Olympia Traveller de Luxe

I’ve become a bit obsessed with typewriters.

This one is a Olympia Traveller de Luxe. It’s about the closest experience you can get to pen & paper that doesn’t involve a pen. The hammers strike the paper with a force corresponding to how hard you press the keys.

Even though it is indisputably simpler than a modern laptop, the complexities of it seem more striking. It is packed with tiny linkages that all work in harmony to get the text on the page. Even the ink spools are more complicated than you might think. Each press of a key winds the ribbon a small amount from one spool to the other, and then once one side is exhausted, pressure builds on a pin that causes the mechanism to switch directions – returning the ribbon to the other spool.

There are margins that you can adjust using two sliders behind the paper slot. When you are within about 8 characters of the end of the line a little bell dings, reminding you to return the carriage. It is sometimes a little awkward when you are in the middle of a particularly long word, but you can always -hyphenate anything that will not fit. If you feel like living life on the edge, you can override the margins, letting you fit those last couple of characters in.

If you have a split color ribbon, you can swap colors using a little switch on the right. Personally I’ve never felt the need for anything over than black, but it is a nice option to have.

You can configure the line spacing, where you can pick from the rather cramped 1, the standard 1.5, or the roomy 2. The mechanism for this is quite ingenious – adjusting a slider decides the position of the tooth that advances the lines, meaning the platen is rotated more or less. You can also disable the line spacing, and freely spin the platen wheels to your hearts content. This is very useful for loading the paper into the typewriter.

Making, or rather fixing mistakes, is a bit of a pain. The previous owner of my model evidently used liquid Tipex at some point as it was liberally splashed about when I first aquired it.

• margins
• colour selection
• line spacing
• correction
• how the shift works
• i’m writing this from github.dev on my phone, how incredible is that – shame I can’t quite get it fullscreen though…