Keep Your Typewriter Working for Uncle Sam

Filed under: Finds, ephemera, typewriters — olivander May 20, 2008 @ 2:03 pm

Dirt...is the Enemy!

For your education and amusement, I present the 1950 Federal Work Improvement Program Equipment Maintenance Series #1 booklet, Typewriter Care. Here you will find an excellently illustrated guide to cleaning and maintaining your government-issued typewriter, how to lift and carry a typewriter, fastening the typewriter to a desk, removing the platen, and helpful hints to prolong your typewriter’s life. Though not perhaps as amusingly dated as Family Fallout Shelters, it is nonetheless an interesting and informative glimpse into the days when the typewriter repair guy was as ubiquitous to the office as today’s helpdesk guy.

Caution to those on dialup: the pdf is just over 5mb in size.

6 Comments »

  1. This is actually quite helpful. The ribbon-catch mechanism on my Underwood standard and Remington noiseless baffle me no longer! I must admit that I’ve fallen behind on my daily type brushing, though.

    Comment by mpclemens — May 20, 2008 @ 3:41 pm

  2. This is awesome. Thanks!!! I needed a visual guide to removing a platen.

    Comment by Strikethru — May 22, 2008 @ 10:33 pm

  3. I’d love to have that as a poster, but i’m not removing any platens. That just sounds like the kind of trouble I’d never get myself out of.

    Comment by monda — May 25, 2008 @ 10:50 pm

  4. Thanks, Olivander. That’s really helpful.

    Monda: Probably Zelda’s platen is easily removed, if it’s anything like the other Remington/Underwoods of that vintage. My Remington Standard Behemoth is like that – two little levers pop the thing right out for cleaning.

    Comment by duffymoon — May 27, 2008 @ 7:59 am

  5. The Unstoppable Mr. Moon is exactly right. I just took a close look at my Underwood standard, and what I though was an exercise in removing panels and hardware turns out to be Very Simple Indeed — just lift the two sides, and the platen pops out.

    Amazing! Photos to come on flickr shortly.

    Comment by mpclemens — May 27, 2008 @ 12:15 pm

  6. Mini photo set here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mpclemens/2527751303/

    The pics are wee. Once again, I’m impressed by the engineers who designed these machines to be repaired. They anticipated what may break, and made it accessible for the repair person to treat it.

    Comment by mpclemens — May 27, 2008 @ 12:47 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.