Southworth air mail stationery

What a spectacular box of stationery I found at my neighborhood antique mall this afternoon! I love the lettering and imagery on the box and the lightning-bolt motif.

Southworth paper has special meaning for me. Not only was this the first company to produce paper especially for typewriters, but it was founded by my great-great-great-grandfather Wells Southworth.

Click on any image to see a high-resolution (600dpi) image.

 

Typewriter repair = chess?

"Mateo" usually beats me.

 

Free Thoughts, October 2024

This time I was joined by Sayo, a Xavier student, to type "free thoughts" for the public. We had plenty of requests, and I captured only a few of the results in photos.

Sayo was new at this, but he proved to be a gifted on-the-spot thinker. Afterwards, he said that the experience made him feel like a better person. I know what he means! I recommend giving this a try if you want to create meaningful moments for yourself and for the people you'll meet.

Some of my efforts:

This one isn't readable but the students' expressions are better than the thought! (Topic: why are pickles smaller than cucumbers?)

Some of Sayo's work:

Good, huh??

AI can't generate this (yet)

As my readers surely know, generative AI continues to make impressive/frightening strides. Chatbots pass the Turing test with flying colors. AI-generated images, music, and videos have eerie detail and depth, providing new aesthetic possibilities as well as easy tools for propaganda and harrassment. AI can animate your old family photos, or add detail that was never there. It can generate a realistic podcast based on any document you give it. Massive data centers are springing up to handle the surging demand, boosting our electricity consumption to alarming levels. And the AI future has barely begun.

Yet there is one thing AI can't generate ... at least not yet.

This is "typewritten text" according to Midjourney:

Midjourney attempts to generate a particular typewritten word:

Meta AI gives it a shot:

Several image generators provided by Nightcafe don't do any better. This one is atmospheric and eye-catching, but that's not typewritten text:

This one gets a "participant" badge—not even "honorable mention":

As for this one, uh ... what?

Nadex Pioneer typewriter

Meet the Nadex Pioneer!

Yes, it's yet another product of Shanghai Weilv, the only remaining manufacturer of manual typewriters on the planet. And it's not a new design, but the same thing as the Royal Epoch (click for my review) and other "brands" from the same factory. I have no doubt that it's just as bad, and the two-star reviews on Amazon confirm my hunch.

Take a close look at the "typing" in the photos. No, the Nadex cannot produce proportional, crisp, aligned typing like this. It's laser printed!

Don't waste your money on a Nadex. But wonder, with me, what might happen if someone decided to pour a few million dollars into creating a proper typewriter factory, with high-quality materials and careful assembly. We need a good new manual typewriter for the rest of the 21st century!

Louis L'Amour on typewriters

Louis L'Amour (1908-1988) was a spectacularly successful author of Western novels and stories. Here he is at his Olympia SM3 in 1953, and at an IBM Model B or C in later life.

Dave Cannon has discovered some wonderful passages on typewriters in L'Amour's memoir Education of a Wandering Man.

These are so good I just had to type them up on my Reporters Special. Thanks, Dave!

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Notebooks I have known

Bob Sassone was curious to know more about the notebooks I use. So here is a rundown—of interest, maybe, to readers who love to write by hand (I suspect there's a significant overlap with typewriter lovers).

My notebooks fall into two groups. 

There are the academic notebooks, which I've used since college for class notes (as a student, then as a teacher) and notes from conferences, lectures, etc. These are usually around 8.5" x 11". I am currently on my 41st volume.

Then there are the personal journals, which are smaller, usually 6"x8" or so. I started these in high school and I'm currently on my 19th.

UC Berkeley had a little room where you could buy books to support the library. They were discards or unwanted donations. I found quite a few bizarre oddities here, as well as a few ledger-style notebooks—the kind Bob Sassone says "look like something Scrooge would have used for his business." They had a few scientific notes, written in a fluid and confusing hand with a thick fountain pen. These must date from the 1950s or earlier. 

I filled them with course notes (and doodles).

Once the "Scrooge" volumes were full, I turned to unruled artist's sketchbooks, which leave me free to organize text (and doodles) as I like. 

For many years I preferred plain, black-bound sketchbooks. There were some exceptions, such as these beautiful volumes. My mother-in-law bought the green one for me in Egypt; I bought the other in Montalcino, Italy.

More recently, I've been using colorful (even a bit garish) blank notebooks produced by Flame Tree. Half Price Books sells these for only $10 apiece.

For the personal journals, I started out in high school with a little, paperbound, lined notebook. All the rest have been nicer, blank journals from various sources. I've gotten several from Epica, which imports beautiful Italian leather-bound journals. Pricey, but worth it. 

Moleskine and Leuchtturm 1917 also make good journals, but I've gotten some with thin paper that allows too much ink to show through; in those cases I've written only on the recto (right-side pages).

My preferred handwriting tool is a Pilot Namiki vanishing-point fountain pen. Every year or so, I drop mine on its nib and have to replace it. I'm a klutz.

What if I really want to write something by typewriter? This happens pretty often when I'm preparing for class. I type it up and tape it into a notebook.

There is a lot of satisfaction in working with ink and paper, and filling a shelf with your writing. 

What are your favorite ways to write by hand?

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August '24 typewriter safari

I stopped by the Ohio Valley Antique Mall today and checked out the latest crop of you-know-whats.

I'll tell you right now that I didn't buy any of them. But I can still create a quiz: Which of these models is the rarest? Do you know? Write your guess in the comments below.

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