Cop Car's Beat

More on typewriters

Royal Portable Typewriters for English Language Typing

Joared wrote in a comment to Roberta X made me do it of the keyboard layout of her Royal portable typewriter. I encouraged her to send me a photo of the machine and will post it if Joared has the time/energy/inclination to send one (or more). Until then, I am posting (below) a touch-typing guide that I found online, within an owner's manual. The manual is for a Royal Quiet Deluxe from 1952 which model did not include a separate key for "1" as does Joared's machine. (For those too young to know or to have used such a quaint machine, typists typed a lower case "l" in place of a "1" - which isn't too bad when using a font with serifs such as "l". I'm not sure whether Joared's machine includes that key because it is one year newer than the model addressed in the manual, or whether she bought a more expensive machine.

 

Typewriters for German Language Typing

Thanks to Stu for providing links to a couple of interesting German language typing websites. The photo, below, was found at Stu's link to his own website Eunoia, which posting has comments that include mine that predate some of the information in my own postings on typewriters.

Another view of a similar typewriter keyboard is found at Dreamtime (stock photos).

Note the QWERTZ layout as Stu wrote about in his comment. (I note a difference in the "upper case" ß since, in the photo (above) it seems to be a colon rather than a question mark.)

Here in Germany, we have a bigger alphabet,
the standard is QWERTZUIOP and the Y is bottom left.
U Umlaut is to the right of P
To the right of L we have O Umlaut then A Umlaut
SZ which looks like a Beta is below the question mark.

During the Nazi era there were also separate keys for the SS and for the swastika.

BTW: To access "cut copy and paste" German alphabet letters such as the eszett (ss), ß, I used the GYPU website.

IBM Executive Typewriters for English Language Typing

Other than the Smith Corona portable, about which I wrote in the previously linked posting, the only typewriter that I owned was purchased (used) from a shop in Albuquerque NM during the mid-1980s. It, an IBM Executive (photo of a machine similar to mine, above), made really gorgeous copy! The look of the finished page was enhanced by the proportionate spacing of the letters ("i" took one space while "W" took five spaces, as I recall), by the sans serif font (illustrated in the image, below), and by the machine's using a carbon ribbon (photo below the font image) rather than an inked ribbon. 

I really liked that machine; but, when I moved back to Kansas, knowing that it would be difficult to squeeze my household goods into Hunky Husband's already fully-furnished house, I gave the IBM Executive to Elder Brother and his wife who, at the time, lived in Santa Fe NM. He may/probably does still have it.

Roberta X made me do it

I mentioned in the next previous post, More of this and that - early October, that unlike my new computer keyboard which forces use of the left index finger to input a "6/^", I had been accustomed to using my right index finger for that key. I asked what was "standard" touch-typing for that key. In her comment, Roberta X (RX, henceforth), wrote that her '1942 U. S. Navy touch-typing chart shows finger choice for the "6" key (only!) as "optional" for left or right index finger.'

RX rightly reminds me that, over the many years since Elder Brother and I bought our portable typewriter (in 1951 or maybe 1952, I'm not really sure), the upper case numeral keys have changed. On the 1950s keyboard, the upper case "6" (I have to re-input each of the 6s because my fingers aren't paying attention!) was an underline, "_".

Although I was unable to find the graphic that RX referenced, I did succeed in finding two touch-typing charts (images, below) put out by Smith Corona, the company that made EB's and my portable typewriter. I'm pretty sure that a similar chart was included with the typewriter, explaining my habitual use of my right index finger for the "6" key (yes, I hit the 7 key, AGAIN!)

 

Below is an image of a manual portable typewriter quite similar to EB's and my typewriter - down to the case. [Alert: The rest of this paragraph should be viewed as "not necessarily so". Please see ADDITION at the end of the posting. CC] The only real difference I see is that the label on our typewriter was "SCM" followed by the company name in script. I don't recall whether the company name was Smith Corona or Smith Corona Monroe. I can find photos of "SCM" logos online, but I can find no mention of the company's having gone by Smith Corona Monroe, so I suspect the label included the former of the two.

