Meaning: Rough neighbourhood, usually full of homeless drunks. Origin: 19th Century, America.
Although probably not as commonly used today as it used to be, the term “Skid Row” still refers to a rough, tumble-down suburb, neighbourhood, or even just a street, where transients, drunks and the homeless reside.
The expression dates from the days when lumberjacks felled enormous trees using nothing but colossal axes, saws, and their own two hands. After a tree had been felled and de-branched, it would have to be transported. In the days before motorised vehicles, this was all done by hand. Because it’s not easy transporting a huge tree across open ground, especially when it’s wet, soggy and muddy, lumberjacks would team up and build a simple boardwalk out of smaller logs, on which they could slide, or ‘skid’ the huge tree-trunk along. Literally a “skid row”.
Lumberjack work was often seasonal and it wasn’t unknown for these men to be unemployed for a good part of the year, when trees couldn’t be felled (such as during winter). Pay was often low, so they didn’t have much of a chance to save up enough money to last them through the off-period. They would gather in rough, cheap-rent parts of town, which were named “Skid Rows” after the cheap, throwaway boardwalks which they constructed to transport trees.
By Hook or By Crook
Meaning: To attain something by any means possible. Origin: Medieval Europe.
Back in the days of feudalism, when peasants and serfs toiled day in, day out, just to survive, working their lordship’s land and living in simple wood and stone huts, a vast array of rules governed their lives. What they could eat, what they could hunt and trap, what and how much of a particular crop they could grow, how much of the harvest was taken as taxation, and what animals they could own and raise.
One of the rules was the one regarding firewood. As essential for life as oxygen, peasants required firewood for cooking, light and heat during the winter. To get firewood, they could either buy it off the landlord, or they would have to go and forage for it.
It was illegal to pick up dead wood off of forest floors. That wood was on the land, and the land belonged to the local landlord. However, peasants were allowed to take whatever wood and branches which they could retrieve from the trees on their lord’s estate. Since firewood was so essential, peasants would use whatever means they had at their disposal, to retrieve firewood…even using their reaper’s hooks or scythes, or their shepherd’s crooks…to reach into treetops and pull down whatever branches they could snag and break off the tree.
Hit the Hay & Make the Bed
Meaning: Go to Sleep. Origin: Medieval Europe.
Before the days of the modern mattress, people slept on crude pillows and cushions, stuffed with hay or straw, which they had to empty and change periodically. These cushions and pillows gave rise to mattresses which were stuffed with crushed hay or straw. Hence the term to ‘hit the hay‘, meaning to go to bed.
‘Making the Bed‘ goes back to medieval times, when the bed would have to be made up each evening before sleeping. This was a lot more than just neatening everything up before getting some shut-eye; it also meant tightening up the webbing (ropes) underneath the mattress, to prevent it from sagging through the wooden bedframe during the night (resulting in uncomfortable sleep). The phrase “Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite!” comes from this, as well! To sleep tight literally meant tightening up the webbing, so that your mattress wouldn’t fall through the bed and dump you on the floor in the middle of the night!
Burn the Candle at Both Ends
Meaning: Waste and extravagance, hectic lifestyle or to be extremely busy. Origin: 18th Century England.
These days, to ‘burn the candle at both ends‘, is similar in meaning to the phrase ‘burning midnight oil‘. It suggests long hours, hard work, and staying up late to finish off working by candlelight or by the light of an oil-fired lamp.
While it may be today, it wasn’t, when this phrase was coined back in the 1700s.
Originally, to burn the candle at both ends meant to be wasteful and overly extravagant. This may seem silly to us today, but when a candle was your only source of light, it makes more sense.
It makes even more sense when you consider that every household in England needed candles, and that candles were heavily taxed! To save money, a householder would use only the smallest number of candles possible. To burn a candle at both ends (which could only be done when the candle was horizontal, or on an angle), produced more light, at the expense of wasted wax and candle-longevity. Only someone who could really afford the expense would ever bother to be so wasteful with his only source of light after dark.
Fire. One of man’s greatest creations. It allowed for light, heat, and the invention of the barbeque! For millenia, fire was essential to survival in one form or another. But fire was, and remains, a constant threat. Handled properly and safely, fire provided light, heat and the ability to cook delicious meals. But an act of carelessness or a lack of foresight could turn one of the most important forces known to man, into a destructive cataclysm far beyond our control.
To prevent and to manage events of the latter nature, we have firefighters, and firefighting equipment. Fire-fighters have been around ever since Ancient Rome, and they have a long and fascinating history, which this posting will explore.
Ancient Firefighting
Firemen have existed for centuries, in one form or another. There are fire-fighting teams that go back to Ancient Egypt and even Ancient Rome.
The first fire-fighting brigade of significance was established in Rome, by a man named Marcus Licinius Crassus. A wealthy businessman, Crassus employed a team of 500 men whose job it was to extinguish structural fires in the city of Rome…for a fee…to be paid…before the firefighters would even tip so much as a thimble of water…
So much for that.
The Emperor Augustus liked the idea of Rome having a firefighting force. He established the world’s first professional fire-brigade. Called the Vigiles, these men patrolled the streets at night. Upon the alarm of fire, they formed bucket-brigades and teams of laddermen and hook-men, who extinguished fires, or pulled buildings down, to prevent the fire from spreading to other structures in the surrounding areas. The Vigiles did double-duty as an early-form of police-force as well, keeping an eye out for crime, and making sure that the city was safe from both fire and thieves and generally, being vigilant. Yes, that’s where the word comes from. It’s also where we get the term “Vigilante”.
Ancient Firefighting Tools
For centuries, up until the 1800s, firefighting equipment was rudimentary. Buckets of water, long fire-hooks, to pull down buildings, ladders to reach high windows, primative hand-powered water-pumps and only moderately effective “Water-Squirts” (a handheld water-dispenser which was a bit like a modern child’s water-gun), were the main tools of the trade. Fighting a fire was less to do about putting the fire out, and more about preventing its spread. Fire-hooks were used to pull down burning buildings in danger of collapse, or to destroy buildings in the fire’s path, to create a firebreak which the flames couldn’t jump, thus containing its destructive force.
During the medieval period, firefighting was largely self-organised. Various European monarchs (such as Louis IX of France), set up state-funded fire-fighters, but also encouraged regular citizens to form their own “fire-bands”. These acted like Neighbourhood Watch committees, which patrolled the streets at night, keeping an eye out for fires and crimes in progress.
The Great Fire of London and Advances in Technology
In 1666, the ancient city of London was razed to the ground by a fire started by the King’s baker, the unfortunate Mr. Thomas Farynor. The Great Fire was a disaster unprecedented in the history of London. Sure, there had been fires before, but no fire had ever burnt down 4/5 of the city! The Great Fire of London also instituted the start of a newfangled concept in the world…insurance! For the first time ever, you could now pay for fire-insurance! An insurance-company would open an account and upon consideration of a few pounds each year, you would have fire-protection in the event of your property going up in flames. In return for your patronage, the insurance-company gave you a big, fancy metal “Fire-Mark”. This plaque was to be affixed to your residence in a prominent place (such as next to the front door), to indicate to the company’s private fire-brigade, that you were a paying customer who they were expected to help, in the event of a house-fire. And now, fighting fires was slowly getting easier, too!
By this time, the first really successful fire-pumps had been developed. They were heavy, lumbering things that needed a horse to pull them, but they did work. Their main issue, however, was that they had a very short range. You had to be right in front of the fire for the pump to be any good at all.
These early pumps were called ‘force-pumps’. This meant that water filled a piston-shaft, and the piston forced the water up a pipe and out of a nozzle on each down-stroke. On the up-stroke, the piston-shaft was again filled with water from the tank, and again, forced out by the down-stroke.
These pumps were ineffective and rather time-wasting. The man who improved them was a German inventor named Hans Haustch. He developed a suction-and-force pump in the 1600s. This meant that pumping the handle up and down both pumped out water from the piston-shaft, but also pulled more water in from the tank, creating a constant and more powerful flow of water.
Although it was an improvement, this new double-action pump was useless, relatively speaking, until the intervention of Dutchman, Jan Van Der Heyden.
van der Heyden (1637-1712), developed the one crucial bit of equipment so vital to firefighting that centuries later and every fire-station on earth still has one!…in fact, every fire-station probably has dozens of these things!
The fire-hose.
Jan van der Heyden was a Dutch inventor. He developed his newfangled ‘fire-hose’ in the 1660s. His brother Nicolaes was a hydraulic engineer…a handy person to have when designing fire-fighting equipement…and together, they developed a perfected version of the fire-hose in 1672.
Affixed to the spouts of the new double-action water-pumps, the van der Heyden Brothers’ new fire-hoses (made of leather, the only material sufficiently strong enough to cope with the pressure), allowed people for the first time to have directional, pressurised water as a means for attacking a fire. No longer was the range of your attack limited by how far you could throw a bucket or how close you could park the fire-engine, but rather, by how fast you could pump the handle. Everything else was managed by the hose. Direction, height, distance…all you had to do was point and shoot. A great improvement from standing six feet from a blazing building holding a piddly bucket of water. Despite these advances, however, in Colonial America, it was still the law in many towns that every household kept a bucket of water outside the front door at night, as a safeguard against fires. The buckets were used by the local fire-watch, and would be returned to the home-owner once the fire had been put out.
The Development of the Fire Engine
The first fire-engines, with the new water-pumps and leather hoses, hooks and ladders, axes and buckets, were developed in the 1700s. By the Georgian era, firefighting had developed to a point that it was finally practical to make a mobile firefighting unit, the fire ENGINE.
The fire-engine had been in development in the 1600s, but the first really successful versions took root at the dawn of the 18th century. Horse-drawn fire-wagons could now to be directed to any part of a city with its supply of water, hose, pump, men and equipment, to tackle a major conflagration.
It was around this time that the first modern firefighting brigades were developed. While there were still penny-pinching, profiteering private fire-companies around (they were particularly notorious in the United States), city and state governments were now establishing the first paid fire-fighters.
The first city to have such a fire-brigade was Paris. Created by order of King Louis XIV, the “Company of Pump Guards“, as it was called, was the first professional, state-funded, uniformed fire-brigade in the world.
To prevent the squabbling and fighting that had attended the Ancient Roman firefighters, and even the colonial firefighters and private firefighters in the United States, the French Government decreed that ALL firefighting missions were provided by the city, to the victim, FREE OF CHARGE.
As the 1700s progressed into the 1800s, more and more city-funded fire-brigades were established. Big cities such as London, Edinburgh and New York soon had city fire-services and organised firefighting had become a reality.
Fire-Trucks
Fire-trucks are famous aren’t they? Jangling bells, wailing sirens, flashing lights, and that distinctive “fire-engine red” paintjob!
The first-ever modern fire-truck came out in the early 1900s, and belonged to the Springfield Fire Department in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA. Here’s a photograph of it:
This fire-truck was made ca. 1905, an age when most motorised vehicles were still the handmade, and extremely expensive preserve of the upper classes. But it is, nonetheless, the world’s first modern fire-truck.
Victorian-era Firefighting
The 1800s saw a huge rise in urban populations, industry, and…fire. By now, most big cities had their own, state-funded fire-services. But technology was still rather primitive. To improve firefighting, a number of changes had to be made.
Fire-wagons were still horse-drawn, but to improve efficiency, the first coal-fired, steam-powered water-pumps were installed on fire-engines in the 1800s. These allowed for longer fire-fighting times, and for more men to be used fighting the fire, rather than manning the pump.
It was around this time that the fire-dog became famous.
Dalmatian dogs are a common symbol of fire-stations in the United States. They’re famous for being white with black spots, for wearing classic red fire-helmets and for rescuing people from burning buildings!
But why are they there in the first place?
Fire-dogs, the Dalmatian dogs which are so strongly associated with firehouses, are descendant from 18th and 19th century “carriage dogs”. Carriage dogs (an ancestor of the modern Dalmatian) were the canine companions of coachmen back in the days of horse-drawn carriages. They were a sort of car-alarm with fur.
In the 17 and 1800s, when nearly all transport was horse-drawn, the welfare of the horse that did the drawing was extremely important. Especially when the transport happened to be a fire-engine. To protect horses from harm, such as horse-thieves, it was common for stable-boys, grooms and coachmen to keep dogs near to the horses, to drive away people intending the animals harm.
When a fire-engine went out on a call, the dogs went along with it, again, to guard the horses against people who might want to steal or harm the horses, which in the 1800s, were valuable assets.
The 1900s saw the end of the horse-drawn carriage, but the Dalmatian dog remained. They don’t run alongside, or guard the wheels of modern fire-trucks anymore, but they have stayed a symbol of firefighting ever since.
Fire Extinguishers
For most of history, the most widespread fire-extinguisher of any kind was a bucket of water stored next to the stove, or on the front porch.
The first modern fire extinguishers were developed in the 1800s.
Capt. George William Manby, a writer and inventor from England, created the first modern fire extinguisher in 1813.
It was designed to be portable, but it was made of copper, and weighed about 12kg! But it was, nonetheless, a fire-extinguisher.
It was filled with a water-and-potassium-carbonate solution, contained under pressure. In the event of a fire, the pressurized solution could be sprayed out of the nozzle to extinguish the blaze.
In the second half of the 1800s, numerous inventors came up with extinguishers which did more than just spray ordinary water onto a fire. Starting in the 1860s, inventors created the “soda-acid” fire extinguisher, which was particularly useful for fires where there might be poisonous chemicals around.
The soda-acid extinguisher worked by having the main canister of the extinguisher filled with a mix of water, and sodium bicarbonate…baking-soda!…and a separate phial filled with sulphuric acid, sealed inside the main canister, along with the water-soda mixture.
In the event of a fire, the extinguisher (depending on the design) was either tipped upside down, or a plunger was pushed or pulled. The idea was that this motion would break the glass phial inside the extinguisher. This released the acid into the water-soda mixture. The resultant reaction created high pressure, and a lot of carbon-dioxide gas. This could be forced out of the nozzle of the extinguisher to put out the fire.
One of the more interesting types of fire-extinguishers developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries was the so-called “fire-grenade”.
An antique glass ‘grenade’ fire-extinguisher
The fire “grenade” was a sphere of glass filled with either salt-water, or the chemical carbon tetra-chloride (“C-T-C”).
Fire-grenades could be used by firemen or people in distress, to put out a fire from a distance. One simply lined up the fire in one’s sight, and threw the grenade at its base. The glass shattered and the spreading water (or chemicals, as the case might be) put out the fire, with minimal risk to the firefighter or person in distress.
In some places, fire-grenades were placed on special hair-trigger harnesses above doorways in big, public buildings. This way, if there was a fire, the grenades could fall from their harnesses into the doorways above which they were installed. This kept the doorway clear of flames, allowing people a safe escape-route (so long as you were fine with running on top of broken glass!).
Fire-Helmet
Ah, the classic fire-helmet. Originally made of leather, or brass, and today more commonly made of special plastics, the fire-helmet was developed during the Victorian era, as a way of protecting firemen from two of the biggest dangers of fighting a fire: Collapsing buildings, and getting soaked.
Fire-helmets are famous for their long, sloping rear brims. These are designed to protect the neck and the back of the head, and to deflect falling water away from a fireman’s neck, and going down the back of his shirt. Meanwhile, the iconic shape is designed to protect against falling objects, such as collapsing scaffolding, bricks and other debris that might come crashing down out of a fire-weakened building.
Brass helmets were popular during the Victorian era. But they started being changed for safer plastic helmets in the 1900s because of the risk of electrocution from electrical fires. As a result, fire-helmets today are made of special, heat-resistant plastics and composite materials.
Fire Hydrants
The first ‘fire hydrants’ of a sort, were developed in the 1600s. Cities lucky enough to have running water had it transported around town in wooden mains-pipes, which were buried under the streets. In the event of a fire, firemen would dig a hole in the street to expose the water-mains below. A hand-drill was used to bore a hole into the pipe. As the water rushed out and filled the hole around the pipe, a bucket-line could be formed around the hole, filling buckets with water and sending them, hand-over-hand, to the blaze.
When the fire was extinguished, the hole in the mains pipe was plugged with a wooden bung. The hole in the street was filled in, and a marker was placed on the spot. This was so that any future firefighters would be alerted to the presence of a previous bore-hole in the area, if they ever needed to fight a fire in that street again. This is why some people still call fire-hydrants ‘plugs’ to this day; because they literally plugged the water-mains.
The modern fire-hydrant, which we see on street-corners, and which are painted bright red, came around in the 1800s. It was invented in 1801 by Frederick Graff, then chief-engineer of the Philadelphia Water Works. Ironically, the patent-papers for Graff’s invention were lost when the United States Patent Office in Washington D.C. burnt down in 1836!
The Firepole
It’s a scene played out in old movies, cartoons, T.V. shows, and in almost every episode of “Fireman Sam“; the call comes in, the alarm-bells start ringing, and firemen leap into action, jumping for the fireman’s pole, swinging around and sliding down the shaft to the ground floor of the firehouse, to jump into their uniforms, put on their helmets, start up the fire-truck and charge off to the scene of some catastrophe, red lights and sirens glaring and blaring.
The fire-pole was invented in Chicago in the 1870s. As with many inventions, necessity, and a certain level of ingenuity, gave birth to one of the most iconic pieces of firefighting equipment ever.
Firehouse No. 21 in Chicago was an all-black firehouse, and the resident captain, David Kenyon, was stupefied when he saw one of his firemen, George Reid, slide down a pole from the second storey of their three-storey firehouse to the ground floor to respond to an emergency.
At the time, fire-poles did not exist; Reid had actually used the lashing-pole which the firehouse used in transporting bales of hay for the fire-wagon horses. The pole was used as a securing-point when hay-bales were loaded onto the hay-wagon, to stop them rolling off during their deliveries.
Kenyon was so impressed that he pestered the Chicago fire-chief over and over and over again to give him permission to install a similar, purpose-built pole in his firehouse. Eventually, the chief gave in, and agreed – provided that the funds needed for the installation and maintenance of the pole came entirely out of the pockets of the firemen who used it.
And so it came to be, that in 1878, the world’s first fireman’s pole was installed at Chicago Firehouse No. 21.
At first, nobody paid any attention to the pole, and other firemen thought it was stupid and ludicrous. It was some ridiculous toy to play around with when the boys at firehouse 21 had nothing else to do!
But other firehouses began to sit up and take notice when they realised that Firehouse 21 was responding to emergencies much faster, especially at night.
Not having to deal with doors, staircases, landings and overcrowded corridors meant that the firemen could literally slide into action and be ready to go in just a few minutes; compared to having to run down stairs, hold doors open, and risk tripping and falling over, especially in the dark.
With the benefits of fire-poles established, every firehouse in the world began to be fitted with them. To make them stronger and longer-lasting, the world’s first metal fire-pole (made of brass), was installed in Boston, in 1880.
An old fire-pole with important safety-features: Double trap-doors, and a safety-cage
These days, fire-poles are sometimes considered more of a hindrance than a help, because of the dangers of sprained or broken legs and ankles, and risks of losing one’s grip, and falling. Some countries have outlawed them altogether, but other countries continue to use them, albeit, with better safety-measures in-place, such as protective railings, and padded landing-mats. These prevent accidental falls, and cushion any hard landings.
In glancing over my blog, I noticed that my posting on straight razors seems to be one of the most popular ones that I’ve written so far. If you want to read it, it may be found here.
I’m writing this as a sort of follow-up, or companion-post to my previous one. This won’t go into all the nitty gritty details of every little bit of everything, but it will cover in-depth, how to buy a straight-razor (and associated gear) for far below retail price.
