That's the exact question we asked the seller at one of France's largest annual outdoor flea market located near Marsac, north of our city. He was a shy fellow who gave the barest of smiles while deciding what answer to give. Meanwhile images of braille, telegraph, card hole punching, and IBM Selectric machines all flashed through our visual memories. This jumbled-up melange was halted when he said, it's a typewriter, one without a keyboard, dating from around the start of the previous century.
Such typewriters are referred to as type sleeve or index. Using an image search, we found a German brand, an AEG Mignon, that resembled our fabulous find. At first we were unable to be sure ours was the same model since there were no easily discernible manufacturer's name. Then when The Calm One was sitting nearby it, the light fell just right on the paper holder, like invisible ink suddenly appearing, and we were able to see an embossed, faded, diamond-shaped logo containing the word Heady.
If you want to know about Heady, then you need to know about YuEss. After Germany was vanquished in the First World War, their patents were rendered null and void. In New York City, two Jewish immigrants copied the Mignon, decorated the paper holder with the Star of David, and called their company YuEss (phonetic spelling for U.S.). The machines sold poorly—after all NYC was the powerful domain of Royal Typewriter Company and their splendid keyboard models—and they moved to France and rebranded their machine Heady. And there, it did reasonably well.
Different typefaces were available via a type sleeve. Though a pointer was needed to be placed on the index card, users matched the speed of keyboard typewriter operators.
I suspect the plastic covering the letters is celluloid. The index card of course needed to be compatible with the particular type sleeve.
Getting it to work is not a total impossibility. The Calm One is hunting high and low for a compatible ribbon which needs to go on the spool in the lower left in the below photo. What would be its first typed word? Typewriter.
A heap of levers cluster to the right of the carriage including a paper bail. I suspect some were used for carrier return spacing.
Though this lever looks like a carriage return lever, it doesn't seem to effect that action.
The left key makes a space (it also allows moving to the left the carriage roller knob to make a carriage return), the middle one strikes the chosen letter, and the right one backspaces.
In a place of honour because so many women were able to improve their lives through typewriting skills, Ms Heady with her pointer positioned smack right on the letter T sits near by my hands rapidly moving over a Macbook Air keyboard and under the watchful eye of the universe in a glass more than eighty years after her manufacture.
À la prochaine!
Such typewriters are referred to as type sleeve or index. Using an image search, we found a German brand, an AEG Mignon, that resembled our fabulous find. At first we were unable to be sure ours was the same model since there were no easily discernible manufacturer's name. Then when The Calm One was sitting nearby it, the light fell just right on the paper holder, like invisible ink suddenly appearing, and we were able to see an embossed, faded, diamond-shaped logo containing the word Heady.
If you want to know about Heady, then you need to know about YuEss. After Germany was vanquished in the First World War, their patents were rendered null and void. In New York City, two Jewish immigrants copied the Mignon, decorated the paper holder with the Star of David, and called their company YuEss (phonetic spelling for U.S.). The machines sold poorly—after all NYC was the powerful domain of Royal Typewriter Company and their splendid keyboard models—and they moved to France and rebranded their machine Heady. And there, it did reasonably well.
Different typefaces were available via a type sleeve. Though a pointer was needed to be placed on the index card, users matched the speed of keyboard typewriter operators.
I suspect the plastic covering the letters is celluloid. The index card of course needed to be compatible with the particular type sleeve.
Getting it to work is not a total impossibility. The Calm One is hunting high and low for a compatible ribbon which needs to go on the spool in the lower left in the below photo. What would be its first typed word? Typewriter.
A heap of levers cluster to the right of the carriage including a paper bail. I suspect some were used for carrier return spacing.
Though this lever looks like a carriage return lever, it doesn't seem to effect that action.
The left key makes a space (it also allows moving to the left the carriage roller knob to make a carriage return), the middle one strikes the chosen letter, and the right one backspaces.
In a place of honour because so many women were able to improve their lives through typewriting skills, Ms Heady with her pointer positioned smack right on the letter T sits near by my hands rapidly moving over a Macbook Air keyboard and under the watchful eye of the universe in a glass more than eighty years after her manufacture.
À la prochaine!