Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Underwood Master 1939


It seems like just yesterday I perched on a stack of books at my grandfather's roll-top desk, typing with one finger at his Underwood typewriter.  I adored the mechanical tap-tap, the scent of ink, and the beauty of the mellow font; in fact, I still do.

When I spotted this Underwood Master, 1939, across a crowded room at the Heart of Ohio Antique Center, a few months ago, I flew to his side and made him my own.  Okay, he needs a little work; the keys are stiff and he needs a new ribbon. Still, a bargain at $30.

The Underwood Master became truly famous after a publicity stunt at the 1939 World's Fair in New York.  A gigantic 14 ton working model was constructed, earning the title "The World's Largest Typewriter".  It took paper 9 x 12 feet and the ribbon was 5 inches wide and 100 feet long.  Thank god, my Underwood isn't quite so large.


It does, however, evoke pleasant memories, as well as being personally symbolic.  Not in my wildest of dreams, would I have imagined my self turning to writing at this stage of my life.  Maybe my attraction to Grandpa's Underwood was a foreshadowing of my future?  Yes, I think it was. Who knew?

There is nothing to writing.  
All you do is sit down at a typewriter 
and bleed.

Ernest Hemingway 

56 comments:

  1. this is a very informative post...I loved reading it. Old type writters are wonderful, somethiong about the click clack...luv it.

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  2. I remember my mother sitting at the kitchen table typing on her old Underwood. She sometimes preferred to write letters to her sister that way. I'm wondering if you can still get a ribbon for your old beauty!

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  3. Janelle, yes! I actually found a new ribbon online. Can't wait to clack some actual print on paper.

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  4. I've only just got rid of my old (East German made) manual typewriter. Boy did it give good service!

    I've also owned an Underwood. Pure mechanical genius.

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  5. Thank you, William. A delicious page!

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  6. http://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-restoration.html

    Basic Typewriter restoration page, very helpful! I've repaired a few of these old Beauties. I like the way you must commit to a word before you type it,focus is required to avert mistakes unlike a computer where gushing is encouraged. Good score!

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  7. Jeffery, you are so right. It's a completely different style of typing, like creating an art form in the word. As much as I love the history and art of the Underwood, I'm quite partial to the slick-smooth gush of our current keyboards.

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  8. My absolute favourite is the Smith Cornona portable in its little pressed paper suitcase. I loved the smell of it after it had been overhauled, kind of a machine oil smell/new ribbon smell/cleaned platen smell all rolled in to one. When we first learned to type we had to learn the names of all the parts of the typewriter and their purpose. I would never want to go back to composing on a typewriter but I would love to have one of those old Smith Cornonas.

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  9. Just the photos make me happy. What you say about writing, and the foreshadowing, is lovely . . . destiny.

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  10. I remember seeing, and using, one of those "antiques." My first was an old Underwood portable, probably the first portable the company made.
    Of course I'm computerized. But when it comes to filling in a form, you still can't to that with a computer.

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  11. It's a beauty with soul, I can already tell.
    Please fix it up and let it communicate again.

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  12. I love that Hemingway quote. It is one of the reasons I quit writing. I once read about Virginia Woolf lying prostrate on her couch with her arm draped across her head and face saying, "I'll never write again."

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  13. I have been wanting one of those.

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  14. I used to have an old Imperial. When that went, I bought a portable Olivetti Lettera. In the 80s I regularly typed up my column on it, and the old girl sleeps in her case, in a cupboard, as I write this.

    Your Underwood Master 1939 has class written on it.

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  15. Are you still able to buy a typewriter ribbon which will fit it?

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  16. Pat, yes, I found some ribbon online that will fit! Amazing.

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  17. I have my mother's old typewriter here in my studio. I stuffed old photos in between the keys and on the top. Something so promising about a typewriter, love that quote too :)

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  18. Love the old typewriter and love the quote!