The Appeal of Straight Razor Shaving
In our money-conscious, green-guilt world that we live in today, where everything must be eco-friendly and reusable and everything else, more and more men are turning to the way their fathers and grandfathers shaved, and are moving back to using a straight-razor to shave with. Some like the challenge, the skill and the patience that it takes. Some reckon that every whisker shaved off their chin grows three on their chest. Others like the nostalgia of it. Some people do it because they reckon they can save money.
On that last score, however, some would begin to wonder. A brand-new strop, razor, mug, brush and soap can cost over $200-$300!
Suddenly it’s not looking so cheap and money-saving. And this is when most men, turned on by the idea of a good, old-fashioned shave, turn away, and go back to using their vibrating Mach 5.
This is a little guide about how to get all the things you need, on the cheap.
Buying a Second-Hand Straight Razor
Straight-razors come in a dizzying array of styles and types, and it can be tricky to know exactly what kind of razor you should buy. Keep the following things in mind when looking for a second-hand straight-razor:
– Always pick quality. Buy a razor that was made by a reputable company, or from a reputable country or city. In England, the best straight-razors all came from Sheffield, and for centuries, Sheffield was the center of the English cutlery trade. Anything that cut anything, came from Sheffield. Kitchen-knives, tailors’ shears, the finest silverware, and the best, barber-quality straight-razors were all made here.
While any razor from Sheffield is almost certainly a winner, keep an eye out for the name Joseph Rodgers & Sons. For well over two hundred years, J. Rodgers & Sons has produced quality cutlery, since it was founded in 1764! Everything from paper-knives to silverware and straight-razors. You can date a J. Rodgers knife by examining what is engraved on the shank of the blade.
A Victorian-era Rodgers blade will have “Cutlers to Her Majesty” (Queen Victoria). A razor made after 1901, will have “Cutlers to Their Majesties”, (King Edward & Queen Alexandra, George V).
Other respected Sheffield razor-manufacturers were Bengall, and Wade & Butcher. Keep an eye out for them, as well. But in general, any Sheffield-made razor will be of assured quality.
Any razor marked “Thiers“, will have been made in the French town of Thiers, and is another sign of quality. The company of Thiers-Issard still makes straight-razors to this day.
One of the most recognised names in cutlery is that of “Solingen“. A town in Germany, Solingen is arguably the cutlery capital of the Western world. Everything from razors to kitchen-knives and scissors of all kinds are produced in Solingen. Even surgical blades are made there. Almost without exception, any razor made in Solingen will be a winner. The German company of Dovo still makes razors there to this day.
– Check for Defects in the Razor. This goes without saying, but bears mentioning. Keep an eye out for such things as cracks, chips, uneven wear (from improper or overenthusiastic sharpening), water-spots, pitting and rusting.Light rust may be removed with fine-grit sandpaper and light steel wool. The razor will then be serviceable again after sharpening and stropping. Heavy rusting, cracks, chips and uneven metal-wear are all irreversible damage to a razor, and cannot be fixed. Discard any finds in such a condition.
Some razors have cracked or damaged scales (the handle part which the blade folds into). There are repairmen out there who craft and replace broken scales with new ones. So all is not lost on this front. You could even do it yourself. All you need are the pins (the little rivets), and the right materials and skills. Razor-pin sets may be purchased online. Try eBay.
Tarnishing, water-spotting and pitting are generally cosmetic issues, and should not affect a razor’s ability to function. Light rusting, once removed, will not affect a razor’s overall quality of function. As mentioned previously, heavy rusting cannot be safely removed, and it can seriously weaken a razor. Do not attempt to resurrect a razor with extensive rust-damage. It’s not worth your while.
– Features of a Razor. Not all razors have all of these features. Some might have all. Some might have some. Some might have none at all. It’s all up to you, to decide what you want in the razor that you buy.
Some razors will have ‘jimps’. Jimps are the corrugations ground into the shank of the razor-blade (the part of the blade you’ll hold in your fingers). They are there to provide you with extra grip during shaving. Some razors don’t have them at all. Some have single jimps (corrugations on the bottom side of the shank), and some have double jimps (corrugations on the upper and lower sides of the shank).
Some razors have ‘transverse stablisers’. These are found at the end of the razor-blade (opposite to the point), next to the shank. They’re sets of slots or grooves, which were punched into the razor-blade when it was being formed. They serve to provide strength to the blade, and prevent cracking from blade-warp and metal-fatigue. Like jimps, not all razors have them. Some razors only have one pair of stablisers. Others might have two.
Most razors will have a ‘shoulder‘. The ‘shoulder’ is the definitive ‘break-off’ point between the end of the blade, and the shank, which you hold in your fingers. It serves as a barrier to stop your wet fingers sliding onto the blade (and getting cut!). The shoulder meets the shank at right-angles, to provide a safe ‘slot’ to place your fingers in, to stop them getting in contact with the blade. This is also where you’ll find the stabilisers.
– Make a note of what the Scales are made of. The vast majority of vintage razors will have scales made of some variety of plastic; usually celluloid. Be warned that celluloid can degrade over time. This is rare, but it can happen. So keep an eye out for any razors with warped, cracked or otherwise damaged scales. You can buy the razor for the blade, and have it re-scaled, or you can disregard it altogether.
Straight-razors with pretty ivory scales are iconic. But also rare and expensive. Most white/cream-scaled razors will be made out of “French Ivory”…a fancy term for celluloid plastic which is coloured to look like ivory. Don’t be fooled. An easy way to tell the difference is to just feel the scales with your fingers. Ivory, especially old ivory, is never perfectly smooth, and should have a grainy touch. It’s a natural product, after all. Plastic will almost always be perfectly smooth.
– How Much do I Pay for a Straight Razor? Most vintage straight-razors can be bought for peanuts. In most cases, below $25.00, in good condition. Some razors which are a bit more interesting/rare etc, might cost more. But a good, serviceable, second-hand razor, which will work wonderfully after a light refurbishment, should not cost the earth. One of my razors was just five bucks, made in Germany. Never fails to give an excellent shave. The more expensive razors are typically the ones with fancy scales, the ones made of ivory, tortoise-shell, bone, etc.
– Care & Maintenance of your Vintage Razor. So. You’ve bought a nice, vintage razor. It’s nothing fancy, but it was cheap, good quality, and will get the job done. Now what?
Apart from the obvious – keep the razor sharp and the edge smooth – especially with vintage razors, it’s important to keep the blade DRY BETWEEN USES. After each shave, dry the blade COMPLETELY with a towel, and make sure that there’s no water trapped inside the scales. Vintage razors were made of carbon steel. There’s nothing wrong with that, apart from the fact that carbon steel rusts. Very easily. A few drops of water left on a razor overnight, is enough to start rust going. Also, it can lead to water-spots, unsightly corrosion left by water-droplets on the blade. So to prevent that, dry the razor thoroughly after each use.
Buying Secondhand Accessories
Now that you have your razor, from the local flea-market, antiques shop or off of eBay, let’s have a look at buying other things second-hand.
The Strop
– Every good razor needs a good strop. And a good strop need not cost the earth. I bought a top-quality strop for about $25.00 at the flea-market. So, what should you look for?
There are a whole heap of shortcuts around this. You can make a strop out of an old belt, out of a pair of jeans. Even out of newspaper. And they’ll all work. So if you’re trying to save a lot of money, you could try that. An old belt will have to be smooth and without patterns or embossing. A strop made out of the legs of an old pair of jeans will have to be free of seams and stitching; this would interrupt the draw of the blade, and damage the edge of the razor. A strop made of newspaper (I’m not kidding. Yes, newspaper), will need to be thick, and strong, to stop it from ripping when you pull on it, in preparation for stropping.
Every time you strop, you remove a small amount of leather from the strop. So if you’re using a belt, make sure it’s not a belt that you’re going to wear anytime soon…or at all.
In buying an actual second-hand strop, you should keep an eye out for the following:
– The Condition of the Leather. Every good strop is made of leather. Sometimes, you’ll have double-sided strops, which are both leather and canvas. But sticking to leather for the time-being, ensure that it is smooth, and free of cuts, scratches and cracking (from being overly dry). Some leather can be softened using additives which you can buy at your local hardware shop. That’s fine, and should not damage the strop or the leather (it better not!). But steer clear of any strop which has serious cracks and/or cuts in the main part of the strop. These will do no good for your razor when you run it along there.
– The Condition of the Connections. A typical hanging-strop has two ends (I think…). The handle, and the hook. The hook can be a simple…hook…a ring, claw-fastener, or a clip. This is used to affix the strop to the wall of your bathroom (on a towel-hook/ring, or towel-rail). At the other end, is the handle which you pull tight while stropping. Make sure that any stitching or rivets which hold these connections to the strop, are in good condition. The last thing you want is for the stitching to rip, or for the rivets to break during stropping. You’ve got three inches of lethally sharp steel in your hand and you don’t want to chance cutting yourself in an accident if the strop breaks.
– The Size of the Strop. You want a strop of a decent size. At least three inches wide, and at least a foot long, if not more. If you don’t, then you won’t be able to strop the entire length of the razor-blade when it comes to using the strop.
The Brush
To use a straight-razor, you need to wet-shave. And to wet-shave, you need a brush. A badger-hair brush is best. It holds water and retains heat. And that’s what you want.
You can buy brushes second-hand, although if you do, any purchase should be THOROUGHLY cleaned first, with hot water and soap. Or you could buy a modern brush instead, if you’re a little worried about contamination. A quality badger-hair brush, purchased brand-new, might cost a bit more, but properly maintained, it will last a lifetime.
N.B.: A brand-new badger-hair brush *may* smell a bit wonky when you first open it. That’s because well…it is animal hair. You can clean it up a bit using shampoo, to remove the smell. Or you could leave it as it is…regular use and contact with shaving soap/cream will remove the smell in time.
The Stone
Every straight-razor user needs to have a decent sharpening-stone. There are people who go crazy with this stuff, and buy pastes and solutions and three, four, five or six different stones, to get their razors sharp enough to cut glass. But enough of that. This posting is about how to get started in straight-razors on a budget. So, what you want is one good razor stone which you can use easily, and which gives reliable, consistent results.
If you want to really cheap it out, you can just use a regular, rectangular knife-stone, such as what you might sharpen your kitchen-knives on. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but there are specific stones which are made just for straight-razors. Most of them are vintage/antique stones, since not many people use straight-razors anymore. You can find them at flea-markets and antiques shops and, provided they’re not cracked really badly, or worn out, they should work just fine. Razor-stones are generally a lot smaller than a regular knife-stone, for the simple fact that…razors are smaller! Always remember to keep the stone wet with water while sharpening, to reduce friction and heat, and to keep the sharpening process smooth.
Mugs, etc
The cheapest solution for something like this is to just take a cereal-bowl, or an old coffee-mug that you don’t want to use anymore, and use it as a lathering-bowl or cup for when you want to whip up lather for your shave, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But some people find it tricky to use a bowl with no handle on it (which can be important when your hands are wet with soap and hot water), and shavers who own big bushy shaving-brushes can’t always fit them inside a regular coffee-mug.
To get you out of this mess, you might want to invest in a shaving-mug or bowl, or a shaving-scuttle. Scuttles (little jug-shaped affairs with a soap-dish on top) can be found in almost any decent flea-market or antiques shop. Unless it’s something really fancy, though, I wouldn’t pay any more than about $20-$30.00 for one.
When you buy a mug or a scuttle, make sure that the base of it is smooth and level. This is so that it won’t shake, slide or rattle on your bathroom counter while you mix up your lather. Not only is it really annoying, but it can throw off your mixing arm, because the mug, bowl or scuttle is always sliding around everywhere.
Tips, Tricks, etc.
Here’s a few things to keep in mind when buying or using second-hand shaving equipment. A few parting words:
– The majority of vintage razors, even the ones from quality companies, are rarely worth a great deal of money. Most of their value comes either from their uniqueness, rarity and/or scale-materials. Unless there’s something that really draws you towards a razor (it’s a cased pair, or it’s a seven-day set, it’s really pretty, it’s really old, or any other reasons), don’t pay more than about $20.00. It’s not worth more than that.
– Assume that any second-hand razor will require thorough cleaning before use. You don’t know where it’s been or what it’s been used for, or what it’s had on its blade. They weren’t nicknamed ‘cut-throats‘ for nothing. Same goes for any brushes that you should purchase second-hand.
– This bears repeating…again: After each use, dry your razor-blade thoroughly. Especially with older razors, rust can start on a wet blade literally overnight. And if it gets really bad, you’ll have no choice but to throw the razor out.
– Light rusting can be removed with fine-grit sandpaper, and this will not affect the operation of the blade. Heavy rusting compromises the structural integrity of the blade. So throw it out. You don’t want a razor-blade cracking or breaking in half (and yes, that can happen in extreme circumstances) during stropping or shaving. Especially with extra-hollow-ground blades, which are very thin and bendy.
– Until you’ve learnt from experience how much is enough, always sharpen and strop your razor more than you think is necessary, just in case. In general, fifty strokes on the hone, and fifty on the strop, should be enough. It may sound like a lot, but once you’re up to speed, you’ll have it done in about five minutes.
One of the chief causes of razor-burn and cuts is shaving with a dull, unsharpened/unstropped razor. A properly sharpened and stropped razor, used correctly, will not cut you or cause razor-burn.
The television, the T.V., the idiot-box, the electronic babysitter. That magical screen in our living-rooms which has brought us news, sports, weather, education, entertainment, excitement, bemusement and rage, has come a long way since its inception nearly 100 years ago.
This posting will have a look at the history of television, from its beginnings to the commencement of regular programming.
The Television and Us
For most of us in the 21st century, life without television is inconceivable. There are those of course, who were born without it, but with it or without it, chances are, if you watch it regularly today, you would be hard-pressed to imagine your current and future existence without this magical device in your living-room. How many incredible events have been brought to us through the television? How many amazing films have we seen? Famous and memorable TV serials, and even advertisements. Everything from “Happy Days” to “Brylcreem” (just remember, only use a LITTLE dab), to “Are You Being Served?”
Mankind’s love-affair with the TV is inseparable, unstoppable and unthinkable that it should ever go away. But where does TV come from?
A World Before Television
In a dark and soul-less time, before computers and fax-machines and mobile telephones, when eggs were 5c a dozen and penny-candy was really a penny, mankind tuned into the radio.
From the early 1920s, until the late 1950s, we enjoyed a roughly 30-year period where radio was king. When we literally had to tune in and warm up, to enjoy a program over the air. This was the Golden Age of Radio. It brought us such memorable events as the Hindenburg Crash of 1937, the Attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Declaration of War in 1939 and countless famous old-time radio programs, from “Gang Busters” to “Dragnet”, to “Richard Diamond” and “Abbott & Costello”.
Back then, the family radio-set was an important piece of household equipment. But even by the 1930s, its dominance in our living-rooms was being threatened by a new kid on the block called television.
The Invention of Television
The word ‘television’ comes from the Greek ‘tele’ meaning ‘from afar’. Just like how telephone, and telegraph mean sounds, and writing, or messages, from afar, television means pictures from afar.
So, who invented television?
As with many great inventions, from airplanes to motor-cars, telephones, the fountain pen and the typewriter, television cannot be wholly attributed to one man.
Experiments in transmitting images over a distance have dated back as far as the late 1800s, however, television as we would recognise it today, that is, moving images transmitted to a screen, did not emerge until the mid-1920s. The man responsible for its creation was Mr. John Logie Baird, a Scotsman (1888-1946). To this day, the Australian TV industry still holds the “Logie Awards” every year in his honour.
Mr. Baird was experimenting with transmitting images over the air for a long time, starting in the early 1920s. However, it was not until the early 1930s that the first TV sets that we might know today, ever appeared in shop windows.
Early Television
Named after its inventor, this is the Baird Televisor, ca. 1933, one of the first ever residential TV sets! It’s hardly widescreen, but it is a television.
Back in the 20s and 30s, radio was the dominant force for entertainment, education and news, and T.V. programming was often limited to a few hours, or even a few minutes a day, and nothing more than black and white film with no sound, or sound, with no pictures! T.V. during the interwar period was little more than a fairground attraction, or a toy for the rich.
By the second half of the 1930s, TV started becoming more accessible, and more advanced, although it still had a limited market. Picture-quality was not what it might be, but now, TV sets had sound! Sets were still expensive, but those who could afford them, bought them from famous department-stores like Selfridges in London. In the United States, T.V. broadcasting started in the 1930s and Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first American president to appear on television, at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
Nazi-Vision
That’s right! Nazi-Vision!
Believe it or not, but it was the Nazis who created one of the world’s first national television networks. German factories started producing early TV sets in 1934, and the Nazis were among the very first people on earth to realise the potential for television to reach several audiences at once, and spread the glorious Nazi ideologies of Strength through Joy, racial purity and an abundance of bratwurst for all!
Based in the German capital of Berlin, the Nazi-controlled broadcasting station and studio produced everything from propaganda movies, to Nazi rallies, speeches and other material, which was transmitted to the screens of loyal Germans fortunate enough to own the first generation of home television-sets. While most of the programming was broadcast live, and was not recorded, some 250-odd reels of ancient film remains, which gives us a tantalizing look at television under the Nazis, from 1935-1944.
Although the Nazis could see that TV could be a great technology for spreading their ideologies and propaganda, they also realised that the technology would have to be greatly improved before it would work properly. The limitations of early cameras meant that picture-quality was mediocre at best. Their solution was to record their broadcasts onto film, and play it back later, like they did with any other movie. This not only improved quality, but it also had the unintended side-effect of giving us a record of Nazi television that has survived to this day.
Despite the Nazis grand vision, the relative expensiveness of television sets meant that the audience for their programming was always rather small. Few people owned sets. Those who did were usually party-members with the money to spend, people in positions of power, money or authority, and a chosen lucky few private citizens. The rest of the sets were set up in public “Television Parlors”, scattered around Berlin. They were little more than simple movie-theaters, where the big screen had been replaced by the small one.
Another opportunity for the Nazis came in 1936. That’s right, the Berlin Olympics of 1936, where Jesse Owens beat the Aryans and humiliated Hitler, were the first Olympics to be publicly televised!
However, the fact remained that, despite the Nazis best efforts, early television remained impractical on a large scale. They had improved some things, such as picture-quality and sound, but a limited audience meant that until the medium was more widely adopted and accepted, and better recording, broadcasting, and receiving means had been devised, TV would be little more than a toy. Indeed, even by the outbreak of the Second World War, the entire nation of Germany had only about 500 television sets, scattered around the country.
Television and the War
By the early 1940s, some semblance of regular TV broadcasts had begun. In 1941, CBS in the United States was broadcasting televised news in 15-minute bulletins, twice a day. Regular programming began to introduce the TV shows that we would recognise today, although the limitations of the studio-cameras and lights of the period left much to be desired when it came to picture-quality. The war itself played a big role in holding back the development of TV. Rationing and shortages of almost everything needed to make TV sets, from wood to metal to glass, made them expensive luxury-items. And at any rate, the companies that made TV. sets were more interested in making radios and other electronics for the war effort.
These shortcomings and interruptions severely affected the widespread use of televisions, and it wasn’t until after the war, in 1947, that regular T.V. broadcasting really took off in the United States.
In Germany, where television was being exploited for propaganda purposes, advances in technology had been made, but even then, programming was brief. Usually only a few hours a day, if at all. By autumn of 1944, with constant, heavy bombing-raids on German cities, and the war going badly for the Nazis, the national broadcasting company in Germany ceased transmissions.
Please Check your Local Paper for the Times
The war is over! Yay!
In the late 1940s, TV programming really started taking off. With the war over, more technology and research could be profitably spent developing and improving the emerging medium of television. For the growing number of television-owners, there were now more frequent telecasts and a greater variety of options, everything from news programs, sitcoms, and early kids’ shows like the famous “Howdy Doody” program, starting in 1947!
