Not my type!

October 27, 2008 1:07 AM

I'm trying to find a manual typewriter with a cursive font

I'm looking for a working manual typewriter with a cursive printwheel/ball, etc.
I'm looking to keep this purchase under $60 or so (including shipping), which means that I've had little luck on ebay (currently, there is only one and it's above $350). The font I'm specifically looking for is Olympia Typestyle 69 (or similar style), but I can't find a printwheel anywhere, even to replace a normal font in a used typewriter. I've been looking for a printwheel here, but without much luck. Can anyone recommend a trusty website? If there are recommend specific places to look IRL, I live in upstate NY but would be willing to travel to NYC and I'll be in DC for the holidays.

posted by alcopop to Shopping (2 answers total)

This is almost definitely going to be useless to you, but I'll just throw it out there anyway because it's such a neat piece of info:

The famous IBM Selectric does not, strictly speaking, need to be powered by electricity. All it needs is something to spin the shaft that its motor normally spins - everything from there on is 100% mechanical. So you could actually run a Selectric from suitably-geared pedals or even a hand crank, and it'd work (and you wouldn't have to pedal when you weren't actually typing, either; the motor normally runs all the time, but it doesn't have to).

And you can, of course, get all sorts of type-ball fonts for a Selectric, definitely including cursive.

Selectrics in good condition cost rather more than your budget, but one with a blown motor could easily cost $50 or less. It's hardly a practical proposition, but I for one just want to see someone using a pedal-powered Selectric. Perhaps someone who reads this page will be that someone :-).
posted by dansdata at 4:44 AM on October 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

I searched for olympia typewriter and found Heaster Lawson Business Supplies page of Olympia printwheels. They appear to have a printwheel for typewriters in the 100 series that has a face known as "GreatScript12".

A further search for olympia printwheels script turned up a multitude of sites, of varying degrees of unease-of-use, which on cursory inspection contain script typeface printwheels for Olympia typewriters.

A search specifically for "Olympia Typestyle 69" only turns up the post you link to, this AskMeFi post, and a LJ post from an apparently different person who desires the same typeface.

If it doesn't have to be for a typewriter, you can pick up a reasonable analogue of the typewriter script typeface in Monoline Script Std. Regular from Adobe or Script 12 Pitch from myfonts.com for around thirty bucks. In my opinion the latter is closer to the version you desire.

If it doesn't have to be an Olympia or a wheel for an Olympia, I found this Sears model that claims to be in Elite Script that's a little more than you want to spend but still under a hundred bucks buy-it-now.

Anyway, that's the best I could come up with. I miss the old typewriter script face myself, now that you mention it.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:51 AM on October 27, 2008