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  19. Well you have taken me back, back ,back to O.D. Cars up the Antrim Road to the very office that Aunt Helen presided over from the age of 15 'til her early 70s...and there in prime position...the very machine!
    "Underwood"... priceless. I longed to have a go but was too young and too inexperienced. And not only that but my academic school didn't even teach us "gals" to type ...so there was no hope of me ever being presented with...an "Underwood"!
    How life disappoints one!
    thankyou Tess... fabulous!

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  20. Old one I remember was/is my mother's Royal. For a long time (what? a month?--grin!) I thought the same company made (I put it in it's 'radio commercial' format):

    Royal Pudding!
    Rich rich rich with flavor
    Smooth smooth smooth as silk
    More food energy than sweet fresh milk

    Were/ARE not radio and TV commercials the very vehicles which will, in 100,000 years, label our era as when mankind reverted from Neanderthal backward to Monkey (Sorry, Monkey Man!)?

    Wasn't THAT a wordy sentence???--grin!

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  21. I think Jack Kerouac might have liked that giant world's fair typewriter. just imagine the words he would bleed.

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  22. Yeah, typewriters. Of course I
    learned to type on a manual
    and I used to pound the hell
    out of those keys, which made
    the transition to an electric
    typewriter difficult. Started using
    electrics in the 60's, while in
    the Navy. I remember at the
    VA in 1995 when they came in
    and took our IBM Selectrics and
    forced us to use some early
    computers; a traumatic time.
    Word processing on one's computer
    is so delicious these days, what with
    spell check and all. Makes us all seem
    so smart and so hip. Love these photos.
    Your macro lens is great. Good thing
    you have a lot of room at the Manor
    for old glass bottles, sculptures,
    bric-a-brac and now this fine
    Underwood. Where do you keep
    your eagle feather? The Hemingway
    quote must have been a little
    tongue in cheek.

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  23. They are beautiful to behold
    but I'll stick with my paper and pen or my computer
    I equate them with term papers..ug

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  24. It is a beauty! These old machines somehow remind me of a piano. They both have such intricate workmanship and both were made to produce beautiful art.
    Love the quote! Keep on bleeding words.

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  25. Glenn, I would like to think it's an eagle feather, but more than likely, it's a goose feather. I keep it in a crystal vase on my bureau.

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  26. My dad used to work for Underwood's printing department, Tess.

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  27. Tom, seriously? That is so cool. Tell us more.

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  28. I love old typewriters. I don't like to type on them anymore, becauseit takes too much effort on the keys. I sure like looking at them though...

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  29. Tess, Love the Ernest Hemingway quote. Also, the photographs are superb. -- barbara

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  30. Wonderful find, Tess. I can hear the clacking of the keys...enjoy your Underwood!

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  31. i love your memories of your grandfather surrounded by his books and typewriter.

    i grew up with underwood in my household too. my mother would use that onion paper and i recall where she would type over a mistake with the correct letter. then came the ibm selectric (a godsend during grad school) where the typewriter corrected the mistake instead of typing over it. and we thought that was the cat's meow.

    now we have laptops and microsoft word. wonder what our grandchildren will be using to compose their great american novels?

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  32. Well, how about that? I was just cruising around on Craig's List and ebay, looking for a vintage typewriter. I'm dying for one and know that the right one will happen along before too long --

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  33. Every love letter I have from my husband (37 years married today!) is typed on an Underwood. It holds a special place in my heart.

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  35. oh, i loved my old typewriter too. when i went to journalism school, they had the old manual underwoods that you had to tap hard to make the keys strike the paper. you tapped out every story with conviction! i was shocked that they were so retro. they didn't ever do electric typewriters, they jumped straight from old newsroom manual underwoods to computers in the 90s. i bought some jewelry fashioned from underwood letter keys at a flea market recently. they reached out and grabbed me, they were so evocative.

    and that quote, ha! it reminds me of truman capote's snotty comment about hemmingway. Of his work, he said, "That's not writing, that's typing!" I love Truman's work, but he was a competitive sort.

