Thursday 14 March 2013

A confession

Dear Typosphere. My name is Steve, I am from Brisbane, Australia and I am obsessed with typewriters.
I have started this blog, The Impatient Typewriter Mechanic as a result of my obsession. However, only half of the title is true. I am by no stretch of the imagination a typewriter mechanic, but I am definitely impatient and I love nothing more than to get frustrated with the inner workings of whichever manual typewriter I happen to be confoundedly tinkering with at the time.
Last Sunday I attended the first ever Brisbane Type-in at the Breakfast Creek Hotel- a great event and well covered by the blogs of those who attended.
That’s me on the end there, staring back at the camera with a rather goofy smile. The sort of stupefied but contented grin that comes from being surrounded by some terrific typewriters and by people who can tell you pretty much anything you want to know about them. Here I met for the first time all the great people pictured, including Robert, Scott  and Rino; all of whose blogs I’ve read periodically for some time (as well as various other typospharians’ blogs for that matter). Also present was a genuine professional typewriter mechanic (now retired) with over 30 years industry experience; the gentleman Mr John Lavery, who gave me some very useful advice on how to tackle a couple of issues with my Smith Premier 10.
So I figure this is a fitting time to start this blog, as it marks almost exactly a year since the seeds of my typewriter obsession were sown. I plan to blog about how these initial seeds were sown in later posts, but in short, one year ago I had never (to the best of my knowledge) used a manual typewriter. Now only 12 months later, I own 8 of them and know enough about them to (sometimes) get a dead one going again. Along with the typewriters themselves, I’m a huge fan of the personal stories that invariably accompany these curious machines. So this blog has a threefold purpose if you like, firstly as a public admittance of my obsession; secondly a means of communicating with this fantastic Typospheric universe which I am so pleased to have progressively discovered; and thirdly, a means of sharing one or two of these stories along with other typewriter related adventures....

18 comments:

  1. Welcome to the typosphere! I'll add your blog to some blogrolls. Type on!

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  2. Welcome! And yes, the backstories of some of these machines would be fascinating indeed. So much secret history there!

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  3. Welcome Typospherian, fresh blood! :D

    Added to my blogroll, and added this post to the type-in.org list of reports for the Aussie type-in.

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  4. Welcome to the Typosphere, Steve! Good to see new members rolling in. I look forward to future posts.

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  5. Many thanks guys, great to (finally) be here!

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  6. Ah hah! You've certainly got this up and going. The Brisbane typosphere is getting lively!

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  7. And..... a warm welcome. Glad to have you adding to the Typosphere.

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  8. Hi Steve,
    Great first post. I was hoping you could give a ring so I could talk some more about the Smith.

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  9. welcome aboard. I love the old school phone and typer in the background!

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  10. Great Blog. I love the background picture, too. Reminds me of my own desk - only yours isn't surrounded by the great diving range of paper.
    I'm looking forward to more posts, too.

    And here's to the Australian Arm of the Typosphere!

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  11. AH ha! Another Aussie in the fold. Sweeeeet! Welcome, welcome!
    Looking forward to read more about your adventures.

    Oh you lucky ducks.
    If only Darwin was stocked with antiques.

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  12. Welcome to the world of the Typosphere!

    I look forward to more of you posts.

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  13. Hi Steve. That's all we need, another bloody Aussie with a typewriter :-)

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  14. Hello, great to meet you all! Ha, good call Rob, it appears we Aussies are remarkably well represeted! I guess you'll just have to settle for grinding us into the dust in the upcoming Ashes Series...

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  15. I wanted to wish you a belated welcome to the Typosphere. I apparently missed your posts through the Blogroll while out on travel. I found it through an image search that turned up your glass key Lexikon. I had no idea there was such a thing! Mine has the typical slightly out of round plastic keys.

    I look forward to your future posts.

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  17. Great to see another typewriter enthusiast enter the typosphere! It's wonderful that the Australian collectors are such a tight community, the virus is spreading wild! \o/

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