Thanks, RX!

ADDITION of a few hours later: SCM

So much for my memory. It is like scrambled eggs. Perhaps I would have made more headway in my SCM "research" had I not remembered (incorrectly) that the "M" stood for Monroe - one of the Smith brothers. The "M" was for Marchant. I found History of Smith Corona Corp. which provides the following information about SCM.

Smith & Corona became known as Smith-Corona in 1946 and in 1953 was renamed Smith-Corona Inc. During the postwar years, the company worked to meet the challenge of the newest technology, the electric typewriter, which began to dominate the market in 1948. In 1955, Smith-Corona introduced an electric typewriter for the office. The result of a decade of research, the new machine featured a scientifically sloped keyboard fitted to natural finger movements, more controls in the keyboard area than any other electric typewriter, and automatic repeat actions on all keys. Continuing to branch out into other areas, Smith-Corona merged with Marchant Calculators in September 1958; the resulting company, Smith-Corona Marchant Inc. (SCM), became world renowned as an aggressive and diversified corporation.

....

....In 1985 Smith Corona was incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary of SCM Corp., and the following year, the London-based conglomerate, Hanson PLC, acquired SMC Corp. ....

She has done it again!

In 2012, I posted a brag on my sister-in-law, Helen's, new cookbook - European Tarts –  Divinely Doable Desserts with Little or No Baking at Cop Car's Beat: Bragging on family (typepad.com). Since that time, in addition to her work as pastry chef at an upscale restaurant in St Louis MO (more than enough work for one of our generation), Helen has been working on a cookbook of cookies. That book turned into two cookbooks: one for American cookies, the other for European. The American-style book is schedule for publication the 1st of October; but, having an "in" with the author, Hunky Husband and I received an advance copy 10 days ago.

Ta da (that's a fanfare) or, better yet, Fanfare for the Common Man for brass & percussion (from Symphony No. 3): 

Helen is nothing if not gracious, loving, and kind (and bubbly!), demonstrating those qualities once again by crediting me with having started her off in developing one of her cookie recipes by sharing a recipe that I used. Truth to tell, I have absolutely no remembrance (or record) of the recipe or, indeed, of any similar recipe that I may have used when our children were small; but, Helen's memory is much better than mine. I'll take her word for it and thank her for the publicity.

BTW: Helen and I have always had an agreement that I, completely lacking the domestic gene, won't try to act like a chef if she won't try to design airplanes. One further note on Helen's facility with European cooking: she carries on the tradition of a long line of wonderful cooks, her mother having, as a teen-ager, come to the USA from the former Yugoslavia.

P.S. I should not fail to, explicitly, include the link to Helen's blog: Pastries Like a Pro.

Happy 85th, Hunky Husband

 

Happy birthday, Dudette!

Data mining find of 5/10/1967

"[Hunky Husband] flew first flight of WFT on 004."

HH spent a lot of time in that aircraft - on the ground and in the air. That was a long time ago! Before you ask, I'll volunteer that I believe that "WFT" was Wichita Flight Test. We had moved back to the Wichita area from Seattle just a few weeks before the quoted entry was made. I'm not sure when the photo of 004 was taken (presumably by a Boeing or USAF employee), but I had written "69" on the back of it.

ADDITION of a few hours later

B-52 669 - photo dated February 1962

Below are two "color chips" as found in a Wikipedia article.

The photo, below, of HH (back, right) and the rest of the crew with which he flew flight tests in 1963 has previously been posted on this blog; but, it seems appropriate to repeat it with the photos of tail numbers 669 and 004.  The aircraft is 669. [There is a five-digit number stenciled onto the vertical stabilizer. The first two digits indicate the last two digits of the (Gregorian) year in which the aircraft was ordered while the last three digits indicate the last three digits of the aircraft's assigned serial number.] I posit that the photo was taken before a flight. Had it been taken after a flight, the guys would be looking bedraggled and sporting stubbles.  Those flights were not short!

