Talk:Typewriter/Archives/2019

The correction feature on Selectrics

The article currently says:

The pinnacle of this kind of technology was the IBM Correcting Selectric. This machine, and similar products, incorporated a black/white ribbon and a character memory. With a single keystroke, the typewriter was capable of automatically reversing and overstriking the previous few characters with white cover-up.

I think this is wrong. Didn't the Selectric correcting ribbon actually lift-off the character from the page? That is, wasn't it an adhesive ribbon rather than a "cover-up" ribbon? It seems to me that when you replaced an exhausted ribbon, the white band was filled with all the duff characters. That was also the reason why the correcting ribbon wasn't recomended for legal documents; they could be ratrher-seamlessly altered ex-post facto. Does anyone else remember all this?

According to the correcting Selectric II manual both cover up and lift off tapes were available. Kb3pxr (talk) 20:00, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Atlant 12:49, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's the way I remember it. It should be easy enough to find out -- either from IBM or at a typewriter museum. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.34.158 (talk) 10:33, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

This also wrong as the correction button worked as so. On keypress the typewriter backspaces, switches to the correction ribbon, and disables character spacing. The operator then must type the same character that was typed in error. The typewriter then switches back to normal operation and the operator can continue typing at the point the error was made. Full automation was not possible until the later electronic typewriters when the correction key would backspace, engage the correction ribbon, automatically print the error character again from memory using the correction tape, then return to normal mode. Some electronics had the capability to remove entire words or lines. Kb3pxr (talk) 20:00, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

References

Found a citation in a newspaper about the first inventors of typewriter

The wikipedia entry says "Francesco Rampazetto" invented the scrittura tattile, a machine to impress letters in papers, citation needed. Looking for a citation I found a Francesco involved and a separate Rampazetto involved in the San Francisco Examiner. See: Joedevon (talk) 19:30, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

References

New Content Questions

Hello, I want to add some information to this page regarding the way that typewriters were used in the Soviet union. I recently did a research paper on samizdat and found a lot of useful information. Typewriters were an extremely useful tool in samizdat (self-publishing) and getting around the censorship of illegal literature. I wanted to get your thoughts on whether I should add it to the “Early social effects” or “Typewriters in popular culture” section, or whether it would be a good idea to add this information at all. Kczwa1 (talk) 17:02, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Kczwa1, I do not have an opinion on where to insert this information (which seems interesting), but would like to point out that WP:OR and WP:SELFCITE might be a problem depending on what your "research paper" is. BernardoSulzbach (talk) 18:48, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

One possibility is adding new sourced material to the samizdat article, and summarizing it here. Just plain Bill (talk) 21:56, 6 December 2019 (UTC)