Lucasdul2

HELL YES. Your father knew how to WRITE. The Executives were amazing amazing amazing amazing amazing typewriters because they supported PORPORTIONAL LETTER SPACING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I get shivers just thinking about that. Their only drawback was the inability to swap typefaces, but other then that, the print and text is BEAUTIFUL. Especially some of the lesser available typefaces (the names of which currently elude me). Amazing, and considerably reliable. Also easier to service, as they were more traditional typewriters with typebars and not the Selectric Golf Ball Element.

Hahahahaha yes, I am a nerd. Most typewriters are monospaced, meaning each character occupies the same amount of space. A period and the M would both be spaced the same. Proportional spacing is what you're reading right now. The period takes up much less space than the M. The Executive is one of only three (i believe) proportional typewriters. It had six escapement, with the smallest character occupying two units, and the largest occupying around 5. Made for some lovely typography.

The lego typewriter, boy. I blogged about that one in length, but in short I was very impressed. There were a few areas where I thought the design could have been better, but the overall mechanics (being lego) impressed me. Especially the escapement. A brilliant blend of technics and system that emulated some of the real life mechanical components of the typewriter! Overall aesthetics were cool too, reminded me a lot of some Depression era machines like the Royal Signet.

Yes.

I have only seen one DVORAK typewriter, it was a custom mod by a talented IBM selectric tech. Otherwise, they are very rare. I have heard rumors of two manuals out in the wild, but QWERTY was the layout that took the Americas by storm. Keyboard layouts change by languages, and DVORAK was designed to work well with English as it's based on key frequency percentages. It is a tricky modification to do, but not impossible!!

I do indeed! I am currently backlogged about six or seven machines. Just had a lady drop off two machines for repair this morning. A lot of writers, enthusiasts, etc use them. Not just collectors!! They're still in professional use.