Hunky Husband comes out

It should come as no surprise to any of my blog friends that Hunky Husband has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. My life is pretty much an open book, so I've mentioned the effects of that disease on our family, on occasion. Yesterday, HH took the bold (and brave) step of announcing to our (local) family gathering (and to Bogie, by phone) that he had been diagnosed with "Onset Alzheimer's". I don't know where HH found that particular label since I did not hear his physician apply it; but, I shan't quibble - it is descriptive. I think that HH found a little relief in making the announcement.

AFAIK, HH first suspected that he was headed down the Alzheimer's path in September, 2015. As his mother had gone down that path from ages 60-75, we may have been lulled by the later age (79) at which we noticed HH's own cognitive decline.

HH worries about becoming a burden to me. As any loving spouse would say, "Never a burden!" Two things concern me about the Alzheimer's path: 1) that I probably won't live long enough to provide support throughout HH's path, and 2) that our later-generation family members are at a risk for also entering that path. As fortunate as HH's and my lives have been, we can hardly complain about our own lots in life. We do hope for even better lots for younger generations - hopefully preventives or cures.

Happy birthday, Bogie!

Tidbits for the week - 2021Mar5

Bluebirds Getting Ready to Nest (2/25/2021):

One of the local male Eastern bluebirds is checking our nesting box while shopping around for places to build two or three nests, in hopes of enticing a female to join him in raising little bluebirds. We've been seeing bluebirds all winter, but now they are actively shopping around. I barely caught him during ingress.

Honey Bees Return (2/28/2021):

In Yellow jackets, galore - Correction - Honey bees, galore, posted on a month ago, I noted the presence of honey bees carrying off pieces of the inner material from corn kernels. IMHO, they should not have been out scavenging so early in the season and must have been desperate for sustenance. They have been absent since then, and that was to have been expected - especially with the really cold weather to which we were treated for a couple of weeks or so since they only come out when the temperatures reach into the 50s F. Well...today, they are back - busily attacking the cracked corn. Poor little girls are having a time. I'm happy that my low-grade bird food is helping them.

I consulted Elder Brother, who used to keep a hive of bees in Santa Fe NM, about the behavior of the bees. He said that I was doing well to keep the feeders replenished for them since they must be desperate. He had never seen bees carry off grain bits.

Old Photo of the week:

This (below) is one of the old photos that I've scanned in the past several days. These are my significant others as they appeared on 4/7/1962. One can tell that the photo was taken on a Saturday morning by the tee shirt, jeans, and facial stubble worn by Hunky Husband. Dudette is nearly three years old in the photo while Bogie is just shy of four days old - freshly home from the hospital.

It's too bad that more of the couch doesn't show. I was really proud of myself for having, in the previous year or two, re-upholstered a used couch and easy chair that we had purchased from Mavis Bishop, secretary in the Vibration & Instrumentation group at Boeing, in which I was working at the time (1960). The husband of one of my aunts was an upholsterer in Kansas City Mo. Since I had no idea where one bought upholstery materials, he was kind enough to sell me what I wanted (black nylon frieze for the couch, red nylon frieze for the chair) and help me figure out the yardage required. The couch (which made out into a double bed) and chair, a limed oak breakfast table (with 1 leaf) and four chairs were ours for $95. That would be about $850 in today's dollars.

Moving along

Wonderful Weather (2/17/2021):

By Tuesday (2/16/2021) morning we had accumulated about five inches of snow since Friday. During the previous night, our outside air temperature (OAT) equaled the -17F OAT that I recall having experienced in Kansas in about 1960. The Current Results: Weather and Science Facts website tells me that, as recently as February 10, 2011, we reached -17F, again. How soon I forgot. The website tells me,

"These records were observed at Eisenhower National Airport and go back to 1954. The lowest temperature measured during that time was -21 degrees Fahrenheit (-29 Celsius) on February 6, 1982."