There was stiff competition from radio during this time, but one by one, popular radio programs of the 1930s and 40s slowly shifted from the old, to the new, setting up regular TV spots for themselves on the weekly schedule. For a while, some actors and performers ran concurrent TV and radio programs; “Dragnet” used to do it for nearly a whole decade!
By the early 1950s, TV was becoming more and more accepted, and popular shows such as “Amos & Andy” (1951) and the Jack Benny Program (1950), were big hits on TV. Radio-writers and musicians who found themselves suddenly unemployed, began scriptwriting for these newfangled television-series, and writing and recording music for TV shows.
The Shape of the Box
Early televisions of the 1930s and 40s closely followed the styles of furniture and radios of the period. A typical 1930s radio-set was large, with a handsome wood case, cloth-covered speakers and handsome bakelite knobs. Television sets were made in the same style. Here’s an RCA 360, from 1947, one of the first postwar televisions to be mass-produced and available to the public:
By the 1950s, as with many other things, from typewriters to radios to kitchen gadgets, sleeker lines, newer materials and different colour-palettes were the rage. Boxy old wood-case televisions were out. More simplistic and uncluttered looks were in…
In the 50s, televisions were the latest and greatest thing around. Some people who couldn’t actually afford a set, would just buy an aerial and stick it on their rooves, just to pretend that they did, so that they could keep up with the Joneses.
Remote Television
Almost as soon as TV started taking off, people started looking for ways to make the technology more appealing to the everyday user. Why should you have to get up and flip a dial and knob whenever you wanted to change the channel? That arduous, six, seven, or nine-foot trek to the set, and back again, is such an inconvenience! Surely there’s a better way?
I See the Light!
As early as 1950, the first TV remote-controls had been invented. Originally connected to the set itself by long cables, the first wireless TV-remotes, of the kind we recognise today, came out in the mid 1950s. One of the first wireless remotes was the Flashmatic, from 1955. It worked quite simply: You pressed the buttons on the controller and aimed it at the television. A beam of light from the remote hit a photoelectric panel on the TV set, which changed the channel.
Brilliant, but problematic. See, the light-sensitive electric cell on the television-set did not differentiate between the beam shot from the remote, and any other source of light. If you turned on an electric lamp near to the television, or even if you opened the curtains and let in the sunlight, the channel would change automatically, even without the remote!
A Click and a Switch!
Early TV remotes worked on light-beams affecting light-sensitive electric panels on the television set. They worked well enough, so long as you had a decent aim and there weren’t any interfering light-sources, but the drawbacks of their over-sensitivity and fiddly operation made them somewhat impractical. A better type of TV remote was invented shortly after, which relied not on light, but on sound. Pressing the remote-buttons let off clicks of different frequencies, which could be picked up by the TV-set. Each frequency related to a specific command – changing the channel, or the volume, as the case may have been. But even this could be problematic, when people with sensitive hearing could hear the pulses of sound (which were designed to be outside the human hearing-range).
Slice and Dice!
Don’tcha just hate it that, just when the show gets to the interesting bit, it suddenly breaks for a commercial?
You can thank TV remotes for that.
After the invention of the remote, it was discovered by studio bigwigs that airing commercials between shows was ineffective. Once a show was over, you could just turn the set off, or flip to another channel. And you didn’t have to watch the stupid commercial for Remington typewriters, or Brylcreem, or Pepsodent, or whatever other boring junk those commercial schmucks were trying to peddle in your own living room! How dare they invade your privacy like this!?
To remedy this, the modern format of television was created, where shows were split into segments or acts, just like a play at the theater. This allowed for advertising, but it also meant that people were less likely to flip away from the channel, in case they missed the return of their favourite TV episode, thereby increasing the viewer-numbers of TV commercials.
Crafty bastards…
The Golden Age of Television
The Golden Age of Television is defined as the period from the early 1950s up to the 1970s. It was during this period that many of the classic and famous TV shows that we know and love and remember, were broadcast. But more importantly, it was during this time (especially in the 50s and 60s), that TV gained dominance over radio for the first time in history. Also, it was during the 50s and 60s that TV developed its own style, format and language.
Previously, TV shows were modeled after radio-programs, but not everything used in radio was possible on television, which necessitated various changes, which led to the evolution of modern television. Shows produced on TV during and after this changeover, are considered classics of television.
What shows, you might ask? Well, how about Dragnet? The Jack Benny Show? Amos & Andy? Leave It To Beaver? Life with Luigi, and numerous other programs.
Good Night, and Good Luck
Along with regular programming, the television revolutionized the broadcasting of news. Previously, you had the radio and the newspaper. But now, the nightly, six o’clock bulletin was the mainstay of news, sports and weather. The news anchor and reporters became staples of nightly broadcasts. Programs like the 1950s “See it Now“, began to replace radio broadcasts as the method for spreading news to the public. The line “Good night, and good luck”, was the sign-off line used by famous reporter Edward R. Murrow, notable for reporting on the Blitz in London, and MacCarthyism during the 1950s.
We Return You to Your Regularly Scheduled Program…
By the 60s and 70s, TV had become the mainstay of most well-to-do households in the developed world, and had finally replaced radio as the main medium for electronic entertainment, music and news. It had by now, reached the format which we’re most familiar with.
The 60s and 70s saw many of the most famous TV shows in history take to the air, like Gilligan’s Island, the Addams Family, Are You Being Served?,Dad’s Army, Dragnet (which transferred from radio in the 1950s), and the Dick Van Dyke Show.
It was in the early 1970s that the first TV-recording equipment arrived on the scene. These days, we have DVD recorders and other technology that will allow us to pause, rewind, record and watch multiple shows at once. But we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if the VCR and the video-cassette didn’t get there first. Entering the market in 1971, the VHS tape and the VCR remained the standard method for recording TV-programs for thirty years, until the end of the 20th century. Tricks like putting sticky-tape over the slots in the tape-cassette to disable the anti-recording feature on some cassettes, would enable people to use almost any cassette to record movies, TV shows and almost anything else that they wanted, right off their TV sets. VCDs, and eventually, DVDs, and their accompanying recorders, would of course replace them starting in the late 1990s, but VHS tapes paved the way.
That brings us more or less to the modern day, so far as TVs are concerned. Some things have changed, such as digital TVs from old cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs, and the lack of a need for a pair of rabbit-ear antennae, but in the past few years, not much else has changed about the basics of television as we know it today.
It occurs to me that there’s a lot of blogs and forums out there these days, dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal. There are those who sail merrily on their way, oblivious to everything, and there are those who have thrown out the anchors at the top of the falls, holding back with all their might, mankind’s devilish attempts to hurl them into the abyss of blandness, cookie-cutterism and lack of personality and style.
Some Sort of Introduction
Websites and blogs such as the famous Art of Manliness, and The Gentleman, and forums such as the Fedora Lounge, were created to educate people about what life, mostly for men, but also for women, used to be. Before we all got tangled up in what Hollywood and the men from marketing and advertising wanted us to look like.
Some people have seen the older ways and in one way or another, have decided that they would like to return to them, or imitate their style in one way or another, ranging from behaviour, dress, grooming, style, and home decor.
In the 21st century world, the odious ‘man cave’ has made its appearance, both in peoples’ homes, and as a term on the internet. It is an odious term. Yes. I have said it, and it is said.
We already have ‘study’, ‘office’, ‘den’, ‘loft’, ‘workshop’, ‘games-room’ and ‘garage’ as sanctuaries of masculinity, and as places for men and their friends to hide themselves away from others, and enjoy themselves in their own privacy, or enjoy their privacy with their chosen circle of friends.
But apparently, none of these terms sufficiently captured the essence of what the ‘man-cave’ is, which is in itself, a rather fluid term which at times seems to defy definition altogether. A man-cave can be anything from a games-room, a home-theater, a library, an office, study, a private bar or a model-making workshop, tinkering-room or gym. Perhaps this is why older terminology has been replaced by something more suited to capture such a diverse space that the man-cave has become.
But I’m kinda digressing here. Like…a LOT. I apologise…
The Actual Point of this Posting
One of the most common and popular rooms in the house, and one which may well become a person’s man-cave, is the room which in older times was marked as a study, office, or den. In an attempt to inject these traditionally masculine rooms with masculinity once more, some men have chosen to go the oldschool-route, and redecorate and redesign their studies so that they might look like the great chambers of thought and knowledge that they once were, full of books, wood, leather, whiskey and tobacco smoke.
This posting will cover the details that you’ll need if you want to try and pull off that classic, old-world man-cave study/office look from yesteryear. Those big, classy executive-style offices that you see in old houses, in period movies, and old photographs, with all the lashings of wood and leather and steel and brass, glass and soft, fluffy rugs. The traditional man’s office of yesteryear.
The Stuff You Will Need
The Desk
Every good study…has a desk. It goes without saying. But if you’re going for that old-world look, what kinds of desks should you be looking for? There are several to choose from.
The Rolltop
The rolltop desk is a traditional desk-form from the Georgian era, characterised by the curved rolling lid made of linked wooden slats. The desk typically comes in one of two styles: Either with a quarter-circle curved frontage and side-panels, or a more bendy “S”-styled roll, such as what is pictured above. One is not necessarily better than the other, and it’s up to personal taste which one you want.
The rolltop desk has plenty of space for storing little nicknacks, files, stationery and so-forth, and enough space on it to keep a typewriter, or a computer. Provided the computer or typewriter is of the portable, laptop variety, the rolltop lid in most cases, can be pulled down over the machine at the end of the day, without the top of the computer or the typewriter getting in the way.
The rolltop also has lots of little cubbyholes and pigeon-holes. These are extremely useful for things like stamps, bottles of ink, pens, paperclips, staplers, hole-punchers and other desktop equipment that you would need on an infrequent basis, but would need to access in a hurry when you did.
The Slant-Top or Bureau
The slant-top or bureau desk is characterised by its famous drop-down work-surface, which is usually supported by a pair of pull-out supports, either side of the top drawers. Much like the rolltop, this desk-form dates back to the 1700s, but remains popular with those people who like to keep things neat and tidy. Its rather small size forces you to keep clutter to a minimum, and like the rolltop, a simple flip of the lid hides everything neatly away from the sight of others.
The Secretary Desk
The secretary desk is instantly recognisable from its distinctive shape. It’s basically a bureau with a bookcase stacked on top. This is a handy desk-form if you find yourself constantly needing to flip through reference-books during your work, and you’re sick of having to trek across the study to your bookcases and back, to find the information you need. Simply stack your most-used reference-books in the case above your desk!
One of the great things about desks of this type is that the shelf at the top of the desk is the perfect place to put a desk-lamp where it will provide light, but not get in the way of your work. The upper part of the pigeonholes is also great for storing pencil-mugs, drinks and other things that you might want to access when the desk itself is closed and/or locked at the end of the day.
Rolltop and slant-top desks are almost strictly wall-desks. The backs of the desks are up against the wall, literally. Some people don’t like this. They like having a desk which they can access from all sides. What should you look for?
In this category, there are two common forms.
The Pedestal Desk
The pedestal desk is a desk-form so common that its creation goes back probably to the beginning of desk-building. It’s called a “pedestal” desk because it holds the desktop above two “pedestals” which house the drawers and storage-cupboards within. In its numerous guises and variations, the pedestal desk is the one desk-form that has survived well into the modern day.
The one small issue with pedestal-desks, and other all-round desks like this, is that there isn’t any back panel behind which you could hide wires and cables, so they can sometimes present a more messy appearance.
Particularly small pedestal desks with a narrow space between the two pedestals are often called “kneehole” desks, because the space under the desktop is just wide enough for the writer to slide in and put his knees in there. Compare the kneehole desk below, to the larger pedestal desk further up, and you’ll automatically see a difference in size.
The Partners’ Desk
The Partners’ desk is without doubt, the granddaddy of all desks. They’re called partners’ desks because they’re designed to be used by two business-partners, working face-to-face, sharing one big desk, which is essentially two pedestal-desks placed back-to-back.
Partners’ desks are MASSIVE. They’re about the size of a small car and have enough surface-area to double as an airfield during times of war. I’m pretty sure that during the Battle of Britain, Churchill allowed the RAF to use his desk as a runway for Spitfires when his majesty’s airfields were bombed out of action. Yes. Their finest hour was won thanks to desk-space.
Yes, I made that up. But the size of these desks was such that during the Second World War, those daring R.A.F. chaps used to refer to partners’ desks as “Mahogany Bombers”, due to their gigantic size. And that’s the truth!
These desks also weigh about as much as a whale after it’s gone through the krill buffet. If you’re looking for a power-desk, you must buy one of these. But be warned, they weigh a lot, and they take up a lot of real-estate. You need a BIG study, office, or man-cave, to fit this in!
Unless IKEA has invented a flat-pack version of this, you’ll never get one home in the boot of your car. You might succeed if you have a truck. Best bet is a trailer of some variety, a moving-van, or a pair of teleport-booths.
Classic Desk Accessories
Now that you’ve picked your desk, you need something to put on it. What kinds of things were common on desks 50, 70, 100 years ago? For the accessories and items that make up that classic desktop look of times gone by, read on.
The Lamp
Unless your awesomeness, sophistication and coolness is such that it generates its own, blinding glow of smug superiority, you’ll need a lamp on your desk. If you want something that will match your beautiful antique or solid-wood desk, and not some smunky piece of junk that you bought at IKEA, then you couldn’t go past a traditional Emeralite desk-lamp…
Commonly called “bankers’ lamps” because of their association with banks and their tellers, Emeralite desktop lamps have been manufactured since 1909! Talk about endurance of design! They were originally produced by the company of H.G. McFaddin & Co., in New York, U.S.A. To this day, the classic brass base and stem, and the swiveling green glass lampshade has remained a popular choice for those seeking old-world lighting charm. The brass is shiny and reflective, increasing the amount of light, and the green lamp-shade provides for a nice dash of colour!
But why is it green?
Although you can get these lamps with their shades in almost any colour, from frosty white to lemon yellow, its most common colour, and the colour which everyone associates with these lamps, is green. Why?
Emeralite lamps (note the name: “Emerald Light”) were made with green glass shades because light shining through the glass was softened by the colour green, and was easy on the eyes, while still providing enough light to be useful. The problem was that early electric lightbulbs could be a tad overpowering (some bulbs made in the Edwardian-era are still burning brightly to this day, a testament to their quality and longevity!). Placing a green shade between the light and the user was meant to soften it and make it less glaring on the eyes.
As bankers and accountants often had to update and check ledgers and balance-sheets, usually written in tiny script, having soft lighting that wouldn’t burn out their eyes was important. This is why the shades are green.
It’s also why those old-fashioned visors (such as worn by bank-tellers and accountants) are green. To diffuse the light and make it less intense.
Enough with the history, where do I get one? You can find them easily at antiques shops, second-hand shops, lighting-shops and office-supply chains. The design is so iconic that there are still people manufacturing the exact same style of lamp today, over a century later. You can pick one up, brand new, for not very much money at all.
A Leather Desktop
You can’t go past the feel of real leather. Soft, cool, relaxing and smooth. And also an essential on any old-fashioned desk.
In the old days, leather-topped desks (such as the ones seen above), were considered the height of quality. The reason is not always obvious. Some people think that the leather is there purely because it’s there, and it’s there because it’s leather, and leather is expensive and if it’s expensive it’s gotta be quality and…yawn.
No.
Leather is found on old desks because it provides a smooth, soft, cushioned surface for writing. Don’t forget that until the 1950s, most people wrote with fountain pens, or dip-pens. Ever pricked yourself with the tip of a steel pen-nib? I can assure you that it hurts. A LOT.
A pen-nib is sharp enough in some cases, to literally draw blood. Since scraping such a needle-sharp pen-point on a wooden desktop would gouge marks and troughs into it, and make writing a very uncomfortable job, desks were lined with leather to give the nibs a smoother journey across the playing-field. These days, leather-topped desks are mostly purchased for their aesthetics, but if you intend to do a lot of handwriting at your desk (with a fountain pen or a dip-pen), then you should certainly buy a desk with a leather top.
Desk Blotters
What’s that, I hear you say? You can’t find a desk with a leather surface? Or they’re too expensive? Or they’ve been ripped up from years of poor use?
Fear not, intrepid study re-decorator, your grandparents already thought of a solution. They’re called desk-blotters.
Desk-blotters are those big leather pads that you see on executive desks, with the sheets of blotting-paper (yes, that’s what it is, blotting-paper) slotted into their corners. You can buy these things second-hand at antiques shops and places like that, or on eBay. Or you can buy them brand-new from homewares shops and large stationery-chains. Blotting-paper can be purchased in huge A1 sheets from places like arts-and-crafts shops, and big stationery-shops. You may need to cut the paper down to size for it to fit into your blotter, though.
Desk-blotters are handy for a number of reasons. Just like with the leather desk-surface, they protect the nibs of your pens from hard, friction-producing surfaces. They also arrest any drips or spills from ink, or drinks, or food (provided that they land on the blotting-paper, which may be changed and removed as necessary). The blotter also protected the leather surface of the desk underneath, if you didn’t want to damage it, but they also had a role in muffling sounds and providing stability which is necessary for the next item on our list.
The Typewriter
You can’t possibly have a nice, classic desktop setup like what you see in the movies, without a pretty, mechanical typewriter.
Remington Standard No. 16., Desktop Typewriter., Ca. 1933
For a machine that really pops and stands out for all the right reasons, and to match the traditional decor of the room, you’ll probably want a typewriter from the first half of the 20th century. A real vintage or antique machine with chrome and steel, and which has all those classic round glass keys with the chrome rings. Such machines ooze class and style.
However, be warned that typewriters of this style are getting harder and harder to find in working condition these days. All-steel typewriters with the flashy glass keys died out after WWII, and are almost unheard of after 1950. But if you’re looking for one (even a non-functioning one to act as a display-piece), then typewriter models likely to be found in old, pre-war offices and households include the Underwood Standard range, (Nos. 1-6), the Royal No. 10 model, the Remington Standard range (Nos. 10-16), and the L.C. Smith & Bros. Standard No. 8 model.
Be warned: A desktop typewriter of this size and vintage is EXTREMELY HEAVY. A Royal 10 weighs roughly 30 pounds. A Remington of a similar vintage weighs about twice as much. Make sure you have a STRONG desk that can take the weight, but more importantly, can handle the bone-jarring vibrations produced by the machine when it operates.
If a huge chunky desktop typewriter is too much to have on your desk, then you could get a nice vintage portable. You can choose from those made by companies such as Corona, Remington, Royal, Imperial, Continental, Olivetti and Underwood. Portables have the benefits of style, convenience, portability, compactness and smaller price-tags.
To find out more about how to buy your typewriter, read this.
Having a typewriter in your study has many pluses. Apart from the fact that they’re extremely stylish and photogenic, a typewriter can save your ass if for any reason, you have a computer-failure. Anything from a crash to a blackout, to your printer packing up. Provided your machine’s in working order, in a pinch, a ribbon and a couple of sheets of fresh paper will have your letter, your essay, your business-report or other important document done in a few minutes.
Typewriters are also handy for things like typecasting on your blog, for keeping a diary or a journal, and for running off one-off documents that you really don’t want to have to save on your computer and waste disk-space with.
To muffle any undesirable clanking from your typewriter, and to stop it from shifting around on your desk, you may like to place a typewriter-pad underneath it. In the old days, you could buy these things from any stationery-shop. They’re just thick, square pads of foam or felt that you stick underneath your machine.
