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!
Newly manufactured, GOOD typewriters in this century would be wonderful, of course! I wonder what they would cost, though? A quick search revealed this: In 1925, an Underwood 5 could be purchased for $42.95. In today's dollars, that would be equivalent to $774.70, according to the source I found. With so many factors to consider, I'm not sure that's even a ballpark figure. But if I could buy a new manual typewriter with Underwood 5 quality for $800, a machine that would outlive me, I would certainly buy one.
ReplyDeleteI think a fair estimate for the price of a good new manual typewriter would be around $1000. Who would pay that much? Well, many people are happy to pay more than that for a laptop or a bicycle. I think it could work. And even the model that Shanghai Weilv is building could become an excellent typewriter with better-quality materials and workmanship. Creative new body designs could make it an attractive typewriter for our age.
DeleteI am not so sure about the $1k, if you want a high quality product comparable to the real stuff from the past.
DeleteSince we are not talking about a product which would get produced in huge numbers, it probably would involve a lot of handwork.
The only chance I would see to land around $1k would be if there would be no dealers involved. If the manufacturer sells them on his/her own through an online-shop only, it might be possible. (A dealer would need to get 40-50% commission on top for such a heavy and bulky product, at least)
But this would mean, you as the customer could not try one out before buying it. Not even see it in person. (Unless a friend has one already)
And then there would be the question of maintenance. Who to send it to after 2 or 3 years of usage for an overhaul? Who to send it to in case of problems? In order to cover this, the manufacturer would also have to open up a repair shop as well. And everything needs to be managed by shipping back and forth - with the known risks and problems of that.
In my opinion the critical questions for such an adventure are not in the "how-to-produce", but in everything that follows up.
Would I personally buy one for $1k? You bet.
I think the use of a proportional typeface* in a typewriter ad is probably the silliest thing I have seen in a while. Word processors have monospace fonts! If you're going to cheat, at least make it look sort of believable.
ReplyDelete*yes, I know some do have proportional typefaces - loved the Graphika feature in the latest Etcetera magazine!
"Thank you again for your presense at my party....."
ReplyDeleteActually not that bad, relatively speaking!
The knowledge and skills required to make a mechanical typewriter got lost when Olympia and Olivetti in Mexico finally closed their factores. That's a shame. :(
ReplyDeleteAnd that's why China makes bad attempts to revive it. xD
(Besides, they don't use letters, but ideograms; they're not familiarized with alphabetic scripts)
While not a manual typewriter, a new machine of decent quality you can buy today is a Nakajima daisywheel, like the WPT-150, for just over $200. Swintec is another company selling rebranded Nakajima machines under their own label. There are also new old stock Brother daisywheel machines still available, as well as IBM Lexmark Wheelwriter machines (but these are very pricey).
ReplyDelete