Catherine Hennessey’s Typewriter is Back

My friend (and prototypical blogger) Catherine gave me her Olympia Monica electric typewriter many years ago. After a flurry of typing initially, it sat fallow for a time. When I returned to use it a few years ago, it suddenly stopped working, due, I found later, a slipped drive belt.

When I finally got around to fixing the drive belt last month, I was disheartened to find that the typewritter ribbons I’d been carefully saving had gone missing in one of our print shop cleanups. I was ribbonless.

Fortunately, Toronto Typewriters is still in business, and a few days ago my shipment of a Black Dog Universal Typewriter Ribbon arrived. 

It’s not cheap, the ribbon is made in the USA, but at least it’s “lovingly spooled in-house” in Toronto.

A typewriter ribbon on two interlocking spools. The spools are red on top, black on the botton, as is the ribbon itself.

It took me awhile to remember how to properly wind the ribbon through the typewriter, but I figured out out.

An indec card in a typewriter, with the typed text "Catherine Hennessey's typerwriter is back in action. And it even types in red." The words "types in red" are in red, everything else in black.A white-coloured typewriter, labelled Olympia Monica electric, with the additional label "Sold and Services by E. T. Wilson Office Equipment Lud, Ottawa, Ontario,"

Stay tuned, correspondents, for typewritten missives.

Peter Rukavina
Catherine Hennessey
Olympia
Typewriter
Toronto Typewriters

Comments

Congratulations on getting this back to life. I'm a big fan of typing on index cards myself.

If you need inexpensive, US-made typewriter ribbon, try Baco Ribbon or Fine Line which can be had for pennies on the dollar (and it's usually where most shops or re-sellers of ribbon are sourcing theirs). https://boffosocko.com/research/typewriter-collection/#Typewriter%20Ribbon

Most know about the blogosphere, but did you know there is also a small, but growing, typosphere?!?

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About This Blog

Photo of Peter RukavinaI am . I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.

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