If you’re using a portable typewriter, a large mouse-pad, suitably orientated, can be an excellent substitute. A larger desktop typewriter will need something that covers more surface-area, and which will have to be much thicker, to cope with the significantly higher weight. To prevent irritating rattling, clinking or clanking while typing, remove any glass objects (jars, sets of drinking-glasses, etc) off your desk. Even the smallest portable typewriter can produce significant vibrations.
Fountain Pens
A man who loves to write should always have a good fountain pen. Not only are they infinitely classy, they are also much smoother and lighter writers than the modern ballpoint pen. For more information about these classic writing instruments, how to buy them, how to use them, care for them and other information, there is an entire category dedicated to them, which may be found on the menus back at the top of this page, on the left side of the screen.
Inkwell or Inkstand
You couldn’t have a classic desktop setup without one of these, could you? An inkwell, or an inkstand (a pair of inkwells on a stand, with slots and spaces for pens, nibs, and other bits and pieces) was a common desktop accessory, which remained popular long after dip-pens were obsolete. Some inkstands were given away as presentation-pieces or gifts.
The traditional inkstand or inkwell that might be found on a traditional desk would’ve been made of glass, silver, or brass.
Rocker Blotter
If you have a fountain pen, then you need a rocker-blotter. Rocker-blotters, in their various sizes and styles, have been desktop accessories since the Victorian era. They can be made of almost anything, from steel to silver, pewter, brass, leather, and a dizzying array of wood-types.
Rocker-blotters come apart into two-or-three pieces. A strip of blotting-paper (or in a pinch, paper-towel) is slipped over the blotter’s base, and it’s held in-place by the top-plate, which in-turn is held in-place by the knob at the top, which simply screws down. Paper is changed as necessary and as frequently as the blotter’s use requires it.
Magnifying Glass
Every household, or every study, and desk, should have some sort of magnifying device. For stuff like reading maps and small print, a standard, desktop magnifying glass is often sufficient. For a magnifier that won’t look out of place in your new study’s oldschool theme, look for a glass with a silver or brass frame, possibly with a cut-glass handle, like the one pictured above. Glasses like that are heavy and solid in the hands, unlikely to slide off the desk and provide good magnification.
Their extra weight means that they can also double as extra-classy paperweights, if need be.
A Good Drinking-Vessel
Either to be stored at the corner of your desk, or on a separate surface such as a sideboard, you should always have a nice drinking-vessel. What it is depends on what you like to drink. Fine glassware for top-quality alcoholic beverages, or even if you don’t drink alcohol, it can look fine filled with water. If you dislike having to constantly fill up your glass, search for something larger, like a traditional 1-pint pewter tankard.
Relax, modern pewter doesn’t contain any lead, so they’re perfectly safe to drink out of. But if you are the suspicious type, buy a traditional-style tankard with a see-through base. Traditionally made of glass, most modern tankards have see-through bases made of plastic (although some makers do still make tankards with traditional glass bases).
This was an innovation from Georgian times, and was created so that drunken bar-patrons would notice if a Royal Navy pressman had dropped a silver shilling into his beer. Press-gangs would enter a bar and look for drinkers. Accepting a shilling from a pressman was taken as your agreement to enter the Royal Navy. To trick drinkers, pressmen would drop a shilling into their tankards of beer. The drinkers would never see the shilling until the beer was all gone, and they were too drunk to notice it. They’d find the coin at the bottom of their mugs and were therefore hoodwinked into joining the navy.
To beat this crooked system of recruitment, people started making tankards with see-through bottoms so that drinkers could make sure there was nothing hiding at the bottom of their booze.
If you’re really worried about people slipping stuff into your drink, get yourself one of those German beer-steins with the lids on top.
Ash-Tray
Fewer people smoke today than they did back in the 30s, 40s and 50s, but an ash-tray is a nice thing to have on your desk, even if you don’t smoke. They’re handy as receptacles for things like loose-change, keys, business-cards and other important, but small, fiddly things that you don’t want to lose accidentally. The classic man’s ashtray is typically made of either brass, steel, or cut glass.
Bill-Spike
Anyone who is in the habit of writing down dozens of little post-it notes, phone-numbers, phone-messages, and other little details on small pieces of paper on a regular basis (like me!) will certainly appreciate a bill-spike.
Commonly found on shopfront-counters, reception-desks and other places where receipts are want to gather, these painfully sharp steel spikes on their metal bases are handy for keeping a tab on little bits of paper which are important enough to keep around, but not large or detailed enough to put in a folder, in a book, or in a drawer somewhere (where they’d probably get lost, anyway). You can pick these things up at places like stationery-chains and nick-nack shops for just a couple of dollars.
I have one on my desk, and without it, I’d forget where I put a person’s phone-number, or the address of someplace, within an hour of writing it down. Having a bill-spike is great for just poking down those flittery bits of paper that some people just have all over their bedrooms, offices and studies. Just write down your note, and poke it on down, and it won’t move anywhere until you want it to.
If your spike has a little coin-catcher, like that one in the photo (mine does), so-much the better. Handy for keeping your loose change in. If it doesn’t, then that’s why you’ve got the ash-tray on your desk for.
Letter Holder
For some people, having a steel bill-spike on their desk can be a safety hazard (if you have kids, for example). An alternative is the traditional letter-holder. Typically made of wood, brass or steel, these things can range from simple one-slot holders, to entire caddies that will hold letters, envelopes, incoming mail, outgoing mail, pens, pencils, scissors, stamps, paperclips, staples and oodles of other things. Handy for storing loose bits of paper in there.
Inbox
No, not one of those electronic things. I mean a proper inbox! Remember when they used to be made of wood? Handy for keeping documents that you’re working on, spare copy-paper and other things. If you need extra help with organisation, get a matching “outbox” too.
Stapler
You couldn’t possibly have a vintage office man-cave, without a stapler. And you couldn’t possibly have a stapler more vintage than the El Casco M5, from 1934.
Established in Spain in 1920, El Casco was originally a firearms manufacturer, producing revolvers. But the Depression hit the company like a kick in the nuts. Desperate not to keel over and die, the company turned its precision machining of firearms into precision machining of exquisite desktop accessories…which it still manufactures today. And the M5 stapler is one of its most iconic designs, and is the stapler that you would have to have in any vintage office.
Other Oldschool Office Fixtures
Oldschool Storage Solutions
Pigeon-holes and filing-cabinets kinda rule the roost here. I don’t believe in things really doing double-duty. An object should have a use, and it should be used for that purpose. Having things that double up as something else can be fiddly and frustrating to some people, just as much as it can be space-saving and time-saving for others. Keep a nice old-fashioned filing-cabinet in your office or study. Two or three drawers, possibly four, depending on how much filing you need to do.
And while you’re at it, invest in some of those old beige/custard/buff-coloured manila folders, the ones made of cardboard. I find these handy because you can just write whatever you need to, on the front of the file, in big letters, to save you having to fiddle around with tags and stickers. And some more modern files don’t have surfaces or colour-selections that lend themselves well to this function. Especially handy if you have poor eyesight.
Sound System
For most men, music is a must. To enjoy your favourite rock, jazz, classical, pop, Latin/South-American, or other genre of music, it sounds so much nicer when it’s coming out of something that looks pretty. Or even if it’s just listening to your favourite radio-station, talkback, music, or otherwise. What’s something that you can put in your new, revamped man-space that will look nice and sound nice?
For those of us who enjoy variety, you probably couldn’t go past a Crosley-brand radio-gramophone. Records are becoming more and more popular these days, and people young and old are collecting records, buying new records, resurrecting old records, and dusting off their old collections. The Crosley record-player shown above is one of many reproduction units evoking the radio-styles of the 30s and 40s. It can tune into AM and FM radio, it can play all your records, ranging from 33, 45, up to 78rpm, and it even has audio-cassette capabilities. Some units of this style even have slots for CDs (keep an eye out for those, if that’s what you’re after).
Some people find themselves listening to the radio more than they listen to their CD, record, cassette or even MP3-collections. Good, old-fashioned tube or transistor-radios are ideal for this. Some people say that vacuum-tube radios, of the kind popular from the 20s-40s, are the ones that produce the very best sound.
Old-fashioned tube-radios came in a number of styles. The two most common are cathedral…
…and tombstone…
…named for their curved, and rectangular/square profiles.
You can buy an antique one that’s been restored, or you can buy a modern reproduction, which will look the part, sound the part, but cost a fraction of the price.
If you have an extensive collection of CDs or records, you might want to buy an old jukebox from the 1940s or 50s…
You can buy original vintage ones, or you can buy modern reproduction jukeboxes, which are designed to play a stack of CDs, instead of a stack of records!
Seating Solutions
Don’t be a Victorian, and believe that ultra-comfortable seating is something to be considered immoral and rude. Every office man-cave should have a comfortable office-chair. The modern office-chair was invented in the mid-1800s, and was typified by the Centripetal Armchair:
In many ways, this was the first modern office-chair. It came with a swivel seat, rolling caster-wheels, and had models which came with additional features such as headrests and arm-rests. In fact, when it was unveiled in 1851, it was considered so modern and revolutionary that the uptight Victorians were completely horrified by it! Victorian morality dictated that such comfort and pleasure, derived from a piece of furniture, suggested relaxed, loose morals, quite shocking and improper in those days! As a result, despite its revolutionary design, the chair was a poor seller.
Fortunately, such starched, straitlaced attitudes are not so prevalent today, and you can easily go out and by a comfortable chair without fear of immorality.
You don’t have to buy a chair as fancy as that, but any desk-chair should be comfortable and fully adjustable. If you’re going for that vintage look, older chairs were typically made of wood and/or leather. Not plastic or other materials. Chairs like these (particularly ones made of wood) are often pretty cheap and can be bought almost anywhere.
If your room is large enough, then you might also consider the inclusion of armchairs and/or a couch. Handy for visitors, or just as a place to kick back, relax, and have a nap. Or read. Or write.
A Safe Place
What better place to keep things safe than…a safe?
Of course, there are other alternatives, but not all of them are particularly effective. Those pesky “personal” safes that you can buy aren’t really that effective. If it’s small enough to carry home, it’s small enough for someone to steal. And therefore…useless.
What kind of strongbox you buy depends on what you want to keep safe. Some desks come with lockable drawers. If you have a vintage desk with the keys intact, you could use that as your safe. Nobody’s going to try and carry away an entire desk. Some filing-cabinets also have the same feature, for storing important documents.
But if these two options aren’t suitable, and having a floor or a wall-safe isn’t an option, then your best bet is to get an actual, honest-to-goodness safe. Those old-fashioned steel ones that Wil-E-Coyote loves to drop on the Road Runner. A safe like that in working condition, with a known combination, will keep your valuables of all kinds…well…safe!
Of course, these safes come with a few strings attached – They take up quite a bit of space. And they are also extremely heavy! Be glad that some of them come with stands and wheels! But they are handy in storing stuff that you want to have protected. Now, nobody is going to be running off with your precious collection of ‘gentleman’s literature’.
Coat-Tree
A classic, bentwood tree is always handy. This one belongs to me. Traditionally, hats were placed on the top branches, coats on the lower branches, and things like umbrellas, walking-sticks and canes were placed in the ring around the base. Even if you don’t own a stick or a hat, these things can still be handy as a place to dump your coat when you come in out of the cold. Better than chucking them on the couch, anyway.
Open-Grille Fan
Back in the old days, when health and safety regulations were not what they are today, almost every office or study would have one of these perched somewhere around the room, either on the desk (if there was space…unlikely), or on a stand, pedestal or side-table. Old-style open-grille fans are stylish, easy to clean, and keep you cool the old-fashioned way. Just don’t put your fingers anywhere near it when it’s running, and keep the kids away from it. Or better yet, you could install ceiling-fans. Having a nice collection of paperweights (or paperweight stand-ins) would be important when you have a fan like this in your room.
Rotary Telephone
The old, rotary-dial telephones of the 20s and 30s are iconic, and no vintage office, if you’re trying to recreate one, would be found without one. You can still buy original telephones in working order. Simply plug it into the wall, and let it ring! Some of these old phones have bases and bodies made of steel, so they can be surprisingly heavy. But the good news with such solid construction is that after a heated conversation, you can literally slam down the handset without damaging the unit.
Some Concluding Remarks…
These are more or less the bare bones essentials that you’ll need to buy, to pull off the look of a vintage office or study, if that’s the angle for your man-cave, or home-office redecoration. You can vary them around a bit and mix them up, but in completion, they’ll turn almost any room into a replica office or home study, straight from 1935.
Any other elements you add in are personal touches to add your own little spin to things. This is my vintage desktop at home:
As you can see, most of the things listed in this posting can be found there. It’s an ongoing project, inspired by my recent purchase of the banker’s lamp in the corner, which in-turn, inspired this posting, for any guy looking to dress up his study or office in a more interesting, vintage style.
I have wanted one of these things for years, to keep my clothes organised, instead of hanging them on hooks or draping them over the backs of chairs. Ever seen one? It’s called a clothes valet, or a valet stand…
Valet stands were once common in households of the well-to-do, typically, the Middle Class and upwards, who could afford nicer clothes, and could spend the money required for a stand to keep them neat and tidy.
Such stands were common from the 1800s up to the mid-20th century. When men’s daily fashion steered away from trousers, jackets, suits, sport-coats and blazers in the decades after the Second World War, valet stands became less and less useful, and eventually people stopped buying them, and making them. But they are handy pieces of kit for those who still tend to dress in a more conservative or traditional, vintage style.
Valet stands can range from the incredibly simple, to the amazingly elaborate. A really simple stand might just have a coat-hanger on top of a pair of legs with three connector-bars at the base to serve as a coat and shoe-stand. A really elaborate valet-stand can come with a coat-hanger, trouser-bar, shoe-rests, compartmentalised jewellery-caddy, tie-bar, hat-stand…even a chair with built-in nick-nack drawer!
The Backstory
A stand like this would’ve been typical of the style popular from the last quarter of the 1800s up to the postwar period, up to around the 1960s, when men’s fashion took a serious turn. I bought the stand featured in these photographs, today, at an antiques fair, for $5.00!
The clothes valet was standing outside one of the tent-stalls at the antiques fair, with some sort of advertising poster or sign clipped onto it, and it was obviously being used as a sandwich-board or an advertising-stand. And initially, I didn’t think it was for sale. But when I got right up close to it, I noticed a white price-tag hanging from it, which said: “$5.00”.
And my heart just went pitty-patter. I tracked down the stallholder and inquired about this amazing and under-appreciated piece of woodwork standing, unloved and ignored, outside her tent. She said that the price was indeed correct. $5.00. Once she’d removed the clips and the poster, I was welcome to take it, she said. So I coughed up a fiver and walked off with the stand.
The best five bucks I’ve ever spent. You’ll never find one of this vintage, of this style, in this condition, for that kind of money, not even if you tried. This was a real vintage score :D.
The Features of the Stand
So, let’s show you around the stand, such as it is…
Up the top here, we have the tie-bar, then below it, the shoulder-width coat-hanger. Underneath that is the recessed tray for things like watches, cufflinks, collar-bars, tie-bars and other such masculine jewellery.
Beneath the jewellery-tray is the trouser-bar, for hanging your trousers on. And right at the bottom is the…
…shoe-rest.
You simply can’t find beautiful vintage household pieces like this anymore, and I consider myself very lucky to have this, for such a super-low price. It’s in perfect condition, barring a few dings and scratches. Apart from that, it looks almost brand-new.
A valet-stand made today, brand-new out of the workshop, would probably cost you hundreds of dollars, even for a simple bog-standard one. A mid-range stand, looking something like this…I don’t even want to guess! Even antique ones aren’t cheap. I got this for a song, and I couldn’t be happier.
In retrospect, the song should probably be: “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails“. Hahaha!!
It’s absolutely beautiful, it’s been something I’ve chased after for at least five years, and I finally have one, for possibly the lowest price that one of these has ever sold for, barring one that was given away for free. And I don’t ever see something like that happening!
Clothes Valets Today
You can still buy clothes valets today. You can order them online and such. But nothing beats one that was built back in the days when they were an essential for any well-dressed man about town, and might’ve been found in almost any man’s bedroom. The quality, the style and the sturdiness comes as standard, and you can be assured that whoever used this thing before you was just as snappy a dresser as you are.
These days, everyone has a camera. A digital camera, a mechanical camera, an electronic camera, a film-camera, even a camera-phone. Today, taking a photograph is easy. It’s literally done in a flash. You can take hundreds and thousands of photos and store them away, you can edit them, caption them, delete them, enlarge them, reduce them, photoshop them, you can have them black and white, colour, sepia-toned, panoramic and almost any other effect or result that we desire. And most of the time, we just don’t think about how far photography has come.
There was a time not too long ago, when photography of any kind was impossible. When the only way to take a picture of something was with paints, canvas, a pen, a pencil, or a stick of charcoal. When everything had to be sketched, drawn or painted by hand, a process that took hours, and even days or weeks to complete. Today, a photograph takes no more than a second. But what was it like when photography was new?
This posting will look at a history of photography, from its invention and earliest beginnings, to the introduction of the first portable, compact film-camera, in the late 1800s.
The Birth of Photography and the First Cameras
The word “photography” comes from the Greek language, from ‘Photos’ meaning ‘Light’, as in “photosynthesis”, and “Graphos”, meaning “writing”, or “drawing”, as in “Graphics”. So literally: “Drawing with Light”.
However, here we are, jumping the gun. To take a photograph, you first need a device for taking pictures. A camera! Where do we go to find the history of cameras?
The first camera was called the “Camera Obscura”. Taken from Latin, it literally means “Chamber of Darkness”, or “Chamber of Obscurity”, or…a darkroom! One of the most important pieces of equipment in all photography!
The Camera Obscura was a chamber which was completely dark inside, except for a single opening or window, which let in light. Think of it as a lens. The light from outside entered the lens, and whatever was outside the chamber was projected onto a wall, or screen, inside the chamber. Without any other sources of light apart from what came through the lens, anything outside the chamber would be clearly seen on the wall, or screen inside the chamber. Clear enough for someone, if they wanted to, to trace the outline of whatever was projected onto the screen, such as a tree, or a building, or even a person! This…was the first camera. And the tracings that it enabled, were the first-ever photographs.
Hardly faster than having your portrait painted, but hey, you have to start somewhere.
And there we have the camera in its essence. A dark chamber with an opening for light and images to enter, and a medium upon which to record the images.
Obviously, having a camera the size of a closet, being moved around on a horsedrawn cart with your own, live-in artist to trace everything that you wanted to capture was hardly practical. Could you imagine trying to take something that bulky on your next holiday to the South Pacific? You’d never fit it in your pocket…
What was needed was something that took all those principles, and made them…SMALLER! Enter a Frenchman named Louis-Jacques-Mandre Daguerre (1787-1851)!
Daguerre and the Daguerrotype!
The Camera Obscura proved that it was possible to sketch life-accurate pictures of something. Not some fluffy artist’s impression of what something could look like. But the problem with the Camera Obscura is that it’s literally the size of a house. You’d never be able to take it anywhere with you! At least, not with any degree of practicality.
The man who changed this was a Frenchman named Louis-Jacques-Mandre Daguerre….Man that’s a mouthful.
Daguerre did not invent the photograph. That credit goes to another Frenchman, Nicephore Niepce (1765-1833). Niepce had been experimenting with how to use light to imprint an image onto a medium that could record it, if the medium was coated with a material that was affected by light. He’d had some success, and had been experimenting in the 1820s. He made small steps in 1822, but the world’s first real photograph was taken by Niepce in 1826!
Entitled “View from the Window, at Le Gras”, in this grainy snapshot, you can see trees in the distance, and the walls, rooves and windows of surrounding buildings.
Niepce achieved groundbreaking shots like this by a simple replacing of materials.
