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.
As a young man I had a temp job delivering these monsters - boy they were HEAVY! I would pick up the broken ones, take them to the repair shop, and return them to the customers (fixed). Good times!
In 1982, as a young middle schooler, I took an elective class called "Typing." Ms. Barker taught us how to type on the IBM Selectric I. They were heavy, durable and fast. The humming of approximately 25 Selectric motors running simultaneously was an intoxicating sound.
What a nice memory. 1 year before I was born! My middle school typing class used the Power Macintosh 5400. I still remember the Troy Aikman poster hanging on the wall with the quote “typing is the most important skill I learned”. 😂
Trained on Selectric in 1972, I worked 37 years for IBM as a tech, they were definitely a great machine. It looks like you have an escapement problem, it could also be a problem with the correcting mechanism as it inhibited forward motion of the carrier during a correcting operation, bottom line it's fixable if you can find a place with the expertise and access to parts. Good luck.
Appreciate the comment. And expert diagnostic skills. I briefly looked to see if there was a nearby place that might be able to fix it and didn’t find any. Might be something to revisit in the future. And perhaps make a video about it!
Dude! In 1961 my sister was working as a secretary and got the first Selectric in Town and was the envy of the other staff. It was as sophisticated as our going to the moon! Thanks for sharing and the best of luck!
Took a typing class in high school many years ago, where we started on a manual typewriter. After we mastered the basics of the keyboard, we were then switched to the electric typewriter---an IBM Selectric. It was like graduating from a worn-out Ford Pinto to a smooth-running Porsche 911. All us kids in the class were laughing as we marveled at the speed of those Selectrics the first time we got to play with them!
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.
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 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!
Good Video ! I was trained on these in 1979, took years to master the Selectric Flash forward 42 years - - - - - > right now I am overwhelmed with work repairing and restoring Selectrics
I just watched your video on how to replace the correcting spring. While changing the ribbon on a Selectric I bought last week it had fallen off. I began writing on a Selectric at the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism at Indiana University in the early 80s. I then worked as an investigative and political reporter before founding a publishing company in 1986. I went to Apple computers and use them to this day. To transition from typewriter and lead type, to Apple and pasted layouts, to totally digital was interesting thing to witness - the democratization of publishing. That said, I've always preferred a typewriter for long form non-fiction. I can think more clearly, without distraction, and I enjoy having a hard copy to mark up and a finished product on my desk. I'm completing my first book on this new machine., and the first work day produced an astoudning 3000 words - triple my normal output - on the same model machine used 40 years ago. Thank you both for these informative and helpful videos.
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.
Dude nice find!!!!!! You're showing up in recommended. Prepare for an onslaught of subs. Great work man and again what a kind gift from the previous home owner
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.
brings back memories from high school. used one all 4 years back in the 80's, actually preferred it over the IBM PC 2 we used in my data processing/accounting classes.
How on earth is this Channel not viral? This feels like some famous RU-vid pulling an “undercover millionaire” to see if he can become successful again either just his skills.
I’m a writer and I really would love to have one of these. Saw a “distraction free” digital writing tool selling for $$$ and I thought “for all that why don’t I just get an electric typewriter?”
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.
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 had wanted one of the Selectric IIs for years. Was finally able to afford one after I graduated from college. Your Selectric should also have a half space ratchet do you can slide letters (like the A and e in Aesop) or squeeze in one more character without having to retype the whole line. The Selectric II is probably the best modern typewriter IBM ever made. The III wasn't better than the II.
Something interesting, because of the DAC converter, the Selectric typewriter was attached to IBM mainframe computers as printers. I used a programming language in the early years called APL which had many characters specific to the language and IBM even produced a typing ball (we called them gold balls) with these characters so that program listings could be printed.
Subbing just because of the effort man, I randomly just came across this after being recommended a video about large tab buttons. It featured a few type writers. Impressed by the quality and format. Keep up the hard work and effort you put into your videos and you will surely succeed. :)
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 learned on one of these in my high school typing class around 1980. Looking back, this was probably one of the most important skills I developed. Being able to type quickly made using a computer possible. (Apple personal computers were set up in my Nebraska high school in my junior year.) My college courses all required being able to crank out papers at an unrelenting pace. My career, which went digital just as I was getting into it, was totally based on being able to use a computer -- which resulted in the many of the previous generation retiring rather than face having to use a QWERTY keyboard.
People forget what a powerhouse IBM was back in the day . We purchased a Selectric II in the late 1970s for our small office, as these typewriters had a rep for being true workhorses. We were on an annual maintenance contract which I believe was pretty standard for IBM. One day I was standing next to our typist's desk when for no good reason a small flame shot out the back of the typewriter, accompanied by a "snap" sound and a shriek from our typist! And our Selectric was dead. Of course we promptly called service and I was more than surprised when, the next day, not only a technician showed up, but two suits from corporate! Apparently this was a really big deal- this sort of thing just didn't happen in the world of IBM.
