Sunday, May 29, 2011

Vintage typewriters

I'm not really "on Facebook" anymore but I like to visit occasionally, if only to be reassured and/or reminded of the existence of old friends I'm no longer in touch with. Thus, e.g., I found out today that my college friend Adwoa now (a) lives in Geneva, (b) is obsessed with vintage typewriters -- apparently there's been a Vintage Typewriter Revival of sorts lately... -- and has a blog documenting the obsession. The pictures are fascinating, at least to me: as prev. noted I like visibly articulated objects. Some of the old ones (this is from the 1920s) remind me vaguely of pipe organs:


And this one might go well with your furniture:


These intricate mechanical contraptions delight me, partly because I so completely lack the relevant kind of ingenuity (or temperament), partly because they are, in some profound sense, things one understands; any electrical appliance induces a measure of "irreducible bafflement" that even one's mental picture of electrons being dragged through viscous tubes by potential gradients goes only so far to dispel.

Finally that pic of he-who-must-be-mentioned in any post on this topic:

1 comment:

Adwoa said...

Hello, Sarang!

I feel awful to only now have discovered this post - you should have written to say hello; I don't bite :)

Thanks for writing about my blog on yours, and I am glad to hear you like typewriters too. I like your point about typewriters being things whose function and purpose are instantly understood, and I might extrapolate that into a post one of these days.