While a larger Camera-Obscura used paper as a tracing-medium for a projected image, his smaller camera used a sheet of metal impregnated with light-sensitive chemicals. The metal sheeting was made of pewter (alloy of tin & copper, mixed in a ratio of 9-1), which was then coated with a variety of light-sensitive chemicals.
Niepce originally used silver nitrate, which darkens when exposed to sunlight, but also experimented with lavender-oil mixed with bitumen.
In 1829, Niepce started experimenting with Louis Daguerre, and the two scientists attempted to create something that would reliably produce permanent photographs. sadly, Niepce never lived to see the finished product, and died in 1833. Daguerre continued their work, eventually developing a process using lavender oil, which he named the “Daguerrotype”, after himself. Lavender-oil…must’ve had some lovely-scented photographs.
Daguerrotype photography was the first, commercially successful photography in the world, making its debut in the 1830s. Although capable of producing permanent photos that wouldn’t be damaged by extra exposure to light, the process had one serious drawback: It took forever to develop it!
To take just ONE photograph, the camera would have to be set up, and the shutter in front of the camera-lens would have to be opened (to let the light in, to affect the chemicals on the copper-silver photographic-plate inside) for at least TEN MINUTES before a half-decent photograph was taken! Obviously, this was fine for things that don’t move…buildings, trees, woodland scenes…but it was impossible to capture moving objects, such as horse-drawn transport, or people, unless they were standing or sitting somewhere for a very long time!…like in this photograph, one of the first ever taken using this method…
Taken by Daguerre himself in 1838, this photograph is the first EVER to depict humans.
Found them yet? Try the bottom left corner of the photograph, at the street-intersection. There, you can see a man having his shoes shined. The shoeshine customer and the bootblack were the only two people in the entire street who were standing still (or at least, holding a general pose) long enough for their outlines to be captured on this early photographic process with the ridiculously long exposure-time!
Taking A Faster Photo
Early photography was rather hit-and-miss. Frenchman Louis Daguerre creates the first “practical” photography in the 1830s. But there’s a big problem. The process takes ages to work. Hardly practical for holiday snapshots, or even family portraits! Photography would never become a thriving industry if a married couple on their wedding-day had to stand around lifeless for 10 minutes just to have their wedding photograph taken! The process had to be sped up!
To do this, they had to change two things about the photography process.
1. MORE LIGHT!
Photography worked because light affected the chemicals placed on metal plates stored inside cameras. The light entered the camera-box through the lens at the front, imprinting whatever image was in front of the camera onto the chemical metal plate inside.
To speed up this process, it was easy…make a bigger lens! Bigger lens, more light, faster development! Brilliant!
2. BETTER CHEMICALS!
Along with better and larger lenses for capturing more light, photographic plates were treated with chemicals which were more light-sensitive, and more reactive. Faster reactions would make the exposure-time shorter and the whole process that much faster. To produce better photos, plates were treated with a variety of silver and chlorine compounds.
Ever wondered why in Victorian-era photographs, people being photographed tend to look rather bored, sleepy and tired with it all? Like this?
It’s not because of that famous Victorian prudishness or morality…it’s because it took so damn long to have their photographs taken! Exposure-times which lasted up to five or ten minutes were not uncommon, and it just wasn’t possible to take photos any other way!
Could you imagine sitting in a chair, looking at a box on a stand with a window in it, and smiling all happily and holding that pose…for ten minutes?
Go ahead. Try it. I’ll wait…
…Your neck gets pretty sore after a while, doesn’t it? And you don’t feel much like smiling and holding it for ten whole minutes while someone takes a shot, do you?
It’s because it took so long, that you got photographs and poses like the one you see above. In fact, it took SO long to take photographs that early photography-studios actually employed metal bracing-stands to hold people’s heads up, so that they wouldn’t lop over and fall asleep during the photoshoot! Don’t believe me? Have a look…
Called ‘posing stands’, such as in this illustration, these apparatus would allow a photographed subject a certain degree of comfort during the taking of his photograph. The subject wouldn’t be able to LEAN against the stand, but he could rest his back, shoulders and head on it if he wanted to, to take some of the strain of the long wait, off of his feet. It was hardly comfortable, but it was the best that they could do at the time.
Alternative Means of Photography
Louis Daguerre had shown that permanent, practical photography was possible. But the big drawback to his method was that the long exposure-times made photography a rather unattractive artform. If photography was going to survive, you needed a way to take faster, better photographs.
The first of these methods was the Ambrotype.
Developed in the 1850s, the Ambrotype used wet-plate technology. Called the “collodion process”, the photographic medium, which by now had advanced from tracing-paper, to copper-silver sheeting, to a sheet of glass coated with a solution of silver-bromide and chloride, was inserted into the camera. To prevent light getting into the shot and damaging the results, a black cloth hood was held over the camera (like what you might see in those old movies).
The lens-cap on the camera is removed and light is allowed to filter through the camera onto the wet, glass plate. As usual, the image in front of the camera is marked onto the chemicals on the glass. Now, you can take that image and go and develop it!
There was just ONE problem.
Whereas the Daguerrotype was too slow, the Ambrotype was too fast! Why? Because of the very method that the photos were taken! Remember, it’s called ‘wet plate’ technology.
The photograph would only last as long as the glass-plate negative was moist and covered with the silver-compound chemicals. The very moment that the chemicals dried up, the photograph would be lost! To transfer the image to a medium that would record it for posterity (such as paper), the photographer had to work really fast! From soaking the plate in the solution, to loading it into the camera, to taking the shot, to unloading the glass plate and developing the image, the whole process had to be done in under 15 minutes!
Not easy when you’re rushing around with sheets of delicate glass, dangerous chemicals, and heavy, bulky, tripod cameras!
Unsurprisingly, people kept experimenting.
The next method was the Tintype.
‘Tintype’ is a misnomer. There is no actual TIN used anywhere in the photographic process.
The difference here is that tintype used sheets of metal (in this case, iron, instead of copper as with the Daguerrotype) instead of glass.
The process was similar, you still had to soak the iron in silver-solutions to prepare them for photography, but it had the advantage that it was a much faster method of photography. Unlike with the Daguerrotype or the Ambrotype, a Tintype photograph could be taken in just a few seconds or a couple of minutes, since the reaction-time between the silver-compounds and the exposed light is much faster. For the first time in history, it was possible to take several photos in a matter of minutes!
With this improvement in technology, photography really took off for the first time. By the 1860s, tintypes were becoming more and more popular. Remember all those black and white photographs that you see in your history books, from the American Civil War?
A lot of those were tintypes. The quick exposure-time meant that for the first time in history, it was possible for newspaper-photographers to actually go out onto a battlefield and take several photographs, without having to wait all day for the image to impress itself onto the recording-medium! More photographs could be taken in a shorter period of time, with a greater degree of sharpness and quality!
How to take a Tintype Photograph:
Flip the Shot!
Tintype photography was popular because it was fast, easy and relatively practical. For the first time in history, you could have something resembling modern snapshot photography. For portrait photography and family snapshots, wedding-photos and other projects likely to be handled by professional photography studios, the tintype remained the standard for nearly 100 years, from the 1850s up until just before the Second World War.
The ONE…small issue…with tintypes is that you never got EXACTLY what you wanted.
From the earliest days of camera photography, be it a camera-obscura, a daguerrotype, ambrotype or even a tintype, there was always one little compromise that you had to put up with:
What you saw through the camera-lens, was never exactly what you would see printed on paper when the shot was finished and developed. For example, in really early cameras, shots were often projected upside-down. So when the photo was done, you’d have to flip it over to get it right side up.
But there was one other thing. Remember that all these early photographic processes used silver-compounds as the chemical for capturing the light and imprinting the image onto glass or metal. And what is silver used for?
That’s right, making mirrors!
Every tintype photograph EVER taken, was always a MIRROR IMAGE. Don’t believe me? Have a look at this:
This rather grainy photograph was taken in 1879. Two years later, the person in this photograph was killed by the local sheriff.
Who is he? William Bonny AKA William McCarty AKA…Billy the Kid.
This is the ONLY known photograph of Billy the Kid, one of the most famous outlaws of the Wild West. But that’s not why it’s in this posting.
Have a look at the gun with its shoulder-stock resting on the ground by Billy’s feet.
This is a Winchester Rifle, a popular long-arm of the latter half of the 1800s. But notice that, in this photograph, the left side of the gun is exposed to the viewer, and that the loading-slot is clearly visible, above the trigger.
There’s just one problem. Winchester rifles, without exception, had the loading-gate on the RIGHT side of the gun.
Flip the image over, and we have…
…the rifle with its loading-gate on the right side of the gun, which is where it always was.
This photograph was a tintype. And all tintypes, just like this one, came out as mirror-images when they were developed.
Portable Photography
Photography had come a long way from simply tracing an outline of a projected image onto a piece of paper. It was now clearer, faster, and cheaper! But there was still one problem.
Portability.
For cameras of the period to work, they had to be very still, so that the light wouldn’t be interrupted during its interaction with the photographic medium inside the camera. And the medium-materials used, such as copper, glass and iron plates, were heavy and cumbersome to carry around, to say nothing of the cameras themselves, with their bulky wooden tripods. Along with all his kit, a photographer would need a horse and cart to move around town! Hardly practical. What people needed was a smaller, lighter, more portable camera.
Going Dry
The big obstacle to portability, quite apart from the size of the cameras, was the whole photography process. Up until the 1870s, all cameras used “wet plate” technology, where the chemicals were added to glass or metallic photographic-plates before they were inserted into the camera. And after the photo had been taken, the plate’s image had to be transferred to paper-stock before the liquids dried up, destroying the photograph. Daguerrotype and Ambrotype photographs made this process messy, tricky, cumbersome and frustrating. To take a picture, you had to have EVERYTHING you needed, right there, right now, on the table. The photographic-solutions, the plates, the paper-stock, the developing-fluids. And as the name suggests, the whole process relied on liquids. The moment everything dried up, it was useless.
This meant that a photographer had to work fast, to capture an image before the photographic solutions dried up, and the image was lost before it could be imprinted onto paper. But it also meant that you couldn’t keep a whole heap of photographic-plates in a case and carry them around with you at will, to photograph whatever you wanted…the plates would dry out…and you’d be left with nothing but lots of sheets of dirty window-glass in your suitcase.
The tintype process was better, if only in the fact that you could take faster photographs, but there were still serious limitations.
It was to speed up the whole photography process that the much more convenient “dry plate” process was developed.
Dry photographic plate technology, the immediate predecessor to film technology, was developed in 1871, by Dr. Richard Leach Maddox, an English physician and photographer.
Dr. Maddox was engaged in the science of photomicrography; or translated from Greek, the visual recording of microscopic entities. In other words, he photographed microbes, and other things which he was able to observe through the lenses of his microscope.
The good doctor loved his work, but he was constantly frustrated by the limitations of wet-plate photographic processes. Quite apart from everything else, he was allergic to the chemicals, and they irritated him when he had to take photographs.
In trying to find a solution, Maddox wondered why it wasn’t possible to condense the liquids used in photography, into a sort of gel or paste? Such a product could be spread onto a glass or metallic photographic-plate just like butter onto a slice of bread. It would be faster, cleaner, and there wouldn’t be any vapors, or chances of spillages. Surely, such a process was possible?
It was. But it took Maddox nearly ten years to figure out how to do it.
Eventually, Maddox figured out how to do it. He layered a standard glass photographic-plate with the usual cocktail of silver-based solutions which were necessary for photography to take place. Then, to protect the solution from evaporation, he coated the whole thing in…gelatin.
The same stuff used to make children’s candies and fruit jellies!
Once the gelatin (which is transparent in its purest form) was set on the glass, it sealed in the photographic solution, which now would never dry out. But it could still be exposed to strong light, so that a photograph could be taken. Brilliance!
It took a while, but by 1879, Maddox’s ingenuity had led to the mass-production of the world’s first dry photographic camera-plates!
Kodak Moments
In the 1870s, English physician Richard Maddox pioneered a way for photographic plates to be more easily handled and made more portable. When the process for manufacturing these plates was perfected in 1878-79, a young man stepped in to start producing these plates on a grand scale.
His name was George Eastman. In his twenties at the time, Eastman set up a factory which could mass-produce these dry photographic plates, making photography faster and cheaper. In 1889, Eastman established his own photography company: Eastman Kodak, one of the most famous in the world.
The word “Kodak” was invented by Eastman himself, after asking for suggestions from his mother. George wanted something that was easy to pronounce, unique, short, and which would not sound similar to any other product, brand or company-name then in existence. After twisting a few letters around, George and his mother, Maria, came up with…”KODAK”.
Young Georgie Eastman had entered the world of photography at a critical moment in history. In 1887, the world’s first photographic FILM had been developed! Building on Dr. Maddox’s dry-plate technology, it was a simple process of changing the photographic medium from heavy, fragile and delicate glass plates, to light, flexible celluloid sheeting, or ‘film’. Film was more compact, much lighter, and far easier to transport.
By now, it was possible to have photography on the move! You had faster exposure-times, cleaner, lighter materials…and more compact cameras!…which were yet to be invented…but improved technology had paved the way for their eventual development.
A Little Black Box
This doesn’t look like much, but it is the great-granddaddy of the fancy, compact digital camera sitting on your desk right now.
This, is the Kodak Box Camera.
Invented by Eastman using the latest film-technology, the Kodak box-camera was the world’s first-ever “point-and-shoot” camera, designed to be idiotproof. You simply wound up the film, aimed the camera, peeked through the viewing-window, and pressed the lever to actuate the shutter and get a snapshot! Easy as pie!…although the exposure-time was still a few seconds, so…hold that pose!
This was the camera that launched the Eastman Kodak Company, and it was the first commercially-produced snapshot camera that anyone could use. Designed to be cheap, simple and functional, it could bring photography; previously an expensive and time-consuming hobby of the rich, to the hands of ordinary people.
With the Kodak camera, it was now possible to photograph rooms, houses, parks, family-outings, one’s children, famous events, significant occasions and almost anything else. Now, everyone could stand together and have a group-shot where-ever they wanted to!
Kodak advertised its new cameras as being super-easy to use. The popular slogan was: “You Press the Button…we do the rest!”
“The rest”, included the development of the film and photographs, and the loading of the camera. You simply used up the film in the roll, and then you sent the film, along with your camera, to the Kodak offices in America…So long as you lived in America, this might be convenient. For people living in Europe, perhaps not. It was for this reason that the Kodak company didn’t kick it off right away with the Box Camera, but things would improve, once they’d set up branch-offices in other locations.
So what happened when you sent your camera back to Kodak?
The developers at Kodak would open your camera, retrieve the film, develop the pictures, put them into an envelope for you, reload your camera with a fresh roll of film, and then send back your camera, your new film, and your photographs, all in one neat little package! And your camera was all ready for another round of shooting!
The End of Eastman
I’d like to say that George Eastman, the man who brought us the snapshot camera, and founded one of the most famous photographic-equipment companies on earth, lived to a ripe old age and died rich and happy.
Sadly, I can’t.
He did live to a ripe old age…77, and he was rich, but he was hardly happy.
In later life, Eastman was struck down by crippling back-pains. These spinal problems made it impossible for him to stand upright, walk, or even move to any great extent, without serious pain. He was essentially crippled, and confined to sitting in a wheelchair. He suspected that he had inherited the same condition from his mother, who had also had back problems later in life, and who had died in agonizing pain in a wheelchair of her own.
Guessing that he would be in for a long, slow, painful death, Eastman took his own life. He left a brief suicide-note, and then shot himself in the chest. Once. Killing himself instantly. The note which he left to be found, read:
“TO MY FRIENDS: ‘My work is done. Why wait?‘”.
George Eastman died on the 14th of March, 1932 at the age of 77.
But while Eastman was dead, the camera was not!
The Kodak box camera, later reborn with the enchantingly cute name of the “Brownie”, was the mainstay of point-and-shoot cameras for years. Decades! Even in the 1960s, you could go out and buy a brand new Kodak Box Brownie!
Shooting for the Masses
It was thanks to portable, film-using cameras such as the Brownie, that gave birth to photography as a real and practical hobby. For the first time in history, shutterbugs were everywhere, snapping everything that moved, and even more things that didn’t. EVERYONE used a Box Brownie. Everyone. Even royalty! Queen Mary; grandmother of the current Queen of England, photographed the royal family on holiday, using her own Box Brownie!
In the late Victorian era and from then onwards, photography as a serious and practical hobby really took off. Now, it really was possible to photograph anything, almost anywhere! Photographs of things previously impossible, due to the size and impracticality of Victorian-era photographic technology, were now commonplace. Picture-postcards became popular. And professional photographers could make a lot of money going around snapping exotic sights and selling them to companies to print off postcards.
In the 1920s and 30s, there was a boom in international travel. Now, with fast steamships, automobile ownership and extensive railway networks, families, couples and singles could flit off on a jolly holiday. And they could photograph everything that they wanted, and bring their memories home with them. A hundred years ago, such things were almost impossible, unless you knew how to draw or paint!
Cameras captured some of the most famous events of the 20th century, now. The Crash of the Hindenburg, the Attack on Pearl Harbor, the launching of the Titanic. Some intrepid photographers even risked life and limb (but mostly life) climbing the unfinished scaffolds of famous Manhattan skyscrapers, to photograph the construction-workers at their job.
Flash Photography
A Flash in the Stand
Especially with early cameras and photographic technology, light was essential for the capturing of images. Exposure took a long time, and bright light was needed to capture an image.
As photographic technology improved and photographs could be taken faster, there remained the issue of getting enough light to successfully take a clear shot of something where light was insufficient. To do this, flash-photography was invented.
The earliest flash-photography used a stand loaded with “flash-powder”, which was ignited by an ignition-switch held in the photographer’s hand at the moment of exposure. The stands, called ‘flash-stands’, and the powder with which they were filled, are iconic pieces of early photographic equipment. They were invented in the 1890s by a man named Joshua Lionel Cowen (last name also spelt ‘Cohen’, because he was Jewish).
Does the name sound familiar? Probably because it’s also the name of a popular line of children’s model trains. No co-incidence…Cowen invented those, too.
Early flash-photography was a bit of a hit-and-miss affair. The stands were loaded by hand with a measure of flash-powder, which was ignited with a spark at the moment of the photograph. If too much powder had been loaded into the stand, you were more likely to get an explosion rather than a flash! And if you didn’t have enough powder, you were likely to get a rather dark, useless photo that nobody could see! Getting the balance right was a real skill.
A Victorian-era camera with separate flash-stand and powder. Note how close the photographer’s right hand is to the igniting flash-powder
The flash-stand and powder produced dramatic, loud explosions when the flashes went off. This allowed for photos to be taken at night, and in dark rooms where there might not be enough natural sunlight. But there was one serious drawback. The imprecision of loading the powder into the stand was a serious fire-risk. Incorrect loading of the powder could result in a real explosion when the camera went off, and a photographer could have his hand burnt, or even blown off by the blast of the flash if he had overloaded the stand with powder! Nasty stuff…
The dangers of early flash-photography are dramatically shown in this 1939 Mickey Mouse cartoon; “Society Dog Show“. The results are rather exaggerated for purposes of comedy, but improper loading of the flash-stand really could start a fire.
Flashbulb Photography
Early flash-photography using a stand and powder allowed photographs to be taken at night, in dark places, or in places without sufficient natural sunlight. But it had one serious drawback. Because everything was done manually, there was a significant risk of mishap. Too much powder could result in injurious explosions which were not only life-threatening, but also a major fire-risk!
To try and improve the safety and uniformity of flash-photography, the flash-bulb was invented.
