Even though the styling changed, the layout of controls and their behavior appears to be the same as the curvy 1950s and boxy 1960s variations.
Showing posts with label hermes 3000. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hermes 3000. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Hermes 3000/Hermes Media Manual Scan
Ephemera-heads gotta stick together! The manual for the Skyriter that I have posted still gets pretty frequent hits, so here's a greyscale scan of the manual that came with my wide-carriage, French made Hermes 3000. Based on the cover of the booklet, this also applies to the Hermes Media model.
Even though the styling changed, the layout of controls and their behavior appears to be the same as the curvy 1950s and boxy 1960s variations.
Even though the styling changed, the layout of controls and their behavior appears to be the same as the curvy 1950s and boxy 1960s variations.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Epoca Hunters: I Hear You
I like to dig around in the blog settings and look for how people are finding the site (and obsessively over-analyze which posts are getting viewed.) Lately the this search phrase keeps popping up.
hermes 3000 epoca font
I do have a 3000 with that typeface, but it's suffering from lighter top-halves of letters, which I think indicates that the platen diameter has shrunk narrower than the curvature of the slug faces.
Anyhow, someone is interested in it, and maybe you want to make a computer font of it? If so, have at it. I've uploaded a scan of the characters from my machine into my Google Drive which you should feel free to fontify or ogle or pity, persons-who-are-finding-the-blog.
Typospherians: if anyone has tips for getting better letter impressions, I'm open to ideas. These were typed by running about five sheets of paper through the machine at once -- there's little improvement over past examples of the machine in use. I know about recovering the platen, and that may ultimately need to happen when budget allows, and I'm willing to stare into the madness that is the Hermes line-spacing mechanism.
Prepared with the help of my otherwise-awesome 1958 Hermes 3000
hermes 3000 epoca font
I do have a 3000 with that typeface, but it's suffering from lighter top-halves of letters, which I think indicates that the platen diameter has shrunk narrower than the curvature of the slug faces.
Anyhow, someone is interested in it, and maybe you want to make a computer font of it? If so, have at it. I've uploaded a scan of the characters from my machine into my Google Drive which you should feel free to fontify or ogle or pity, persons-who-are-finding-the-blog.
Typospherians: if anyone has tips for getting better letter impressions, I'm open to ideas. These were typed by running about five sheets of paper through the machine at once -- there's little improvement over past examples of the machine in use. I know about recovering the platen, and that may ultimately need to happen when budget allows, and I'm willing to stare into the madness that is the Hermes line-spacing mechanism.
Prepared with the help of my otherwise-awesome 1958 Hermes 3000
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Spoilers
Goodreads seems like a fairly decent way to document my reading (and monetize it, no doubt). I'm just starting to use it. No promises that it will keep me from reading trash, though.
Typed on a Hermes 3000
Monday, November 28, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Headless Typewriter Found in Bottomless Garage
(Optional subtitle: "Hello/Goodbye")
Fresh on the heels of what I thought was an awesome score this summer, the universe seemed to decide that it had enough of my griping about the relative rarity of the Hermes brand in this part of the world, and aligned in such a way that three Hermes 3000's showed up on Craigslist within a week of the arrival of my own, including one in my very own neighborhood. Fortunately for my ego, they were all priced the same as what I'd paid (including shipping) so I could breathe easy. And then, inexplicably, one showed up again just last week, one that I remembered from the summer. At a Drastic Discount.
You already know how this story is going to end.
So, I was out on a Craigslist meet-and-greet yesterday, spending a very satisfactory conversation with the previous owner of the above-pictured machine, a slightly earlier model than the one I'd grabbed over the summer, and more critically to me, in the desirable pica type size. I've gotten to the point where I'm trying to be more restrictive about the machines I keep around, and have realized that I just prefer pica to elite. My other 3000 is an elite, this one is pica. Checking Ted's excellent NOMDA scans, I see that this is the Epoca typeface, which is a very handsome san-serif typeface, which is an added bonus. Perhaps after cleaning and a new ribbon it might even be suitable for OCR work.
The seller was the former academic dean at the local community college and something of a collector: his garage is packed with what he jokingly called "the museum," which featured a broad assortment of just plain stuff: vintage toy cars and a barber's chair with attached ash tray, turntables, movie projectors, brass hose nozzles, mobile phones from the late 80s, and everything neatly labeled and shelved, with still more stuff in the shed. Stuff that started to take over his house, until his wife gently-yet-firmly suggested that he move it out of the living room and into the garage. (Visions of me in about 20 years here...)
His son wrote the book on our town's local history -- literally, it's for sale all over town -- so we also discussed writing, and free-writing, and I (of course) brought up NaNoWriMo and the Typewriter Brigade. He had a lovely old Royal Quiet De Luxe on display that belonged to his father, and featured Norwegian keys added on later. That one was a keeper, he said, and I agreed: it had a special story, and he's got kids to pass that along to. The Hermes was a yard-sale find from a neighbor down the street, and he had no such attachment to it, though he did admit to getting an email flame from someone in the Los Angeles area who was mad that he was letting this machine go for so little, presumably devaluing the LA seller's own machines. And the seller was not ignorant, either: he'd affixed a sticker showing a sample of eBay prices to the machine. He simply knew that he was done with it, and didn't need it, and that it was time for it to move on.
