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Don't say I never did you any favors. Here is my Olympia SM 9 typewriter manual (at least, the one that comes with the late 60's models) in all its scanned glory (a little dark-- it was itself not a very high quality scan, and so squint to see the text in the typewriter diagram).
I've found this manual to be, well, a little on the unhelpful side. It's brief. Also, it contains curiously meaningless translated German section titles like "Is all this known already?" and "This, too, is necessary." However, without it, I wouldn't have known that the SM 9 has a margin alignment feature that allows you to cram extra letters into an already typed word. This, too, was not known already.
Danke und gute nacht.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Olympia SM 9 typewriter manual
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6 comments:
"Is all this known already?" How funny! They use the same phrase in the manual for my SM4, so I'm assuming that represents an awful long period of time. Enough time that somebody who speaks English could have suggested a less awkward translation.
Ditto for my SM3 (scanned on the portable typewriters group's files.) Awkward translations are having us today for your pleasure.
It took me a couple of reads through my manual to realize that the magical correction/alignment feature is half-spacing. Only the Germans (my people!) could obfuscate this so well, and make you feel guilty about this at the same time.
Yeah, I was kind of unclear on this correction alignment thing myself. I am still not sure how to do it, based on the abstract, stilted description by Olympia's German translator
It operates like most other half-space mechanisms: hold down the space bar and type a letter, then release the space, then hold it down again and type another letter, and so on.
The space bar takes two actions to advance a full space, the push and the release. You can sneak a letter (or more) in there almost subliminally while holding it down. Not coincidentally, there is a method for typing an exclamation point that goes like this:
hold down shift and space
type 8
type .
release shift and space
It makes a ! half-spaced away from your last letter and doesn't need a backspace in there. I prefer the backspaced ! myself.
(Typewriter geekdom)
Thank you very much for posting.
This is my first typewriter :DDD
thanks for scanning and posting. My problem is the automatic ribbon reeverse. do you have to do somdetinhg "under the "hood (cover) to make this happen?
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