Remember those scenes from those period movies of reporters and photographers in the 1930s with their three-piece suits and fedora hats with their “PRESS” cards in them? How they’re waving around their portable cameras with the flash-holders attached? They take a shot and POOF! There’s a loud, distinctive “Pshink!” as the flashbulb goes off, and a dazzling white light blinds you for the rest of the film?
“Take your picture, mister?”
That’s a flashbulb-camera in action.
In fact, they say the flashes were so bright, Hollywood movie-stars in the 1920s and 30s pioneered the wearing of sunglasses so that they wouldn’t be blinded by the constant camera-flashes at important social or industry events.
Flash-bulbs made night, or low-light photography safer, faster and more portable. However, it was still dangerous.
The bulbs worked in the following manner: The flashbulb-holder was attached to the camera which would use it. The bulb was screwed into the socket in the holder. When the shutter was actuated, the flashbulb was ignited and went off!
The famous blinding white light is the result of the ignition of oxygen and magnesium inside the flash-bulbs. Anyone who’s done highschool science will probably know that when you put a match to magnesium, it burns bright, dazzling white. It’s the exact same thing in old-fashioned camera-bulbs.
The big drawback to this was that the intense flash let off a lot of heat. Once one photograph had been taken, you would have to wait for the flash-bulb to cool down, first! If you tried to unscrew it right away and set in a new bulb for another flash, you’d burn your fingers! You could probably overcome this using gloves, of course, but the white hot flash-bulb was still a fire-risk. Throw it carelessly into a waste-paper basket and you could set a whole building on fire!
Improving Things in a Flash!
Edwardian flash-photography allowed photographs to be taken at night, or in low-light conditions. But it was dangerous and prone to mishap. The flash-bulb invented shortly after, made the process faster and safer, but the intense heat generated by burning magnesium flashbulbs made it impossible to take more than one good flash-photograph at a time, unless you could safely remove the used bulb and insert a fresh one without burning your fingers!
In the 1960s, companies like Kodak, with its Instamatic Camera, invented the flash-cube! A fantastic little detachable light-cube that you stuck on the top of your camera. Now, you didn’t have to change the bulb every time you wanted to take a shot, and you didn’t even have to wait for it to cool down! You simply snapped it on the top of the camera, and flash-flash-flash-flash! Four flash-shots in one! Huzzah!
Although expensive, (early cameras of this type went for hundreds of dollars in the 1960s and 70s), they were the next step in flash-technology, until eventually at the end of the 20th century, the flash had been incorporated entirely into the body of the camera; just as it is today, with no bulbs to change, or flip, or replace, or pans to fill with exploding powder. Simplicity…and choice! Now you can choose to turn the flash on, or off, and you don’t have to carry anything extra around with you, to make that choice with.
Sepia-Tone Selections
Almost any digital camera worth its salt today, will have a sepia-tone option on it. It allows you to take photographs in that famous yellowy-browny tinge reminiscent of old-fashioned photographs, which have yellowed and faded in their frames…without having to wait 50 years for it to happen!
But what is this famous tint called ‘sepia’?
The word ‘sepia’ is actually a…FISH.
That’s right. A fish. That swims in water. Specifically, the cuttlefish.
In older times, photographs were inked using the ink taken from the cuttlefish. As photographs aged and the ink was exposed to sunlight, the darker pigments in the ink would fade, and the natural brown colour of cuttlefish-ink became more pronounced as the darker colours faded away, leaving us with the famous golden-brown tinge on old photographs that everyone loves to try and recreate today.
Shake it like a Polaroid Picture!
Aaaah, instant cameras. Magical boxes of incredibleness that seem to defy the laws of physics!
The most famous instant camera, capable of producing instantly-developed film, was of course, the Polaroid camera. What could be simpler? Aim, shoot, print, shake…voila!
The concept of the instant camera dates back to the Roaring Twenties, a time of great technological change and wonder!…but things were not to be. Although the idea for the instant camera goes back to 1923, it wasn’t until the 1940s that something practical was invented.
The man who invented the modern instant camera was a fellow named Edwin Herbert Land (1909-1991). He unveiled his new creation in 1948, and ever since, we’ve been enjoying the benefits of instant photography, which would probably not be surpassed until the coming of digital cameras in the 1970s and 80s.
Land’s invention of the instant camera, and the foundation of the company that would make them (Polaroid), was born out of a nagging request from his daughter, Jennifer, who constantly asked her father why, after taking a photograph, it was not possible to view it straight away. Of course, the photograph had to be taken to be developed, and this lengthy process between taking photographs, and actually getting to see what they looked like, annoyed Land, leading to the invention of his instant camera and instant photographs!
The phrase ‘shake it like a Polaroid picture’, came out with the song “Hey Ya”, in 2003!, and it refers to the fact that some people would shake Polaroid photographs in order to try and develop them even faster. But it doesn’t actually do anything at all.
Shaking the pictures was once done by early instant-photographers, in order to dry the pigments used in the development of their photographs. But shaking doesn’t actually help the photograph develop any faster! In fact, it probably screws it up!
What happens when you take the photograph is that the light enters the camera and reacts with the photo-sensitive chemicals on the photographic card, which begin to develop. Shaking the card actually separates the chemicals, and more importantly, the colour-pigments, distorting and damaging the resulting image!
Risks of Early Photography
Especially Victorian and Edwardian photography, was full of risks and hazards, mishaps and dangers. A few have already been highlighted – Exploding flash-powder, scalding-hot flash-bulbs, but one which hasn’t been mentioned is the dangers of developing fluid.
For ages, photographs had to be developed the old-fashioned way, by dipping the photographic cards into solutions, to make the photosensitive chemicals in the paper take on their proper shades and/or colours, to show the image in its fullest clarity.
Although this sounds dangerous enough with chemicals and solutions everywhere, it was made even more dangerous because of the use of cyanide, one of the most poisonous chemicals known to man. Cyanide was used in early photography, when wet-plate processes were still the main form of capturing images. Excessive exposure to cyanide, even in the small amounts used in photography, could lead to poisoning and even death. That’s one way to suffer for your art.
A Clearer Picture?
This is about where my posting on this subject ends. But if you want to know more, here are some of the links I used…
In 1862, French writer, Victor Hugo, published one of his most famous novels. Along with “The Hunchback of Notre Dame“, the world-famous “Les Miserables” remains one of the most famous books ever written. It has been made into at least half a dozen films or TV series, a world-famous, globally successful musical theater production, and a musical film, released last year.
The novel’s title, (pronounced “Le’ Miser’abe“), translates into English as “The Miserable“. The book chronicles the seventeen-year struggle of French convict, Jean Valjean, jailed for stealing bread to feed his dying nephew. His original sentence is five years, but his sentence is extended over and over due to repeated attempts to escape, until he eventually spends nineteen years in chains, finally gaining his freedom, of a sorts, in 1815, the year that Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo.
“Les Miserables” was written over a century and a half ago, and many of the cultural references are lost to history. This posting will look at the various historical events and persons mentioned in the novel, the films, and the play, so that the overall story of the book can be better understood.
“Toulon, 1815”
The Bagne of Toulon
The story opens in 1815. Jean Valjean, convict #24601, has been imprisoned at Toulon, in France, since his arrest for theft in 1796. But what is Toulon, and where is it?
‘Toulon’ itself, is a city, located in southeastern France, on the Mediterranean coastline. The ‘Toulon’ of the story is actually the Bagne of Toulon.
The Bagne of Toulon (1748-1873) was an enormous, and infamous French prison.
Previously, Frenchmen who had been convicted of crimes had been drafted into the French navy. They were used as rowers to power the enormous French naval galleys. When galleys became obsolete, to be replaced by wind-powered sailing-ships, all the prisoners who were once sent to sea were instead sent to the Bagne of Toulon, where they were sentenced to years of hard labour.
Toulon was also a naval base and harbour during this time. The prisoners sent to the Bagne of Toulon were made to serve their sentences doing hard labour, carrying out tasks such as digging foundations for buildings, splitting stones, building fortifications and other structures, and to operate the machinery and treadmills and wheels which ran the rope-making factory nearby. Prisoners were branded with letters that showed the extent of their imprisonment at Toulon. They were either branded as having to serve hard labour (for a specific number of years), or were branded as having to serve hard labour for life, which of course meant that they would most likely die in prison.
The Yellow Passport
When he’s granted parole, Jean Valjean is forced to carry around his parole-documents, comprised of identification information and a passport, printed on yellow paper. The paper is colour-coded so that anyone who looks at it knows at once that he is a convict on parole, and a dangerous man (even though all he did was steal a loaf of bread for his nephew). The paper makes it impossible for Valjean to find work, food, or even a bed for the night, as he tries to make his way to his parole-officer where his papers are to be checked.
The yellow French passport shouldn’t be confused with the yellow card mentioned in the book “Crime and Punishment”, which serves a different purpose. During the time of imperial Russia, to prove that they had the right to practice their profession, prostitutes had to carry around a yellow I.D. card, to show that they were prostituting themselves legally, and had a license that allowed this.
The Bishop of Digne
Although the good Bishop Myriel is a fictional character, the town of Digne (“Deen”) is not. In the early 21st century, the town enjoys a population of some 17,000-odd people. In the 1820s at the time of ‘Les Miserables‘, its population was a much smaller 3,500 people.
“Montreuil, 1823”
Fantine Sells Her Hair and Teeth
After being kicked out of Valjean’s factory by the foreman, the young woman named Fantine is forced to sell her hair, and even her teeth, to survive, and to send money to the innkeeper who houses her daughter, Cosette.
Selling hair was a common practice among the people who were down on their luck during the 19th century. Hair was used in wigmaking, hair-jewellery (where it would be braided into ropes and bracelets), and even in dollmaking. Hair was laboriously inserted into the heads of dolls using needles and tweezers, a few strands a a time. Excess hair was used to stuff the insides of dolls and fill out their forms!
Although hair might grow back, and its loss would only be temporary, Fantine goes so far as to even sell her teeth! And yes, you could sell your teeth…if you were really desperate.
Dentistry during this time was crude, and people often had their rotten teeth yanked out by the dentist, the barber, the doctor, or even the village blacksmith with a pair of his smithing-tongs!
To replace missing teeth, it was necessary to manufacture replacements. Dentures and such other dental add-ons were variously made of everything from metal (if there was just one or two teeth missing, you might get them replaced with gold!), wood, bone, and ivory! Sometimes, animal teeth were used to manufacture replacement dentures.
During the time of Les Miserables, replacement teeth were even taken from dead bodies! Especially, during those years, from the bodies of dead soldiers! “Waterloo Teeth”, literally from the bodies of dead soldiers killed during the final battle of Waterloo, were especially common. After all…lots of dead, healthy young men with nice, white teeth…and lots of people living, who want them. Why waste them? Surgeons, barbers and anyone else out to make a quick franc, went through the battlefield with a jar and a pair of pliers, yanking teeth out of corpses to sell them to denture-manufacturers!
But apart from all these avenues of dental delivery, you could still sell your own teeth, if you were brave enough to have them ripped out of your mouth without anesthetics! But you would have to really need the money, and be really desperate to do this!
“Paris, 1832”
By the 1830s, Jean Valjean has fled the town where he held a factory and the office of mayor. He has become Cosette’s guardian and father-figure, and he lives as a wealthy gentleman of means, but with a private life which he does his best to keep from his adopted daughter.
Jean Valjean
Although Valjean is fictional, the author, Victor Hugo, almost certainly based him on the real-life convict Eugene Francois Vidocq. Vidocq (1775-1857) is one of the most famous figures in the history, both of crime, and of criminal investigation.
Vidocq’s childhood was spent during the crumbling days of the French monarchy. As a boy, he was wild and untamed. To get money, he stole the family silverware and sold it. He was arrested and thrown in prison. The arrest was orchestrated by Vidocq’s own father, who had hoped that this spell behind bars might scare his son straight.
As a young man, Vidocq enlisted in the army and fought during the French revolutionary war. Between 1795-1800, Vidocq spent his life in and out of various French prisons, disguising, escaping, running, and being recaptured over and over again. Eventually, he was sent to the infamous Bagne of Toulon, just like his fictional counterpart, Valjean.
In 1800, Vidocq escaped from Toulon and went on the run. He hid at his mother’s house, but before long, the authorities caught up with him once again, and he was arrested…again. And he escaped…again.
Sick of running around, Vidocq attempted to create a new life for himself as a merchant, but his extensive criminal past made this impossible, with everyone knowing who he was, what he had done and his enemies around him everywhere. In 1809, he was arrested…AGAIN.
Finally fed up, Vidocq approached French criminal authorities and offered them a deal. His freedom in exchange for information on other criminals. The police liked the idea, but not enough to let him just run wild. He would be imprisoned again, but this time, he would have more freedom within the prison to spy on inmates and report their goings-on to the guards and police-officials. He proved to be a capable spy, and eventually, Jean Henry, the chief of the Paris Police, agreed to Vidocq’s formal release from prison.
So that it didn’t look like Vidocq was being given favourable treatment, which might tip off other inmates about his spying activities, Henry arranged for the release to look like another one of Vidocq’s famous escapes. Now outside of prison for the last time, Vidocq became a secret agent for the Paris police-force.
Originally, Vidocq was part of the newly-formed “Security Brigade”, of the Paris police-force in 1811. This organisation of detectives and secret-agents was originally just an experiment. Nobody knew if it would really work. But Vidocq’s long life as a criminal meant that he was able to get into minds of the criminal classes and solve crimes in ways that other police officers could not. The brigade was so successful that in 1813, the brigade was formed into its own formal organisation, the French “Surete Nationale“. ‘Surete’ means ‘Surety’, as in ‘assurance’, or ‘security’. Literally, the National Security Force, or in more plain language, the French State Police.
The agents of the Surete Nationale were small in number; even by 1824, the agency had only 28 members. But each agent was trained by Vidocq in criminal detection. How to disguise oneself, how to think ‘outside the box’, and see things from a criminal perspective. The agency also kept a roll of spies and informants who would infiltrate French criminal organisations.
Through the turbulent changes of French history during this time, Vidocq’s roles and his influence on French government officials wavered constantly. Once more, Vidocq spent his life in and out of prison, mostly because he was branded as an enemy of the state for various reasons. But by now, Vidocq’s new position and fame meant that he had powerful friends. Thanks to a little string-pulling, Vidocq never spent more than a few months in prison at any one time.
In 1843, Vidocq was once again thrown in prison. Even though his prominent friends managed to get retrials and shorter sentences for him, when Vidocq was released from prison a year later, his reputation had been destroyed.
Vidocq became something of a recluse, and in 1849, was imprisoned yet again, for eleven months. When he was released, he lived the rest of his life in general seclusion. His career as a detective was not what it once was, although he did occasionally take on cases, to earn himself extra money.
Vidocq died in 1857, at the age of 82, after surviving a bout of cholera.
Despite his shaky life, Vidocq is famous today as being the father of modern criminology. He was the first person to use techniques such as undercover agents, plaster-casts and moulds, and even very early ballistics, to solve crimes. He even developed the science of criminology, and early crime-scene investigation to aid in the solving of crimes and the gathering of clues and evidence, techniques that most police-forces wouldn’t use until the late 1800s.
Since 1990, the Vidocq Society, named after him, has been solving cases presented to them by various police forces. The Society is an elite club of criminologists who assist police in solving ‘cold case’ homicides which regular police-forces are unable to solve.
Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the U.S.A., the Vidocq Society is comprised of experts ranging from criminologists, FBI agents, scientists, coroners, psychologists and homicide detectives.
Members can be currently-serving professionals, or former, and retired professionals, but membership of this exclusive crime-solving club is strictly by invitation only, and membership is limited to only 82 members (the number of years in Vidocq’s life) at any one time.
The Society does not go out looking for work. It only solves cases which police-forces bring to them for review, and even then, they’ll only work on the hardest and most challenging of cases which meet a strict set of criteria.
It’s been suggested by articles on the internet that Eugene Vidocq was Hugo’s inspiration, not only of the character of Jean Valjean, but also of Inspector Javert. Vidocq’s troubled youth and repentance is represented by Valjean’s character, whereas Javert represents Vidocq’s later life as a relentless law-enforcement officer who will go to any lengths to see that justice is done.
General LaMarque
During the second half of the play, the members of the student rebellion mention ‘General LaMarque’ as the last living champion of the oppressed and poor people of Paris.
LaMarque was a real person, and his death in 1832, really did spark a rebellion in the streets!
‘General LaMarque’ is Jean Maximillien LaMarque, (1770-1832). A famous revolutionary war army officer, LaMarque was famous for his republican views. He opposed the French monarchy and complained that the royalist government did not see to the needs and wants of ordinary French citizens. It trampled human rights, and did not support political liberty of the people.
LaMarque became ill in 1832, contracting cholera. He died on the 1st of June, 1832. Within a week, riots had erupted in the streets of Paris. The champion of the people was dead!
The June Rebellion, 1832
There really was a June Rebellion in 1832 Paris, although it did not involve an organisation called the Friends of the A.B.C. (which was a fictional group created by Hugo for the story). The Friends of the A.B.C., (in French, “Les Amis de l’ABC“) is actually a pun. In French, ‘A.B.C.’ is a homophone for the French word “Abaisse” (“The Oppressed”), so literally, “The Friends of the Oppressed”.
It’s a joke about the fact that the rebellion was sparked mostly by students and schoolboys, youngsters still learning how to read and write their A.B.C.s, and the fact that they were trying to win rights for the downtrodden citizens of Paris, the abaisse, or ‘oppressed’.
The Rebellion was short-lived. It lasted only three days! It started on the 5th of June, 1832, during the funeral procession for the late, great General LaMarque.
Spurred on by the waving of red and black flags (such as those mentioned in the musical), students began rioting and chanting.
The famous Marquis de Lafayette, the famous French aristocratic army-officer who had helped the Americans win their Revolutionary War back in the 1780s, attempted to calm the riot. He was one of General LaMarque’s many supporters and fans, but even the marquis’ presence and calls for calm did not help. The marquis was an old man by then (over seventy!) and close to death himself, but that didn’t stop him from trying to quell the violence.
The Barricades
Government soldiers moved into Paris, attempting to crush the rebellion, and the students and their supporters fell back to their barricaded strongholds.
The rebellion lasted from the 5th of June, the date of General LaMarque’s funeral, to the 7th of June. During that time, fierce gun-battles raged across Paris, and at several intersections and streets, government soldiers opened fire on the rebels, and the rebels only fired back!
But the rebels were never going to win. Outnumbered literally 10-to-1, before long, they were forced to put down their arms and surrender.
Victor Hugo himself was involved in the rebellion. To be precise, he was caught in the crossfire between government troops and rebellious Parisian citizens, and had to take cover in the street.
I thought France was a Republic?
France has gone through many revolutions and rebellions, and the June Rebellion of 1832 was just one of many, many, MANY such events in French history.
From the 1400s until the 1780s, France was a kingdom. In 1789, the French Revolution (the famous one that everyone knows, with the guillotine and the storming of the Bastille and all that) took place.
In 1791, the monarchy was restored as a constitutional monarchy.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this monarchy was not popular. It only lasted a couple of years.
From 1792 until 1804, France was a republic. For a decade between 1805-1815, France entered the period of the “First Empire”, which centered around the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. It ended with Napoleon’s defeat and exile in the 1810s.
With the defeat of Napoleon, the House of Bourbon, which had ruled France up until the 1780s, returned to power in the Bourbon Restoration. This lasts from 1815 until 1830.
In 1830, yet another revolution changes everything, and we have the July Monarchy (so-called because it was established in July of 1830), a constitutional monarchy, much like the one of the 1790s. The king on the throne of France is Louis-Philippe I, cousin to the abdicated King Charles X.