Yeah IBM was no joke in the seventies and eighties. My dad worked for them and people seriously thought they were the corporation that would rule computers for the rest of time. Then came Microsoft and whoops!
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...
Totally agree that these typewriters are a mechanical masterpiece. We still use them here in our accounting office and if maintained, they can have amazing productive lives. Glad someone else appreciates these as much as I do. I still have my Selectric III and use it for a variety of tasks. We still have someone nearby who can repair and bestow some TLC when needed, but he's getting up there and I've tried to glean as much knowledge as I can from him in the meantime.
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!!!!
I'm a guy who first started using these machines in the early 70's, as I put myself through a decade of college professionally typing. I've worked on many, many Selectric-based word processors and I still own the IBM Personal Selectric (the rare short carriage Selectric II Correcting) and a few 'golf ball' elements. You're a young guy and it's hard to describe the impression that the Selectric made on the office world in the sixties when I was growing up. Sadly, the original Noyes-designated space-age look wasn't continued past the early seventies.
I started my career at IBM in the mid-70's as a "Customer Engineer", repairing Selectric typewriters along with a plethora of other IBM Office Product equipment. They were and still are marvels of mechanical design and function. I still have a parts and repair manual, and would bet good money that I could still fix most problems assuming that no parts were broken. There is an entire mechanism on the right side of the machine which controls the motion of the carrier (the unit the ball or element sits on.) The most likely issue with this machine is old oil and grease deposits, and could be easily repaired with a good cleaning and proper lubrication, along with some probable specific adjustments. (I actually still have a soft copy of the adjustment and parts manual for the Selectric). One last point: When you remove the element, hold the body of the ball with one hand and lift the lever with the other. When you fail to do this, there is a great amount of torque placed on the base of the lever which can cause it to break. This is especially true given the probable age of the elements, as the plastic they are made from tend to grow brittle with age.
Stargazzer811 - believe it or not, but you can actually hook an IBM Selectric typewriter up to your PC and use it as a printer. It has full Digital To Analogue (DAC) facility. In fact, these were linked to IBM mainframe computers in the 1960s as printers. I know, because I used them.
I learned how to type in classroom full of Selectric ii's in 7th grade, in the early 90s, and I just learned that was a full 5-6 years after they were discontinued! Of course, the other half of my class learned to type in a computer lab on Apple iie's. I was jealous then, but kind of glad now I got the experience.
2:00 This wasn’t actually the first time that a typewriter had a single type element with all of the characters, Blickensderfer made a manual version of this typewriter, and they made an electric version all 60-70 years before the IBM Selectric I debuted
Doubt you can find one, though, the electric ones were a flop, and the manual typewriters weren’t exactly successful either, so coming across any Blickensderfer is hard.
Actually, my original statement was incorrect. Although yes, Blickensderfer made single-head typewriters, they were the first ones with the “golf ball” design. Technically, a portable typewriter where you turned a disk to type was the first single-headed typewriter. As for actual typewriters, however, the Hammond 1 was the first ever. There could have been earlier ones, but these were the earliest ones that were on record.
@@adamzahr I own an Adler Special and an Olivetti Lettera 32. it would be nice to know more about them. Unfortunatly I don't know any special stories: it's quite hard to find fun stuff about typewriters. Even technical documentation can be quite hard to find. Maybe you should ask Tom Hanks, he's quite the typewriter collector!
This was very much the iPhone of typewriters.And how could you have overlooked the amazing, revolutionary correcting feature - which introduced the, today underappreciated, concept of "undo" to the human race?
You’re absolutely right. I sort of left that piece out in the interest of keeping the video more concise. As I recall it was not on the original Selectric but introduced in later models.
proud owner of one here... maybe gonna buy another for parts soon. Not he programming version though. If II is a Porche the interfacemachine is more like Cessna...
i got a Selectric III from my grandpa in PERFECT condition fully functional with setup date (1985) and no scratchs and foam is slighty damages but fully intact how much is it worth?
