Slightly disturbing typewriter auction photos on ebay

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/17/slightly-disturbing-typewriter.html

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Hold out for one of these:
http://www.hpricecpa.com/typewriterinfo14.html

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" . . . Step right up (Buy ME!). Good for young and old, man and bestial. Nothing like a little snake oil to grease the wheels and get a show on the track Jack. Which side are you on? Fro-Zen Hydraulic?"

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Do I recall mere ownership of a typewriter is now taken as evidence of document forgery? Not probable cause, mind you, but evidence once you’re on trial.

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I could be interested in an IBM Selectric 251 typewriter that is quantum entangled between this and an alternate universe.

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That sounds like a prosecutor throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.

If he had an expert that could match some forged documents to your typewriter (a practice only slightly more reliable than handwriting analysis IMHO) then that would make sense. Merely owning a typewriter not so much.

I mean Tom Hanks must be looking mighty suspicious to that prosecutor.

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Whatever happened to The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
or All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy ?

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Actually, it has to be ‘jumps’ or there won’t be a letter ‘s’ in that sentence.

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hose pho os are in eres ing but i looks like he las one shows a ypewri er wi h a broken .

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What’s the first typewriter? The user can change the letter spacing?

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This is a VERY disturbing typewriter

(I blame the book and film Mother Night for teaching me of the existence of these)

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— ‘Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow!’ —
Anybody? Yes? No, okay. …:frowning:

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For a while, I was hanging onto an old manual Remington - black, heavy, etc. Every movie and TV crackpot has to type up the ransom notes and taunting letters to the newspaper on an old manual typewriter with a flawed and distinctive key, and I’m certainly a crackpot*.

Eventually, I just did what i do with most of my ‘old, cool junk’ I no longer want. When a neighbor hosting a yard sale wasn’t paying attention, I slipped it onto one of her tables and sauntered away.

*I ditched it when, on reflection, I’m not a Grand Conspiracy Philosopher crackpot. I’m a ‘re-create the underground irrigation system of Machu Picchu’ kind of crackpot.

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Zwölf Boxkämpfer jagen Viktor über den großen Sylter Deich.

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Bright vixens jump, dozy fowl quack?

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technical term for that: apparently not ‘kerning’, but ‘tracking’
seems you knew already, and I didn’t.

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I believe if this isn’t your sample example, you’re doing it wrong:

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Hah! I like this.

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I learned in ’ From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler’
that a popular sentence for testing one’s typing speed, but also the performance of typewriters was:
“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.”

Make of that what you wish.

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