It is Louis-Philippe who is the king of France in the 1832, when the June Rebellion mentioned in Les Miserables takes place. But even this monarchy wouldn’t last. It would be overthrown in 1848, to be replaced by the Second Republic, which would be replaced by the Second Empire, which would be replaced by the THIRD Republic, which would last until the Fall of France during the Second World War.
Right now, France is on Republic #5.
And there you have it. A little glimpse at just some of the historical realities behind one of the most famous novels, plays, musicals and films in the history of western literature.
They must do, otherwise there wouldn’t be anyone buying them anymore. And there wouldn’t be anyone fixing them. Or selling them anymore.
And they are.
In the 21st Century, there is a growing number of typewriter collectors, and users who are returning to, or changing over from a computer to, a typewriter. This posting is here to serve as a guide for the novice typewriter-collector, the first-time buyer, the aspiring writer or the antiques bargain-hunter.
You want to buy a typewriter. What do you need to know? Keep reading, and you’ll find out.
Who Uses a Typewriter Anymore?
No, seriously…who?
You’d be surprised.
There’s still a large number of professional writers who use typewriters. There’s still an active repair-community. There’s still an active collecting community. One of the most famous typewriter-collectors and users on earth is Tom Hanks. He’s well-known for it.
I use a typewriter. Hell. I used a typewriter before I used a computer. Not because computers didn’t exist when I was born…they did…but because a typewriter was what my parents could afford when I was growing up. I learnt to touch-type on a typewriter before I ever learnt how to do it on a computer.
What do I DO with it?
What do you DO with your typewriter?? No seriously, what??
A lot of people who own typewriters today use them for writing short stories, novels, books, letters…much like typewriters were always used for. But in the 21st century, some people even use typewriters for blogging.
Called “typecasting”, bloggers will type up an entire blog-posting on a typewriter. Then, they will scan the typed copy, and load it onto their blog.
Why?
Because typing on a typewriter produces something more interesting than simply using “Courier New” in your blog-composition window. Because typing on a typewriter produces text variants which not even the most intricate downloadable typewriter-font can produce. An electronic font can’t reproduce things like strikeouts, type-overs, floating capitals, dropped letters, and faded or misformed print, which some bloggers enjoy, because it makes their posts more interesting and personal.
Perhaps…that’s why YOU want a typewriter…eh?
Deciding on What You Want
When buying a typewriter, as with buying anything, it’s important to know exactly what you want to buy and own. You don’t need to know precisely, right off the bat, but you should at least have a general idea of your tastes and desires. Different typewriters have different issues. Different things that could go wrong. Different prices. The variables are almost endless. So before you head off hunting, you need to know what you want, and the issues or restrictions that might come with your choices.
Typewriters – Style & Design Points
When selecting a typewriter, or drawing up a list of potential purchases, keep in mind a few things…
Do you want a Desktop? Or a Portable?
Desktop typewriters are NOT named-so for nothing. Models such as the Remington 12, Remington 16, L.C. Smith Bros. No. 8, Royal 10 and Underwoods 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, weigh a LOT. The Royal 10 starts at about 30lbs. Something like a Remington 16 or a desktop Underwood goes up to about 50 pounds or more. Can you cart that home from the flea-market? Or ship it across the ocean on your flight back from your overseas holiday? Can you carry that back from the antiques shop halfway across town?
Do you want a portable? How old? Portables are much lighter than desktops, obviously, but they come with their own issues. For example, portables did not become really practical until the 1920s. Portables did not have all the features of a larger desktop typewriter. And portables manufactured during the Depression years of the 1930s were likely to be super-duper cheap, with only basic features. A fascinating look at the impact of the Depression on the American typewriter industry, but as practical typing-machines, you’d have more options with a sharpened pencil!
Do you want pretty glass keys?
Black-letters-on-white, or white-letters-on-black keys, capped with glass, and edged with pretty chrome rings are the signature of the typewriter. They’re pretty, shiny, stylish, artistic…and rare.
Typewriters with glass-topped keys were only made for a relatively short period of time. From the 1890s up to the 1940s. If you want a typewriter with those classic glass keys that you see in movies and on TV shows, then expect your machine to be at least 70 years old. When WWII ended in 1945, glass-key typewriters went out the window. They were considered oldschool and boring. By 1950, there were almost none left in production, and all typewriter-manufacturers had switched over to machines with plastic keys.
Metal or Plastic Body?
More modern typewriters were made with cheaper, moulded plastic bodies that can warp and bend and crack. These are usually the budget typewriters from the 1960s and 70s. A typewriter with an all-steel body is something that would’ve been made before, or during the 1950s. Metal bodies may be slightly heavier, but they offer the strength, durability and assurance that a flimsier plastic body cannot.
Missing Keys?
Until the 1960s and 70s, the vast majority of typewriters did not have 1-keys, !-keys or 0-keys. Instead, lower-case l’s, apostrophes, full-stops, and capital ‘O’ keys did double-duty for these numbers and symbols. So if your typewriter doesn’t have these keys…relax. They never did. And most other typewriters didn’t, either, until the 1960s and 70s.
It was a common practice, to save money, space, and weight on the manufacture of typewriters. It may make for an interesting and new typing experience, but it’s only a minor adjustment to worry about. If your typewriter MUST have those symbols on its keyboard as stand-alone keys, then you’ll need to buy one made in the 1950s-1980s. With only a few exceptions, all pre-1950s typewriters did not have them.
Ribbons and Spools
The vast majority of typewriters use ribbons. But it’s important to know WHAT TYPE of ribbon your machine uses.
Most typewriters from major manufacturers (Olivetti, Royal, Remington, Underwood, Brother, L.C. Smith, Corona and so-forth) will use a standard, 1/2-inch typewriter ribbon. Today, such ribbons are made of nylon. Ribbons come in either solid red, solid black, or two-tone red-black. Buying an all-black, or a red-black ribbon are the best options for regular typing.
While your typewriter ribbon-size might be 1/2-inch, which is more or less standard across the board (some older typewriters, or typewriters from more obscure manufacturers may use different ribbon-sizes which are harder to find), not every typewriter uses a standard ribbon-spool size.
Most typewriters accept what is called a “Universal Spool”. A universal spool is one that will fit most typewriters, and which sports a 1/2-inch ribbon. These are manufactured in their thousands and you can buy them brand-new online (eBay has dozens of them), or from a stationer’s shop which stocks them.
But…what if your typewriter does NOT take universal-spools?
If it doesn’t, don’t despair. So long as you have your typewriter’s original ribbon-spools, all is not lost.
Simply remove the old ribbon from the spools and throw it out. Now, wind the new ribbon from the new spools, onto the old spools, which were original to your machine. So long as the ribbon and the spools are same size (which is more than likely), you should be able to use the new ribbon in the old spools with no problems at all!
Alternatively, if the original typewriter ribbon is in good condition, you could simply re-ink it and reuse it. To do this, you’ll need a bottle of stamp-pad ink (available at any good stationer’s shop), and my instructions about how to re-ink ribbons.
Where do I Find Typewriters?
eBay, Etsy, Gumtree, Craigslist, and the surprisingly large number of online typewriter-dealers, are all excellent internet sources for typewriters of various vintages and styles. They all come with their ups and downs, of course. With eBay and other online seller-sites, you have to deal with how much, or how little the seller knows about the machine, and what they’re willing to sell it for, and whether or not they’re willing to haggle and negotiate.
With professional dealers, the typewriter you buy may be more expensive, but this is countered with the assurance of a professional restoration which will keep the machine running for years to come.
How much do you Pay for a Typewriter?
Postwar models, ca. 1950-1980s are cheap as old chips. You can find these at any flea-market or junk-shop. Don’t pay more than about $25. They’re really common and to spend more money than that on a functioning postwar machine is just wasting your money.
The machines which cost more are typically the older machines. Those from the 1940s, 30s, 20s and the 1910s and the 1900s. These, in working condition, can go for a couple of hundred dollars. If they’re not in working condition, then the price obviously drops. Don’t pay more than about $200 for something in working condition from this vintage, and don’t pay more than about $50 for something that isn’t working.
As you may have guessed from all this, typewriters are not worth a great deal of money. Don’t forget that until about 30 years ago, every office, every study, every desk in the world had a typewriter on it. They’re super-duper common. So the value just isn’t there. It doesn’t exist. But this is good news if you’re looking for a functional machine on the cheap. Just don’t expect to retire on it if you sell it in the future.
Testing your Typewriter – What to Check For
You want to buy a typewriter. You want to buy it at a good price, and you want to buy it in working condition. Or perhaps you don’t. Maybe you want to buy a typewriter as a fixer-upper restoration project? Perhaps fixing typewriters is your hobby? Or perhaps you want to go on a little desktop restoration-adventure?
But if you do want to buy a typewriter that works, you need to know what constitutes a working typewriter, and what you need to check, to ensure that it does, actually, work.
In particular, pay attention to the following areas:
Rubber
Roughly 20% of the stuff on a typewriter is rubber. The platen, the feet, the feed-rollers, and in some cases, the paper-bales (although not always, in this last instance).
Rubber is there to act as a cushion, and to provide grip for the paper when you type. The issue with rubber is that it’s a natural product, and is therefore prone to degrading. When buying a typewriter, you want to check the condition of the rubber.
Checking the rubber on the feet is easy. Just lift the typewriter up. You can buy replacement feet pretty easily online, or even at your local hardware shop, if they need replacing.
Next, check the rubber on the platen. Platen-rubber should be firm, but not solid. Tap it with your fingers. If it feels firm, then it’s fine. If it feels like tapping glass or the side of a bowl, then it’s too hard. This can be remedied by sanding the platen with fine sandpaper (to remove hard rubber and expose fresh, softer rubber, and therefore improve grip), or by rubbing the platen lightly with a rubber-solvent to soften up the platen. If the rubber on the platen is in good condition, then you can just leave it as it is, and not worry about it.
Then you need to check the condition of the feed-rollers. This is a little harder to do. Feed-rollers are the two, or four, depending on the typewriter, free-spinning rubber rollers inside the carriage, underneath the platen. They grip the paper when you crank it into the machine, and roll it under the platen, and feed it up the front of the carriage. Feed-rollers. See?
Feed-rollers are also covered in rubber, much like the platen. To find out if your feed-rollers are in good condition, simply roll a couple of sheets of paper into the typewriter.
Does the paper get pulled easily into the machine? Or does it just not go at all? Does the paper come out evenly on the other side? Does it advance evenly when you hit the carriage-lever?
If the answer to all these questions is “Yes”, then the feed-rollers are in good condition. If the answer to even one of them is “No”, then the rollers are not in good condition.
To try and rejuvenate the feed-rollers, you need to remove the platen from the carriage, fish out the rollers (they just sit there) and sand them, or treat them to rubber-solvent.
If the rubber on your rollers or platen is dry, hard and cracked then you should either PASS on the typewriter, or buy it with a view to REPLACING THE RUBBER ENTIRELY. Cracked rubber is completely unsalvageable, and no treatment with paper or chemicals is going to save it.
Rubber that feels like rubber, and rubber that is somewhat pliable, is rubber that’s in good quality. Rubber that is hard, dry, cracking, and which feels like plastic, is rubber that needs to be replaced.
Carriage
Does the carriage of your prospective typewriter advance smoothly as you type? Yes? Fine. Does the bell ring? Yes? Great! Do the margin-stops work? Yes? Wonderful.
IF the carriage does NOT advance when you type, that means that either the mainspring is kaput (possible), or that the draw-band has had it, and is toast (much more likely). Replacing a drawband is finicky, but possible. Most drawbands are nothing but a shoelace tied around the carriage-drum, and a hook or ring, at the right side of the carriage. This is a repair you could do at home with the right string, a pair of tweezers, and a bit of patience.
Suggested carriage-string materials include fishing-wire, and shoelaces. Keep the original carriage-string just in case you need it as a measurement-guide.
On most portable typewriters, there is a CARRIAGE-LOCK feature. The carriage-lock jams the carriage in-place, so that it does NOT move when the typewriter has been placed in it’s carry-case for transport. When testing a prospective portable typewriter, if the carriage doesn’t move when you type, the carriage-lock may be engaged. Ask the seller to unlock the carriage for you, if you don’t know how. If anything breaks…it’s their fault, not yours!
Keys
This probably goes without saying, but keys are important. But there’s a lot more to checking typewriter keys than finding out if they’re made of glass.
For your potential typewriter to be a practical typing machine when you get it home, you need to make sure that ALL the keys work. Typing “The Quick Brown Fox Jumps over the Lazy Dog” will be useless if the shift-key is broken, if the backspace doesn’t work, if the tab-keys are jammed or if the spacebar is broken.
You want to check every single key. You want to check all the switches,, knobs, levers, bells and whistles. Even the keys you don’t think you’ll ever use…check them. Do they press down? Do they pop up again? Do the hammers work? Do the levers work? If you press the backspace, does the carriage move to the right? If you press the shift-lock, does the shift-key actually LOCK? And if you hit the shift-key afterwards, does the key then UNLOCK like it should?
Do the margin-stops work? Does the margin-clear button work? Does the paper-release lever work? Does the carriage-release lever work? Does the carriage-return lever work? Do the tab-stop, clear and set keys all work?
Depending on your typewriter, there can be all that, and more, to check. Does the ribbon-reverser work? Does the ribbon-selector work?
Some things, you can probably do without. For example, it doesn’t matter if the shift-lock doesn’t work, so long as the actual shift-keys work. The typewriter will still function perfectly fine. Just that typing in capitals for long periods of time might be a bit harder.
Do NOT be worried if keys stick or if hammers jam up. That’s just a sign that the typewriter requires cleaning. You can do that easily at home. Here’s my guide to cleaning jammed-up typebars. You can do it with stuff you can buy at your local supermarket.
Buying a Typewriter “in the Wild”
In collecting circles of most objects (pens, watches, books, guns and typewriters, for example), to buy something “in the wild”, is a term used for making a collectible purchase at an establishment such as an antiques shop, junk-shop, thrift-shop, garage-sale, or flea-market. They’re called “Wild” finds because they are purchased outside of the established channels of collectibles dealing, such as fairs, shows, club-meetings, or from online dealers.
When buying a typewriter ‘in the wild’, there are a few things you should know.
You’ve done your research. You see a typewriter in the local flea-market that you REALLY WANT. It’s your dream machine. It’s the Mary Poppins typewriter. Practically Perfect in Every Way. The price looks fairly reasonable, and you wanted it YESTERDAY! How can you buy it so that things work out in your favour?
– Be DISCREET. Don’t ever show your cards. Keep a poker-face. If you mouth off and act like you know everything and then some, the seller’s gonna clam up, and the price is probably gonna go up like a rocket. Play dumb and pretend you know as much about typewriters as a toad.
– Examine the machine THOROUGHLY. Point out any issues to the seller, and ask if he might be willing to lower the price slightly on their account.
– Not many people use typewriters anymore. So the buying-pool may be rather small. If you don’t buy it, chances are that it may be, nobody ever will. This may make the seller anxious to get rid of it. This may be another bargaining-chip in your pocket.
– Typewriters are HEAVY. And BIG. A small portable is 5-10kg. A desktop model is 20-30kg! Imagine this:
You’re a flea-market stallholder. You lugged your damn Remington 16…
…all the way from home, to the market, in your car. It’s taking up space at home. Nobody uses it. It’s getting dusty and rusty and you just want to get it the hell out of your life. It’s dislocating your shoulders every time you have to move it, and you’re just sick of it! Then along comes sumgai* who wants to buy it. You have $150.00 on it. He offers you $100.00. You’re desperate to get rid of it. So you accept it.
That’s what you, as the buyer, should be hoping for. Typewriters, especially the big, chunky desktop models like that Remington 16, are heavy enough to break your leg if you drop it on there. Most likely, a seller who bothered to lug the thing to the market, doesn’t want to lug it back home again! Use this as leverage, and ask for a smaller price. If he really wants to get rid of it, he’ll take it, or at least haggle a bit, just to get it out of his life.
– Perhaps you walked to the market? Or caught a bus? Or a train? Or a tram? If you find a typewriter that you really like, but you can’t get it home, and the price is reasonable and it’s in good condition…have a few words with the buyer. Offer to pay full price if he might be inclined to deliver it to your house. It’s a little more work for him, but he gets his money, and he gets rid of it in the end. You get your machine, and you get delivery thrown in, to boot!
*”Sumgai” is another collecting-term, much like buying stuff “in the wild”. It’s a corruption of the words “some guy”. As in, you show up at the flea-market, ask a stallholder about a particular item that he may or may not have, and the seller replies: “Oh sorry. Some guy just bought it and walked off with it”.
A ‘sumgai’ is someone who got there first and pinched all the good stuff, leaving you with all the shit that nobody wants. To be a sumgai yourself (ie, to get first pick at all the goodies at the market), you should arrive early and have a keen eye. That way, you won’t have to hear the famous speech from the seller about that “sumgai” who bought the pretty 1929 Remington Model 3 Portable for $25 just ten minutes ago and walked off down the street with it.
Remington Model 3 Portable…
Knowing Your Machine
When it comes to buying your typewriter, it’s important that you know what all the parts are, what they do, and how they work. This will help you pick a good machine from a bad one, and it’ll make you a more savvy buyer, which is always good and important.
When you roll the paper into the typewriter, you rest it on the paper-table. This is the back panel of the typewriter. It usually has the make of the machine painted on there as decoration, such as “UNDERWOOD”, “ROYAL”, “REMINGTON” or “L.C. SMITH & Bros”.
Rolling the paper into the typewriter is done by turning on the two platen-knobs, attached to the platen, the central, rubber-covered drum in the middle of the carriage. The carriage is the part of the typewriter that moves to the left as you type. As you turn the platen-knobs and pull the paper into the machine, two, three, or four feed-rollers grip the paper and pull the paper around the platen.
When the paper comes up the front, you raise the bale-rail at the front of the carriage and slip the paper underneath it. The rail has two (or more) paper-bales on it. These are sometimes made of metal, but some are coated in rubber. The paper-bales are there to hold the paper in place when you type, so that the paper doesn’t flap around everywhere. They can be adjusted to whatever position you like on the rail. If you have two bales, then you want them 1/3 in from the left, and 1/3 in from the right, so that they divide the bale-rail into thirds, and hold the paper evenly.
Along with the paper-bales and the rail which holds them are the paper-fingers. They slide along the front rule of your typewriter, in line with the ribbon-vibrator. They serve much the same purpose as the paper-bales, to hold the paper in-place on the platen.
A typical mechanical typewriter has three or four rows or banks of keys. The keys are attached via levers and linkages to the typebars. On the head of each typebar is the type-slug. Pressing a key pulls the linkages which pulls the typebar up, forcing the slug forwards and down, to strike the ribbon.
The ribbon is held in the ribbon-guides and the central ribbon-vibrator. The vibrator is the central ribbon-guide that jumps up and down as you type.
When you reach the end of the line, the warning-bell goes off, to tell you that you have (usually) six keystrokes left, before the key-lock mechanism kicks in. This deliberately locks the keys so that you can’t keep typing. To unlock them, you push the carriage back to the right, using the carriage-return lever. Pressing this lever hard enough also pushes the platen back, bringing up a fresh line, so it is also called the line-advance lever.
Next to the carriage-lever is the line-spacing lever. The line-space lever adjusted the operation of the line-advance lever. By adjusting this lever, you could affect the line-advance lever to advance the page 1, 2, or on larger machines, even 3 lines, to produce double and triple-spaced documents if you needed to.