I'm not sure if you have tried this. Lift the cover as if you were going to change the type face. Take out the ribbon and the correcting tape. Inside the cover on each side you will find a lever and if you flip both of them you will be able to remove the upper cover. This will expose the internal workings of the machine. Now remove the platinum and all the rubber rollers. Remove the screws which hold the bottom on but DO NOT LIFT THE TYPEWRITER OFF THE BOTTOM PIECE. With the bottom loose, tilt the guts back and place a number of layers of paper towels and set the guts of the typewriter back on the bottom plate. With a can of WD40 with a spray tube start at the top and spray anything which might move. CAUTION: TAKE CARE NOT TO SPRAY WD40 IN THE MOTOR OR ON THE DRIVE BELT (thus the use of the spray tube). Plug the machine in and make sure to lift the guts so that your paper towels do not get caught in the moving parts and start striking every key at least 5 or more times. Change your paper towels and allow it to sit for at least 24 hours or more. FIND SOME SEWING MACHINE OIL. PLEASE WHAT EVER YOU DO - DO NOT USE 3 IN 1 OIL. YOU WANT A LIGHT WEIGHT OIL THAT HAS NO PARATHION IN IT. A GOOD GRADE OF SEWING MACHINE OIL ESPECIALLY IF IT IS SINGER WILL BE JUST WHAT YOU NEED. Now comes the hard part. Oiling every moving part. I have a bottle of sewing machine oil that has a tube that you are able to bend and reach with - IDEAL FOR THIS JOB. You generally will find these items at any place which sells sewing supplies. Reassemble your typewriter and it should work as good as new. I have an old Selectric 1 made in 1963 and it works as good now as it did the day it was made. Yes, I still am well able to keyboard 60 to 70 wpm. Selectric's were know for throwing a hyphen if you were typing at just the right speed. I was so thankful when the IBM Mag Card and IBM Memory machines hit the market. That put to an end to the problem. In the day I could keyboard over 90 wpm and I would end up with a page filled with dashes. I served for a number of years in Southeast Asia and typewriter repair guys were few and far between. Since I had seen the service guys work on the equipment in the states I picked up all the tricks. I averaged at least 2 hours a day working on someones typewriter. Thank God the military had ALL IBM'S. Oh yea, I worked on the carriage models as well.
Wow! Awesome information. Thank you! I’ll see if this might help. Pretty sure I saw some loose cables and things in there so I’m not sure if I’m gonna be able to repair it 😅
@@adamzahr ADAM: First nice to meet you. OK - Generally it is rather easy to see where things go. NOTE: Generally there will be other pieces, cables, or springs of the same nature. See how those are connected. I tend to be mechanically inclined and I would see the IBM service guys work on all this stuff. You may need some really skinny needle nose pliers, at least one wire type hook for hooking a spring back to a lever. In proofing I thought that you really need some picks for the job. I would recommend doing all t his before you soak it down with the WD40. So much is coming back to me. IF A SPRING end broke and left no way to hook it, take the spring and stretch it ever so slightly and make a new hook. Should you live some where they have as we call it "The Nut Shop" they will have all kinds of shit and you may be able to just match most any of the parts such as springs, small bolts, nuts or screws. I know it looks completed but it really isn't. Not sure if you are interested, but take some pics and post them. It might be nice to offer thru your channel some repair tips. My screen is a HD4K 40" TV. So, a good picture in decent resolution would allow me to give you some guidance. Just so you know, I was 25 when that typewriter was made. I go so far back to the IBM mainframes that stood 8' high, some 20 or more feet long with reel to reel tapes for word processing. In fact, I used an IBM Selectric attached to a stand-a-long which made a ticker tape. I actually for many years owned an IBM Memory Typewriter made during the time of the Mag Card equipment. I knew a lady who was writing books and offered me a nice price and so I sold it. Bad mistake on my part. My years in the military have served me well. If you are interested, I am 72 years young. Thanks for at least responding.
If you want to learn more about the engineering about this @Chyrosran22 does deep keyboard reviews (how it works, tech under the hood) one of which is the selectric. That, and he has a majestic beautiful voice. Here is the link to the selectric review: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BJITkKaO0qA.html
Check the ball. If one of the teeth is broken, it will pop up like this and not write, so it could be the ball, not the typewriter, that is causing this 😎
Adam , the single element print system was in stages of development long before IBM came on the scene, if my memory serves me well there single element machines were in some form in the late 1800, cylinders, spinning wheels, many variations. You inferred all type bar typewriters suffered from constant type bar pile up at entry point to the guide, NOT SO, only machines that had incorrect escapement block set up and badly timed ribbon lift. You also mentioned the IBM Selectric was faster the a type bar machine, again not so a correctly set up manual typewriter ie all individual functions fully integrated each other was extremely fast . Your statement as to flexibility is also not quite correct, the Selectric had it's limitations such as print line, many applications required a print line up to a 26" carriage. The noise factor in a Typing Pool was deafening. I would suspect a very large number of IBM machines were sold to other typewriter houses and re badged, .they found their way as computer periferal printers on many mainframes. We used the mechanisms in our accounting machines not withstanding their limitations
