Touchless

Wow, abundant typos here. I can see how a swipe-n-slide lifestyle makes one's fingers flabby. Clearly I need more typing practice.

Typed on a noisy, oily, fingerprinted, wonderful Montgomery Ward Signature 513 (Brother), c. 1966

Auditions: The Other Brother & Friends

Not a strong showing for the travel typers to say the least. I think I'm getting spoiled on the full-size machines. There's more to go, though.

In order of appearance in this typecast:

Signature 100 (Brother-made):


Hermes Baby:


Lettera 32:

Auditions: The Big Brother

 

Apologies for the grammar gaffes and typos (I do know when to use "its" and "it's", honest.) Can I say I was focused on the spacebar fix and not paying attention to what my fingers were typing? Yeah, let's go with that.


Typed on a Signature 513

ITAM Drive-By

Typed on a 1966 Montgomery Ward Signature 513

Big Brother

Typed on a 1966 Brother-made Signature 513

Wide Load

Speaking of depreciation, the price I paid for this (in 2010 dollars) equates to $0.93 in 1967 dollars, roughly the price of a pound of ground coffee in the supermarket. This machine stayed local, as you can see from the owner's notes. Interestingly, our dining room table and living room furniture in our current home came from the same store, about 30 years later, just a handful of years before "Monkey Ward" disappeared entirely.

Teaser photo: test-typed on a Montgomery Ward Signature 513 (made by Brother)

Powerless

My Wish List

* That is, the tricked out Brother. The brain said one thing, the fingers, another.

• Pens: Parker 51, and the Namiki vanishing point
• Rhodia A7 (No. 11) pad
• Courage and patience in the face of revisions
• Madonna Inn and the Caveman suite
  
  

To Dye For

UPDATE: a collage of shots of the pimping-in-progress.

Oh Brother, I'm Gonna Dye

I passed on this one at first, but after very little convincing, it came home in the end, as I'm sure you knew it would. But now, there's a twist.

Inspired by Alpha-Smartie Vance Fry, I'm going to try my hand at giving this old Brother a makeover. You can sort of tell from my photo: some of that yellow is the color scheme and some... well, some is not. It could be tobacco, or age, or a combination of both.

I considered trying my hand at mixing up a batch of Retr0Bright to bleach the colors back into newness, but honestly, I have no desire to do this. That yellow... that brown... it's time for it to go.

There's not a lot of color choices available in off-the-shelf vinyl dyes -- I could also choose black, beige, or a buffed silver -- but looking at those red keys got me thinking that this little machine wants more than a life of blah. So, red it shall be. Take a good long look, because that color scheme is going to dye.

• My discussion topic on flickr's AlphaSmart group