As you type, the carriage moves along the carriage-race. This is the toothed rail which the carriage rides on. Each tooth is one keystroke. Typing releases the power stored in the mainspring, which is inside the mainspring-drum. As the spring unwinds, it rotates the drum, which has a drawcord or drawstring attached to it. As the drum turns, it winds up the drawstring, pulling the carriage along with it.
When you push the carriage back, the drawcord is pulled out again, and the mainspring is wound up at the same time, ready for the next line.
As you type, the inked typewriter ribbon, stored in two ribbon-spools, moves along, to provide fresh ink. Ribbon-spools are held in a pair of spool-cups. Typewriters made before the 1930s did not generally have spool-cup covers. So if your antique typewriter doesn’t have these covers, don’t despair.
This is a 1926 Royal Portable Typewriter, Model 1:
And this is a 1930 Royal Portable Typewriter, Model 2:
As you can see, the 20s, 1st-model typewriter doesn’t come with spool-covers. The second, 30s model typewriter, does. This was common with many typewriter manufacturers of the period. Companies like Underwood and Corona did the same thing.
Back to the parts of your typewriter…
Most, but not all, typewriters came with something called a “Ribbon-Reverser“. The ribbon-reverser determined which spool-cup would rotate as the machine typed, and therefore, which spool would wind up with used ribbon while the machine was in-use. Switching the reverser-switch back and forth changed the receiving spool from left to right, and vice-versa, as the user of the typewriter required. A handy feature.
Along with the ribbon-reverse switch is the bichrome ribbon-selector. The bichrome ribbon-selector typically had three settings: Black, for black-ribbon. Red, for red-ribbon. And Stencil.
Stencil-mode disengaged the ribbon-vibrator altogether. This allowed you to type out clear stencil-masters on your typewriter. The completed stencil-documents were inserted into duplicating machines…
…and as many duplicate copies of the original could be printed as you needed or desired. They were the Victorian equivalent of the photo-copier.
To set left and right margins on your machine, you have the margin-stops, which are usually (but not always) situated behind the typewriter, on the margin-rail. You shift and move the margin-stops along the rail to where-ever you want your margins to be. Setting the left margin determines where the carriage stops when you push it back. Setting the right margin determines when the bell rings at the end of each line. Once that bell rings, you have six keystrokes left before you need to return the carriage all over again.
Located on the carriage are two more levers or switches. These are the paper-release lever, and the carriage-release lever (there seem to be an awfully large number of levers on these old typewriters, huh?).
Lifting the paper-release lever eases up the pressure on the platen and feed-rollers.
Remember those films about frustrated writers who stop typing, grab their paper and rip it out of the machine, scrunch it up and toss it over their shoulders?
To do that, you need to flip the paper-lever. It allows you to just pull the paper right out of the typewriter, without damaging the mechanism.
The carriage-release lever, or switch, disengages the ratchet-mechanism between the carriage and the toothed carriage-rail. You can now slide the carriage left or right along the carriage-rail to set up your typing start-point wherever you want on the page. Pressing this button will cause the mainspring to unwind super-fast. It will grab the drawcord and yank the carriage all the way to the left. If you’re not prepared for this, expect an almighty bang when the carriage hits the end of the line! That may damage the mainspring or the drawcord (if they’re old and original to the machine), so don’t do it too often, or you may wear them out prematurely. Or if you need to use this switch, hold tight to the carriage, first!
Care and Placement of your Typewriter
You have read about where to buy a typewriter, what to look out for, and how much you should pay. You have purchased the machine of your dreams! Perhaps it’s a 1930s Imperial…
…or an Underwood from the 20s…
Perhaps it’s a sleek, postwar model like the Royal Royalite “El Dorado”…
or a more common Olivetti Lettera 32?
Perhaps you bought yourself a desktop or “Standard” typewriter? A Royal 10…
Or an Underwood No. 5?
Perhaps it’s none of these, and many more, historic and stylish machines? But whatever you bought, it’s important that you know how to look after it now that you have it. Here are some things to consider:
Keep Your Typewriter out of Direct Sunlight
A good typewriter is like a vampire. It’ll last forever, but it’s allergic to strong sunlight. And, for that matter, heat. Keep your machine away from windows that receive full sunlight, or anywhere where it might be exposed to heavy rays or high levels of heat for a long period of time. Remember all that rubber on the platen and the rollers? That stuff can dry up and crack if you expose it to heat and light like that. So try and avoid it.
Keep Your Typewriter Free of Dust
Back when they were the only method of rapid word-processing, a typewriter was an essential piece of equipment in the office, and in the home. For reports, essays, homework, letters and stories and plays and novels. Because typewriters were so important, they were built to last. Any company that produced machines that broke down or were outdated as soon as they were introduced (much like the stuff today), would never have lasted in this highly competitive market.
To make their machines last, typewriters were made almost entirely of steel. There’s very few things that can break on a typewriter. And most of the issues with typewriters (sticky keys, wriggly carriages and so-forth) are usually caused by neglect rather than damage.
Keep your typewriter FREE OF DUST. Dust and debris gets into the mechanism and jams up the machine. And you’ll have a hell of a time trying to get it out of there.
To keep your machine running smoothly, when you’re not using it, cover it. If it’s just a temporary pause in usage (like overnight), you can just cover it with a sheet of paper, to stop dust getting into the typing-mechanism. But if it’s for longer periods of time (up to a week or more), then cover your typewriter with its dust-cover, or its protective case.
Typing on your Machine
A typewriter is not a computer. EVERYTHING is mechanical. To type, you need to exert more force on the keys than you would with a modern keyboard. But don’t smash the keys with your fingers. If you’re not used to typing on a typewriter, even half a page of continuous typing can seem exhausting, but as you do it more often, your fingers will get used to it. Use more force than you usually would, but don’t bear down on it.
Use More Paper
Traditionally, you typed with two sheets of paper inside your machine. One, the actual page of text, the other to act as padding. This provides cushioning against the typebars and the platen, ensuring that they will last longer.
Place Your Typewriter Somewhere STURDY
Typewriters are BIG, FAT, CHUNKY MACHINES.
Or at least, some of them can be. When you get your machine home, make sure that you place it somewhere that’s suitable for it. I probably don’t need to tell you now that typewriters are heavy. A desktop Underwood, Royal or Remington weighs in excess of 30-50 pounds.
Make sure that you put your typewriter on a table, or a desk, that is strong enough to take it. Nothing flimsy that’s going to shake around, or that’s going to warp and bend under the weight of the machine. Something that’s sturdy and which won’t shift and wobble.
Typewriters are totally mechanical. The typing, the shifting of the carriage, the clunking of the levers. Everything produces motion and vibration. You need a desk that can cope with the vibrations and jolting produced by the typewriter in regular operation. If you don’t believe how much vibration a typewriter produces, just watch this:
The typewriter in that video is an Underwood Model 3. But those kinds of vibrations (like what shorted out the desk-lamp) can be produced by almost any typewriter, especially the older, heavier ones. Having a desk that can absorb the shocks produced by the typewriter is important. It makes for a smoother typing experience.
If you want to keep your desktop clean, or if you want to try and muffle the sounds of the typewriter somewhat, you can buy a typewriter-pad online. Typewriter-pads were used in the old days, to cushion typewriters and to muffle the sound of the keys. You simply slip the pad (made of thick felt) underneath the typewriter, to deaden the sound. A cheaper alternative is to use a small towel, folded over and slid under the machine.
Don’t Move your Typewriter Unnecessarily
Unless it’s a portable, and therefore, designed to be moved around, don’t shift your typewriter all over the place unnecessarily. This will prevent potential damage. If you must move your typewriter around, make sure that you have its next destination cleared for landing before you dump the typewriter on top of it.
When moving your portable typewriter around, use the carrying-case. It’s not only easier, it protects the machine from jolts and bumping.
Typewriter Desks
Back when typewriters were more common, large office-buildings would invest in specially-designed “typewriter desks”. These desks had special, drop-down platforms which a typist’s machine could sit in. It was at a comfortable height for typing, and the desks featured a pull-over tabletop which would cover the typewriter from dust at the end of the workday, and which would double as a writing-surface on top of the typewriter, when the cover was pulled over.
These desks are ideal for typewriters, because they are specially designed to deal with the weight and vibrations of these machines. They are obviously no-longer made brand-new, and if you want one for your machine, you’ll have to go out and buy one second-hand.
A typical vintage typewriter-desk, with an Underwood No. 5 desktop typewriter. The desktop cover (behind the typewriter) is pulled up, and forwards, covering the typewriter when it’s not in use, and can double as a writing-surface. The desktop is lifted up, and pushed back and down when the typewriter needs to be used.
Desk opened…and closed…
This is what the same style of desk looks like, when the desktop cover has been pulled up and back over the typewriter.
Cleaning Your Typewriter
The majority of typewriter issues (faded text, stuck and jammed keys, sluggish movement, etc) are caused not by age, but by neglect. To keep your typewriter in working condition, you should keep it clean. This can be as simple as keeping it covered when you’re not using it…even if it’s just with a sheet of paper overnight. But sometimes, cleaning your typewriter is necessary.
Cleaning your typewriter can vary from level to level, from a light scrubbing and polishing, to partial or even complete disassembly, to clean out the gunk inside your machine. To do all this, you’ll most likely need some, or all, of the following bits and pieces:
– Cotton Buds/Q-Tips – To clean out the dust and gunk inside the typewriter carriage.
– Methylated Spirits/Denatured Alcohol – To clean the typing mechanism (see my guide on cleaning typebars on how to do this in-depth). Do NOT use anything else other than this, for this purpose. Meths washes out the dust, and then just evaporates, leaving everything clean and dry.
– A watchmaker’s squeeze-bulb puffer – To blow out loose dust and lint. Handy things, when blowing with your mouth simply won’t do.
– Needle-nose Tweezers – For any restoration, cleaning and repairs of machines, these are ESSENTIAL. I said the same thing in my guide on how to restore sewing-machines, and i say the same thing here. Without these, you may as well give up. You need them to fish out gunk, to scrape away crud, to hold tiny screws while you screw them in, to guide thread, or loose cables and straps, and to hold parts in-place while you fix them back on. They are ESSENTIAL.
– Pliers – These are handy (in conjunction with screwdrivers) for unscrewing stuck and stubborn screws.
– A set of small, jeweller’s screwdrivers – Handy for the tiny screws that you find in old typewriters. You can buy these things cheaply at those convenience stores that sell almost everything in the world, from blue Ethernet cables to toilet-plungers. They cost like $5.00 a set and they’ll last forever.
– Sewing-Machine oil – Yeah I know it’s a typewriter…but sewing-machine oil is a really high-quality, thin, runny, extremely slippery machine-oil. It’s ideal for lubricating all those squeaks and squeals inside your typewriter. But do not use more than the smallest amount possible. ONE drop on any affected area is more than enough. This stuff can be bought at any big supermarket. Or if not, then your local sewing-machine shop or arts-and-crafts shop will most likely have it.
– Tissues/Toilet-paper – Always gotta have these.
– Paper-towels – For when you clean any sticking keys (again, for the reason why, read the guide dedicated to this).
– Small, soft, clean paintbrush (for cleaning keys).
– Small bowls (for holding screws, knobs, plates etc as you pull apart the typewriter).
– Windex – Or a similar product. Typewriters, especially the really old ones, were smoked around…a LOT. A typewriter that’s 50, 70, 90, 100 years old, will have been smoked around for at least 20-30 years, if not its entire life. The nicotine and the tobacco gets ALL over the typewriter and it sticks and clings to the metal surface of the machine. Remember how those antique typewriters have really shiny, high-gloss metal finishes on their bodies? All that gets covered up by the smoke. To remove it, you need Windex, some tissues, and a lot of elbow-grease, to scrub off the smoke and nicotine stains. This can take a LONG time; it took me two days to clean all the crap off my typewriter, and it’s just a little portable number!
Paper, Ink and Ribbons
Almost every typewriter on earth will use standard A4 copy-paper without any issues, easily purchased at any stationer’s shop, or even your local supermarket. Most big stationery/office-supply franchise stores will still sell carbon-paper if you feel the need to have it, or use it.
Typewriter ribbons may be purchased easily on eBay, or from online dealers who repair and/or sell typewriters. As per my instructions regarding ribbons, further up, it’s best NOT to throw out your old ribbon and spools until you’ve purchased a brand-new ribbon for the typewriter, and made sure that everything fits properly.
For Melbournians reading this, standard-size, 1/2-inch typewriter ribbons may be purchased brand-new from INDUSTRIAL STATIONERS: 53-57 Queen St., in the Melbourne C.B.D. The ribbons will fit almost every major-brand typewriter. Even my 80-year-old antique Underwood!
Part of the fun of owning antiques and second-hand nick-nacks is the challenge of pulling them apart, seeing how they work, cleaning them up, and putting them back together. Today, I had such an event with my Underwood…
I bought this typewriter a few months back to fulfill a lifelong obsession with these machines. And since buying it, I’d been exploring the intricacies of old mechanical typewriters. By poking around with my machine, cleaning it and diagnosing problems, I found out how various functions worked, why sometimes they didn’t work, and how they were fixed.
Amazingly, after all that…the typewriter still works.
Despite its seeming complexity, a mechanical typewriter is really quite a simple machine.
You slot paper in the back. You turn the platen-knobs. The knobs turn the platen, which pulls the paper in, and grips it against the feed-rollers inside the carriage. This creates the friction which pulls the paper into the typewriter. As you type, the ratchet system on the typewriter causes the mainspring to release energy, which unwinds the spring, which pulls on the draw-band, which pulls the carriage, which advances the carriage along the race, which actuates a lever to flip a hammer to strike the bell and signal end-of-line.
Smacking the return-lever kicks the platen back a notch (or two, or three, depending on line-setting), and shoving the carriage back winds up the mainspring, and resets the machine all over again. A stopper bar at the back of the carriage blocks the left-and-right movement of the carriage by arresting the two margin-stops at user-set margins. Pressing the margin-release drops the bar and allows the carriage to move freely. Pushing the bar up resets the margins to their previous settings.
All done mechanically with no electronics at all.
The majority of a typewriter is made of metal. Steel. But some parts of a typewriter are made of wood, paper, glass, and rubber. And these may occasionally need attention.
When buying a second-hand typewriter, one of the most common things that may need attention are the feed-rollers.
The feed-rollers are two (or more, depending on the size of the typewriter) invisible rubber rollers or cylinders hiding inside the typewriter-carriage. When you turn the platen-knobs, the platen rubs against the feed-rollers, trapping any paper fed into the machine, and pulling it through the typewriter, ready for use.
Feed-rollers and platens are coated with rubber to provide grip and cushioning. If a platen or rollers are hard or cracked, they need to be recovered, or treated, to improve grip. To do this, it’s necessary to remove the platen.
That’s what I was doing today.
An Exploration
In a recent typing-episode, one of the feed-rollers became dislodged for reasons I couldn’t figure out. I managed to re-lodge it, but I decided that I wanted to have a closer look at the insides of the machine. To do that, I would have to remove the platen to gain access to the rollers.
Because typewriters were so common back in the old days, and there was an active repair-industry going on, access to parts of a typewriter that needed periodic attention was usually easy to get. Such as the feed-rollers.
To get to the rollers, I had to remove the platen, the big, black, long, rubber-sheathed…yeah, get your minds out of the gutter…cylinder that makes up most of the carriage.
The platen is held onto the carriage by a surprisingly simple method. Two screws, one knob and a long hard shaft. Somewhere in there is a joke.
Most typewriter-carriages are assembled the same way, and these directions (or a variation of them) are going to be the likely method of platen-removal, if you ever have to do it to your own machine. Here’s a small tutorial about how to do it.
You will need…
– Small-head screwdrivers (flat-head, most probably).
– Q-tips/cotton bud-sticks.
– Methylated Spirits/Denatured Alcohol.
– Air-puffer, vacuum-cleaner, or a pair of good lungs.
– Needle-nose tweezers.
– Optional: A pair of pliers.
1. Remove platen-knob.
On my typewriter, the Underwood Standard Portable, you first have to take off the left platen-knob. To do this, twist the platen around until you see a small screw in the gap between the platen-knob, and the endplate of the left side of the carriage. Put your screwdriver on the screw and unscrew it.
You don’t have to take the screw off completely, just loosen it. The left platen knob will now just slide right off.
(On some typewriters, the knob is simply screwed in place. If so, just unscrew it. But check for exterior screws on BOTH knobs, first).
2. Unscrew right-side platen-screw.
Hidden on the platen-shaft is a small screw on the right side, between the platen-rubber, and the right carriage end-plate. Loosen this screw. Again, full removal of the screw is not necessary.
(This applies to my Underwood portable, your typewriter may be slightly different).
3. Grab right-hand platen-knob. Pull!
Removing the left platen-knob, and loosening the platen-screw (step 2), has released the pressure on the platen-rod INSIDE the platen-shaft, which is attached to the right platen-knob.
Pull the right-hand platen-knob. A long, steel shaft will come sliding out. Don’t bend it, or it’ll never go back in again!
4. Remove the Platen!
And that is IT. Two screws, one knob, and a steel shaft, are the only things holding the platen onto the carriage! With those removed, you can now wriggle the platen out! Start with the side of the platen which has the ratchet-teeth on it, first (usually, this is the LEFT side of the platen). You may have to wriggle it a bit, and ease it out CAREFULLY. You don’t want to bend or break anything. Press the paper-release lever on your carriage (usually found on the right side of the carriage) to give yourself a few extra milimeters of wriggle-space, and to get the paper-bale rail out of the way.
To make things just a little bit easier, adjust the line-space lever so that it’s at its maximum (double, or triple-spaced). This will get the line-space lever ratchet-system out of the way, and make it easier to get the platen out (and in, later).
And after swearing, grumbling and wriggling, you’ll end up with something like this:
Here, we have the typewriter, with the platen, knobs and rod removed! The ratcheted, left side of the platen is bottom-most in this photograph.
With the platen removed, you now have full access to the well where the platen was resting. You can flush out dust, wipe away cobwebs and clean it out really good inside! While you’re in there, check on the feed-rollers. They look like this:
Feed-rollers are not attached to the typewriter in any way whatsoever. Their name directly reflects their purpose. They feed paper, and they roll freely. Feed-rollers.
You should pick the rollers out of their well, and check them for ‘flats’, where the rubber has hardened and flattened out, due to years of pressing against the platen, and for excessive wear-down due to constant rubbing. If the rollers are hard (like you see in my photo), you can rejuvenate them by rubbing them with fine-grit sandpaper, or by rubbing them carefully with rubber-reconditioner, which will soften them up, and improve their grip. While you have the platen lying around, you might wanna do the same to it, as well, if it’s necessary.
With the well open, you should clean out all the dust and gunk that’s built up in the previously inaccessible parts of the typewriter. Like…um…this:
…and this…
Once you’ve cleaned as much as you can, drop the feed-rollers back into their slots, and then wriggle the platen back down into the carriage. Thread the platen-rod through the holes provided (you may need to do extra wriggling to achieve this), smack the left-hand platen-knob back on the end, and tighten up the screws.
Special Note:
Screws on typewriters and other old machines can be rather stiff. You can use a pair of pliers to add leverage to your screwdriver to unscrew them with greater ease. But be sure to use the pliers to add more leverage to the screwdriver when you screw the screws BACK, as well, so as to provide enough friction for the screws to grip the rod, and rotate the platen. If you don’t, then the screws won’t grip the platen-rod, and you’ll have free-spinning knobs without the platen moving at all.
An antique glass ‘grenade’ fire-extinguisher
An old fire-pole with important safety-features:
Remington Standard No. 16., Desktop Typewriter., Ca. 1933
A Victorian-era camera with separate flash-stand and powder. Note how close the photographer’s right hand is to the igniting flash-powder
“Take your picture, mister?”
