I know someone who claims to have met the inventor, here in Boulder, Colorado, where we have a HUGE IBM research plant just out of town. Anyway, I'd like to know just exactly who thought- what if we put all the characters on a ball...
The predecessor to the IBM Selectric II was the IBM Typewriter Wheelwriter III which came out in 1986 and the wheelwriter was a game changer as well. It was awesome. I started with those old school 1940's mechanical typewriters (made your fingers sore as heck as a child) then the Select II and finally the the wheelwriter III. Those 7 years of typing classes really paid off to this day. I see college kids today on a PC keyboards and they are not as proficient, nor fast, nor as accurate typers as we are who got a proper typing skills development. Typing classes went away like cursive writing. It's not taught anymore, but if you have those skills it's a HUGE plus on a resume.
My mother was a secretary in high school (mine in fact) and when I see this typewriter I think of her typing 80 + words per minute . Just the sound of it brings back memories.
My mum had one to do my dad's accounts and her own correspondence - I recall the sound of the keys throughout the 70's and 80's on that thing from the next room and when you started typing it was a trip down memory lane!
My father and the company he and his brother founded, A-1 Professional Business Machines Corporation, serviced these typewriters. He trained young men who worked for him and helped them become great typewriter repairmen. It's interesting that its design was partly influenced by Olivetti typewriters. It was working in Cuba at Olivetti that my father began his journey as a mechanic of these unique machines. I obviously grew surrounded by IBM Selectric typewriters, but A-1 Professional Business Machines Corporation closed a little after the September 11th attacks.
Great video! The Blickensderfer no. 5 and other Blicks have a very similar typing unit. Made in the 1800s. Not interchangeable but very similar in style, although not a ball, more like a skate wheel or a stout cylinder. A very wonderful idea indeed.
I learned on the Selectric in the 70's .... 95 WPM No errors..... I'm begging for someone to build me a mechanical keyboard with the Sound and Heavy Touch!!!!
Absolutely amazing video work! Within The first 10 seconds i already thought damn.. this is some pro level video making! Amazing! And the way you present yourself is also very pleasant to watch! In a world where everything needs to be over the top.
These things are so iconic that they still had one at the huge corporation I worked for in 2005. I learned to type these in the 90s and they were so smooth.
Hunter S. Thompson was a huge fan. He wrote all of his books on one, and had one at his desk in his home in Woody Creek. IIRC he took one along when he was covering stories. It was in his contract that he was provided with one.
Wish I could remember the name of the comedian back in the IBM Selectric days, doing his impression of the machine. He would do a moonwalk sideways to mimic the carriage return, and bob and spin his head to mimic the print ball while moving slowly to the side, with all the right sounds coming from his mouth.
I spent 20 years fixing them, I really respected the engineering. The multiple functions through common parts kept most homegrown mechanics away. From the video I’d guess the rotate tape adjustment needs tweaking
i agree with basically every point however part of the design that the game boy looked "disticntly nintendo" and that since it had NES Controls so it was easy for conversion kind of wasnt exclusive to the game boy The Game gear was unmistakably sega, it looked a lot like a handheld genesis model 2 or Master System 2/3, speaking of the latter: Sega's game gear was a slightly more colorful version of their Master System which was very successful in PAL Regions and made Master System conversions extremely easy for both systems, nearing the end of the master system's life most games were game gear conversions like Sonic Blast. in fact there was an official adapter for the GG to play master system carts. in my opinion thats why it was at least more popular than something like the Lynx, but of course it kept draining batteries and never got a revision when it desperately needed one late in its life and instead was out by the release of nintendo's pokemon.
The transparency mode on the pro 2’s is terrible and unusable. Worked fine on the first gen but the new ones makes it feel like there is a bug in my ear. Crazy.
For now it seems to not work for me either. I thought that i accidentally tapped transparency when it happened, because I could still hear my AC - whivh is definitely white noise that no one wants to hear. Weird.
At first it did work for me I could hear everyone and everything just fine, then out of nowhere there is no difference between noice canceling and transparency