The only downside to the entire transaction -- and it is a very slight one -- is that I'm lacking the lid to the case. The seller never had one, and perhaps it was lost or broken by the previous owner: who knows. So, I've already pestered a few of you about the possibility of locating a new lid, and thrown out a request on the TYPESWAP group for the same. That's still in the works. At the moment, this machine is sitting beneath the dust cover from the other 3000, the 3000 that's now a surplus machine, and might be ready to move on. And while I'm thinking about it, perhaps it's time for Moses to mosey along too, he of the elite typeface and the persnickety space bar. I think it's time to take a little inventory around here and round up the machines that are ready for new homes before my darling wife moves me into the garage, too.
Fresh on the heels of what I thought was an awesome score this summer, the universe seemed to decide that it had enough of my griping about the relative rarity of the Hermes brand in this part of the world, and aligned in such a way that three Hermes 3000's showed up on Craigslist within a week of the arrival of my own, including one in my very own neighborhood. Fortunately for my ego, they were all priced the same as what I'd paid (including shipping) so I could breathe easy. And then, inexplicably, one showed up again just last week, one that I remembered from the summer. At a Drastic Discount.
You already know how this story is going to end.
So, I was out on a Craigslist meet-and-greet yesterday, spending a very satisfactory conversation with the previous owner of the above-pictured machine, a slightly earlier model than the one I'd grabbed over the summer, and more critically to me, in the desirable pica type size. I've gotten to the point where I'm trying to be more restrictive about the machines I keep around, and have realized that I just prefer pica to elite. My other 3000 is an elite, this one is pica. Checking Ted's excellent NOMDA scans, I see that this is the Epoca typeface, which is a very handsome san-serif typeface, which is an added bonus. Perhaps after cleaning and a new ribbon it might even be suitable for OCR work.
The seller was the former academic dean at the local community college and something of a collector: his garage is packed with what he jokingly called "the museum," which featured a broad assortment of just plain stuff: vintage toy cars and a barber's chair with attached ash tray, turntables, movie projectors, brass hose nozzles, mobile phones from the late 80s, and everything neatly labeled and shelved, with still more stuff in the shed. Stuff that started to take over his house, until his wife gently-yet-firmly suggested that he move it out of the living room and into the garage. (Visions of me in about 20 years here...)
His son wrote the book on our town's local history -- literally, it's for sale all over town -- so we also discussed writing, and free-writing, and I (of course) brought up NaNoWriMo and the Typewriter Brigade. He had a lovely old Royal Quiet De Luxe on display that belonged to his father, and featured Norwegian keys added on later. That one was a keeper, he said, and I agreed: it had a special story, and he's got kids to pass that along to. The Hermes was a yard-sale find from a neighbor down the street, and he had no such attachment to it, though he did admit to getting an email flame from someone in the Los Angeles area who was mad that he was letting this machine go for so little, presumably devaluing the LA seller's own machines. And the seller was not ignorant, either: he'd affixed a sticker showing a sample of eBay prices to the machine. He simply knew that he was done with it, and didn't need it, and that it was time for it to move on.
The only downside to the entire transaction -- and it is a very slight one -- is that I'm lacking the lid to the case. The seller never had one, and perhaps it was lost or broken by the previous owner: who knows. So, I've already pestered a few of you about the possibility of locating a new lid, and thrown out a request on the TYPESWAP group for the same. That's still in the works. At the moment, this machine is sitting beneath the dust cover from the other 3000, the 3000 that's now a surplus machine, and might be ready to move on. And while I'm thinking about it, perhaps it's time for Moses to mosey along too, he of the elite typeface and the persnickety space bar. I think it's time to take a little inventory around here and round up the machines that are ready for new homes before my darling wife moves me into the garage, too.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Catch a Wave
One side-effect of finding this machine is that I'm incapable of remembering the model name properly. It is truly "Tropical" as I eventually stated. You can see it among the other Olivetti machines on Will Davis' site. Imagine the name badge says "Hermes" and you'll have it.
Also, this typecast topic got away from one of my original points, which was the documentary being filmed right now by the crew from LA. After some back-and-forth trying to get me to find a location, we met last week in a local used-book store, and I managed to sweat and mumble my way through a series of innocuous but otherwise mind-blanking questions ("What's your name, and what do you do" and "What's your first memory of a typewriter.") If I make it into the final product at all, it will be a testament to their editing skills. I know that folks at the L.A. and Phoenix type-ins met Gary and Chris and praised them for their professionalism and unobtrusiveness. They were particularly patient with me the entire time, despite me trying (and failing) to not stare at the one customer who hung out and watched the first half hour of the interview.
True to form, I managed to not even think to grab a crappy cell-phone photo of the experience. If you happen to get contacted by these guys, please do your best to be courteous and polite to them, so they can get some usable quotes out of the experience. And pick someplace air-conditioned, so you don't look like Nixon sweating his way through a debate.
Typed on "Lennon", a 1972 Hermes 3000 with only a slightly confused heritage
Thursday, August 11, 2011
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