Lowest Wichita temperatures in recent years

Min °F	Date	Min °C
2	March 05, 2019	-17
-2	January 01, 2018	-19
4	December 31, 2017 +	-16
-10	December 18, 2016	-23
0	January 07, 2015	-18
-5	January 06, 2014	-21
3	February 23, 2013	-16
7	December 29, 2012	-14
-17	February 10, 2011	-27
0	January 09, 2010	-18

Not living in this area during 1981-1989, I missed out on the -21F  OAT in 1982. I was living on the Gulf Coast of Florida's panhandle at that time.

Finally this afternoon, I got around to tackling the snow on our driveway. I do, after all, need to drive to the grocery store tomorrow. (Kudos to WalMart for automatically having rescheduled my pickup from Tuesday to Thursday when their online scheduling system was overwhelmed such that we customers could not reschedule for ourselves. One assumes that everyone with a scheduled Tuesday pickup was pushed back to days expected to be exhibiting better weather/street conditions.)

I never spent more than 11 minutes at a time and only went out thrice. My muscles are not accustomed to that sort of exercise, now, and I hate it when I cripple myself because I'm too stupid to pace myself. I'll do even more shoveling tomorrow morning - after it warms up a bit, but before my appointment at WalMart's little store.

The first photo (below) shows the results of my first two ventures out. That bare concrete is where my car will be required to back and turn to the street (to the right).

Next, I cleared some of the concrete in front of the garage doors that hide Hunky Husband's and my cars.

Emergency Supplies (2/17/2021):

Yesterday afternoon, a tiny package was delivered by FEDEX; but, today, FEDEX brought me a really important, heavy box: 14 pounds of safflower seed and 10 pounds of shelled peanuts for our birds. Yay!

Old Photographs (2/18/2021):

One of the photos that I scanned, today, was of my mother's basketball team. She attended country schools during her grades 1 through 10, then had to transfer to a larger school in a town down the road a piece. Whether she also played basketball in 11th or 12th grade, I'm not sure; but, I also scanned photos of the elder of Mom's two younger sisters with her basketball team from the larger school.

In the photo, below, my mother is holding the ball because they lined up by height and she was the shortest. I remember a few of these players, and the coach, from years later when I lived in that area. In fact, my first year or two were spent in a house whose yard abutted the schoolyard. I suspect that the "uniform" bottoms were bloomers - with elastic at the leg opening which is pushed up on the thigh. At least, our gym uniforms in the 1950s had elasticized legs that pushed up - a bit shorter than the ones shown.

ADDITION of 2/24/2021:

Joared gave me a thought. In seeking a photo that showed the gym clothes that my own generation of girls wore in high school, I had searched my yearbooks from 1954 and 1955. Aha! I have a yearbook from 1956 (with which class I should have been graduated had I not skipped 11th grade). The following image is a scan of a page from the 1956 yearbook which illustrates, nicely, the outfits that we wore in the mid 1950s. Since I attended school with these girls for several years, I know knew nearly all of the girls in the two photos. The girls who were seniors when the photos were taken, and who have survived, will be celebrating their 65th year reunion, this year.

Turkeys Making Tracks (2/19/2021):

Each day, early of a morning, our neighborhood's turkey flock left more tracks through the snow. We could follow the flock's movements after-the-fact, up and down and across our street; but, the most interesting patterns were left in our back yard.

Finally, a "clear" sidewalk (2/19/2021):

Now that we've finally reached an OAT that is above freezing, I deigned to clear the snow from our front walk. A man walking down the street to retrieve his mail from the mailbox cluster asked, "Would you like for me to do that for you?" I thanked him and explained that it was good exercise for me. Really, it's more fun than work since I limit what I do at one time - this stint's being limited to 14 minutes. (Working my way up.)

It is a waste of time to clear the sidewalk: no one uses it. I can't blame them. It is so much shorter to cut across the yard from the street to the front steps.