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  36. tess i was drawn to remember my typewriter from my high school years - not an antique but still a manual typewriter. i loved it. the sensorial features of the sounds, the smells, the satisfaction ofhearing the bell at the end of the tab and the sweet grind of the teeth as i yanked on the return handle are flooding back as i write this. steven

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  37. Steven, I do miss yanking that return. There was something so very therapeutic about it.

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  38. I just adore typewriters. The sound, The smell!
    Writing does become a contact sport, doesn't it

    Remember carbon paper and onion skin?
    That crinkle was like a song to me.

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  39. I've seen that Hemingway quotation before--fabulous! Great pix of your Underwood, too! I kind of regret giving mine away...the only remnants I still have of it are a necklace I had made with a "charm" dangling from it that has "Shift key" written on it!

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  40. Awesome quote! Hope you clickety clack away on it soon. It would be fun to see the font.

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  41. lovely snaps...makes me nostalgic for the typewriter i grew up with....love the music of the click clack....

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  42. wonderful photos of a classic!

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  43. The slight cup of each key to my fingers' pads, the force needed to push each character to mark semi-evenly and the snap back after the wap of each strike, that extra little fleck of ink when pressing just a bit too hard....hmmmm, I think you've inspired yet another poem outta me, Tess. I forgot how much I loved writing with a typewriter. I didn't realize how much was lost when I got my first electric one. Advancements in technology, although convenient and useful, are so much less romantic....sigh.

    - Dina

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  44. I have always been attracted to very old typewriters- and have bought a few- mainly for the keys- but I never figured out how to remove them- I did buy an old one once because I wanted to type out poetry passages for a series of paintings- and did not realize I would have to hold the ribbon up and type one letter at a time with one finger-- like you did as a child-

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  45. Oh splendid. I think I had a love affair with my first typewriter - a Smith Corona I remember - which was as strong as that with most of my early girlfriends. There was a physicality to the things (typewriters, not gf's) that you can never replace with a computer keyboard.

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  46. Congratulations, a great find!

    I learned to type on a mechanical typewriter. They have their own melody.

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  47. We never had much growing up, but I always had my own typewriter.

    just gorgeous

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  48. My parents used an ancient Royal manual typewriter when I was a child, gleaming black and gold. I think it was from the 1930s, when they were in their early teens. I wish I had it now...

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  49. Your post certainly brings back memories of typing term papers on an standard Royal during my college days. No computers back then!

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  50. Love your typewriter! Gonna start a novel? Let us know what you do with it!

    Have you seen the work of the artist Datamancer? He makes custom steampunk computer keyboards (nay, entire systems) using old typewriter keys and custom metalwork. Truly amazing stuff.. take a peek!

    http://www.datamancer.net/keyboards/keyboards.htm

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  51. my grandmother's old typewriter needs a new ribbon as well as a new thingamajiggit...would probably cost more to fix than it's worth...sadly

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  52. Marcheline, I love-love it!! Thanks for the link.

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  53. I love your story about the typewriter--I learned to type on a humongous old thing that popped up out of an ancient desk. lol

    There's a portable Underwood up in the attic. It belongs to my daughter--probably one of the first portable typewriters--case and all.

    Wonder what stories that typewriter could tell?

    My Mom wrote her first book on a little blue typewriter...no such thing as laptops then.

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  54. I may be dating myself but I learned how to type on an old Underwood...wish I still had it. Then they introduced electric typewriters in my school and everyone fought to get to use them...I love these photos!

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  55. Dear Tess: Discovered an old portable Underwood which was used in the legal profession I believe. I do remember it being used not so long ago when the old printer refused to print. Classic type font...The opening credits tv series "Murder She Wrote" comes to mind; adore Angela Lansbury.

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Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
― O. Henry (and me)