Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
Manual Word Processing [Classic Retro Thing]
By James Grahame
Back in the day, our grandparents had to bang letters onto paper one-by-one. It took ages and was wickedly errer error-prone. These days, young whippersnappers are more likely to text or email. I'd always planned to pick up a manual typewriter so I could write The Great Suburban Novel or whip off the occasional pompous "Letter to the Editor" by candlelight during a power outage. Regrettably, both Olivetti and Olympia discontinued their manual typewriter lines late last year.
All hope is not lost. myTypewriter.com offers a surprisingly broad array of vintage typewriters and ribbons. The one above is a restored 1928 Corona No. 4 portable, also available in maroon, green, red and basic black. It's yours for $395 plus about thirty clams for a spare ribbon. I'd prefer you to keep your hands off the red one, since I've got my eye on it. Don't forget to pick up a dicshunary, since spel-correcsion is also manual.
[originally published in August 2005, but the site is definitely worth revisiting.]
Visit myTypewriter.com to feast your eyes on dozens of stunning vintage manual typewriters.
