Automating life

Outstanding graphic artist Christoph Niemann recently published a textual/visual essay on AI art in the New York Times which is one of the most thoughtful, nuanced reflections I've seen on the topic. One of his points reminded me of this passage in The Typewriter Revolution: 

For a planet desperate for conservation, for a mind starved for concentration, inefficiency starts to look like nourishment and life. Maybe to save time is not to lengthen life, after all. Maybe the more efficiently you speed through life, the quicker you reach your death.

It’s not efficient to cook a meal from scratch. 

It’s not efficient to ride a bike down a country path. 

It’s not efficient to learn an instrument instead of downloading a song, or to sketch a landscape instead of pointing your smartphone at it. 

Why do we do inefficient things? Because sometimes we don’t want life to be seamless—we want to feel resistance, we want to take our time, we want to savor the experience. When what you’re doing isn’t just a means to end, you’re in no hurry to get it done. 

For the typewriter revolution, writing is one of those intrinsically valuable experiences.

Here is Niemann's reflection:

 

From Sketched Out by Christoph Niemann

A second printing for The Typewriter Revolution

 

First printing:

Second printing:

Errata

A Marxist Valentine: the Marx Adventure children's toy typewriter

Here's a close look at the Marx Adventure I found yesterday. Only a few photos of this toy typewriter (and its rebranded twin, the Sears Adventure) exist online, so I'm happy to be able to provide more views.

It's the back of the typewriter, with its handle, that is most obviously like the Olivetti Valentine. The rest of the typewriter might be a child's drawing from memory of what a Valentine might look like. Of course, the bright red plastic is also Valentine-inspired.

Like the Valentine, the Adventure fits into a vertical case.

The metal case latches are superior to the Valentine's rubber latches, which are usually broken by now.

The Adventure is BIG for a child's typewriter. Here it is next to a Voss, for instance.

Robert Messenger showed us his Sears Adventure next to a Valentine. (Robert also points out that I alerted him to this typewriter when it appeared on eBay in 2011. I'd forgotten!)

Note how much taller the Adventure is than the Valentine.

Here are a few more views of the Adventure's very distinctive design.

The type slugs are plastic (as on some manual portables coming from Shanghai today).

Even the key levers are plastic!

But here is a mechanical feature that blew my mind. I have never seen another typewriter that does this. The possibility never even occurred to me. Maybe other Marx typewriters do this (does anyone know?). 

What am I talking about?

The typewriter uses a carriage shift mechanism for capitals, and a completely separate segment shift for figures. (Both can be activated at once, so that both carriage and segment rise together, effectively keeping the typewriter on its lowercase setting.) Fascinating.

Now for a little historical background.

If you look again at the above photo of the underside, you'll see an upside-down JAPAN stamped into the plastic at the top of the photo. So that's where it was made.

Now let's look more closely at the other information stamped on the bottom:

I assumed J-5415 was the serial number, but then I discovered Benjamin Esh's Adventure, which has the same J-5415 sticker.

Here are links to the US patents listed:

3,197,011 for "sponge rubber typewriter key biasing means" by Shigeaki Kuramochi (his other patents)

3,223,220 for "typewriter having sliding universal member" by Willis Rexford (1914-1992; he was designing for Marx as early as 1936)

3,308,915 for "comb construction for typewriter" by Willis Rexford

3,338,369 for "typewriter key operated mechanism and mounting and guiding structure therefor" by Willis Rexford

3,572,488 for "shift and shift lock mechanism for typewriter" by Shigeaki Kuramochi

3,611,586 for "instructional typewriter" by Shigeaki Kuramochi

Design patents:

D209,352 for "typewriter" by Shigeaki Kuramochi

D212,057 for "typewriter" by Frank C. Fusco

D216,339 for "typewriter" by Frank C. Fusco

D216,602 for "typewriter casing" by Frank C. Fusco

But none of those designs look like the Adventure! Robert Messenger discovered that the distinctive Adventure design was among the "patents pending" referred to on the typewriter. Frank C. Fusco and Bill Gold applied for the patent in 1971, but were granted the patent only in 1974 (D230,087). Their application refers only obliquely to the Valentine—when it refers, weirdly, to "Shell Oil Co. Cat., '24 Selected Gifts for 1971,' rec'd March 31, 191 [1971?], p. 4, Olivetti typewriter item." This catalogue (which I can't find online) may have been some obscure internal publication for Shell employees.

Another oddity is that the back of the typewriter, with its handle, is not shown, nor is the vertical carrying case. These are, of course, the most Valentine-ish features of the Adventure.

Robert also discovered that the Adventure was advertised only once by Sears, in the 1972 Christmas Wishbook, with some help from Dennis the Menace. 

The "ultra-modern Adventure" was "our most versatile" children's typewriter, and the most expensive at $24.99. Ironically, that's exactly what mine was priced at yesterday! But with inflation, $24.99 in 1972 is worth around $192 in 2025.

Robert speculates that Olivetti was not amused by the resemblance. He may well be right. In any case, by the time Fusco and Gold got their design patent in 1974, the Adventure was probably not being made anymore.

And now for the moment we've all been waiting for.

Does the thing type??

Um ... sort of?

If you were a parent in 1972 who spent the equivalent of our $192 on this Christmas present, would you feel you got your money's worth?