’m writing about the typewriter market to help out beginning collectors. | Continue reading
Acquired in April 2025 from a bank in Idaho Falls. I spent way more on shipping than the pittance I spent on the machine itself. I had modest hopes that purchasing it as an ex-bank machine that it would have a non-standard typeface and my bet paid off. It was all bonus points tha … | Continue reading
Published by Chris Aldrich I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment indu … | Continue reading
We often see typewriter cases and/or simple typewriter covers and people will post photos of how they display typewriters, but I saw a clever method on Saturday at a local type-in in Southern California. Aaron Therol of Typewriter Connection brought along a signed Voss from Tom H … | Continue reading
Caveat Emptor One of the biggest of the very few companies still manufacturing typewriters in the new millennium is the Shanghai Weilv Mechanism Company. Sadly, for the hobbyist space looking to get into typewriters, while these are easy to find online, they are notorious for dre … | Continue reading
The local newspaper covered our recent type-in at Vroman’s Bookstore. I hear that we made the cover of the monthly print edition. | Continue reading
Two common questions I hear from those just starting out into the typewriter space are frequently about the basics: How do I use a typewriter? How to take care of typewriters or do basic maintenance? Naturally there is a ton of colloquial advice you’ll receive on these topics fro … | Continue reading
Recently Paulo philosophically asked me, a typewriter collector, “Why another typewriter? I haven’t been able to find an answer yet.” (My attempt at a translation/synopsis from his Portuguese.) In addition to answers from the collector’s perspective, bonus points for answers that … | Continue reading
Earlier this week I started stripping down my recently acquired 1951 Remington Super-Riter typewriter. The machine’s serial number puts it into the 15th month of production of the Super-Riter which replaced the storied Remington 17 and the Remington KMC. Features of the Remington … | Continue reading
Just for fun, let’s see who can come closest to a make, model and year for this lovely typewriter I’ve got on the bench this week for restoration. Please, no more than two guesses per player. Answer to be posted Friday. | Continue reading