On Sun, 12 Apr 2009, Rhialto wrote:

> On Sat 11 Apr 2009 at 06:04:30 +0000, William Levak wrote:
>> It has two features the I have not seen on any other typewriter:  1) The
>> platen lifts out and the paper rollers underneath it also lift out along
>> with the metal paper guide under the platen.
>
> I'm not perfectly up to date on typewriter jargon (english *or* dutch)
> but that sounds like the mechanism that you roll the paper through and
> that moves right to left with it. I have a big typewriter at my parents'
> place where you can also remove that thing. It is very wide, you can fit
> an A3 paper in (A4 on its side) and possibly even a typing stencil on
> its side (which is even wider). My theory was always that it was an
> extra wide model and therefore optional, hence the removability. It also
> has some 6 tabulator keys (maybe even more? I'm not sure), for lining up
> numbers 1, 10, 100, 1.000, 10.000, 100.000 and 1.000.000 and they do
> take the 1000s separator space into account.

The platen (also spelled platten) is the cylinder that the type 
hits when you press a key. The mechanism that holds the cylinder and that 
moves back and forth, is the carriage.

Many top line desk (non-portable) models of typewriters have removable 
platens, but it is unusual for a portable.  Also, I have never seen another 
typewriter where the rollers under the platen are removable.

Wide carriages were an optional extra on better typewriters.  Since the 
carriage is a separate part, it is easy to replace it with a wider one.  I 
have seen carriages as wide as 21 inches (51 cm.).  These were not even 
considered a different model.

There were some typewriters that had different tab keys for different tab 
positions.  This is a very rare feature.  The combination of these two 
features means this was probably an accountants typewriter.  The carriage 
is wide enough for the large ledger sheets, and the tabs would be set for 
the different columns in the ledger.  This is how ledgers were typed 
before computers.


wlevak@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

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