We have guests over for a meal most every week, and every week we’d gather around that table. Sometimes the gatherings are jovial events that stretch long into the night. Sometimes they are somber times shared over quiet dinners. Amid broken glasses, spilled drinks, dirt, and countless food items, that stubborn table has stood strong.
Not to do with pens, pencils, paper, or writing. But, it’s a wonderful appreciation of a thing made by hand. Something we believe in.
Note-taking isn’t a fine art. It doesn’t require years of practice – just the diligence to pay attention to what’s important and write it down. Our notes needn’t be elegant or fit for framing (more on that in a minute) but they ought to be clear and thorough.
Here’s what we can tell you: each “Unexposed” pack features three 5.5-inch x 3.5-inch 48-page memo books in an opaque black sleeve. The interior paper features our “reticle graph,” last seen in the “Night Sky” Edition from Summer 2013.
Beautiful, mysterious, and fun. What’s not to like here?
With the centennial of World War I comes many commemorations, and some interesting material surfaces to paint a background picture of the period. I have taken a keen interest in newspapers and the famous “100 years ago” articles that have been republished for the past six months: my great grandfather fought two wars and, having come back unharmed from both while being on the front, enforced a strong policy in the family to celebrate both armistices. Like many french families, we never talked too much about the wars at home, though. Yet I remember vividly going through a “treasure trove” at my grandparents’ that contained hundreds of postcards, and be told that those were my great grandfather correspondence from WWI. They were very peculiar. Some only had one word written — “well”. When questioning my grandmother she explained to me that her father would post one card everyday to simply signal his wife he was alive. Sometimes he had time to write more, sometimes exhaustion and war just took the best of him and he simply sent a card so that the chain remained unbroken. Now, like most people from that time, he had a perfect calligraphy, but I have seen other such cards later, found in street fairs, that were typeset. I must confess I never gave much thought about it and assumed those were from office workers. Turns out I was probably wrong: a portable typewriter was sold at that time.
The ad pictured above is for the “Virotyp”, the portable typewriter that you can use on a horse back (as I discovered in a later ad). I find it a fascinating instrument. It could be operated singlehanded and, contrary to earlier models[1] had a mechanism to advance the paper automatically when a letter was entered. Typing a letter was not really practical: you had to select it from a rotary dial and press the dial support to punch the letter, while inking was provided by means of a rubber band. The punch was made through a stamp that was carved in brass, like all mechanical typewriters of that time: I am not sure if they industrialized the manufacturing to use a lost wax process or just cut each letter on a one-by-one basis. There was also a mechanism, a miniature lever, to advance to a new line. The first version had a limit in the size of paper it could take, but two subsequent versions — including a tabletop one — removed that limit and allowed for a full A4 sheet to be used. At that time the ad must have changed, though I cannot source it: the original claimed to be “the only typewriter that doesn’t need to be rested against something”. This typewriter proved to be a hit during the war, I am not sure what happened to the product after, or to its creator, Mr Viry. I can’t think of a “user interface” more impractical than a rotary dial for entering text. Can you remember the jokes going around before the iPhone was presented? I do. Some pundits seriously supposed that an Apple phone would be a glorified iPod, with its click wheel, and limited communication capability as a result. Yet, as impractical as it was, the Virotyp fulfilled its goal: to enable its user to write with limited finger motility. Mark that one down as the first handheld communicator? Given the knowledge and production methods of the time, it is a device that makes complete sense, and is functionally complete.
One of the most interesting courses I attended in engineering school was industrial design. Parts of it were cumbersome, we didn’t have CAD software until I was undertaking my PhD, parts of it were truly amazing. In particular, I loved design functional analysis and reverse engineering. We were taught to read a technical drawing and criticize it. The emphasis was always: how does this work? We did dismantle a few pieces, and study a lot of drawings. The course proceeded as a drawing projected on a white board and one would come to analyze it. If you were lucky, you would pick something like a Pascal calculator, if not an automatic gearbox (I picked the latter). We did discuss at length miniaturization in some cases (the calculator was a perfect example of an analog mechanical device), but never came to this example. I wish we did. There are only a few of these Virotyp left, and they go quickly on eBay for an insane price whenever a functioning one comes up[2]. I wish I could get one and reverse engineer it, it is a very clever (and beautiful) device.
For further information, there is a gallery of pictures at the Typewriter Museum, and because the internet is great, you can also see one in action, sort of, on YouTube.
One last remark: it is amazing to see that this ad appeared during the summer 1914, and as all the others I have seen, nothing seemed to indicate that the war was coming. It was just the right device at the right time for the wrong reasons.
David Mendels is a Professor of mobile, micro and nanotechnology at Surya University in Jakarta (Indonesia). He developed the DashPlus app (based on Patrick Rhone’s paper-based system), and recently co-founded IanXen. The goal is to eradicate malaria with the help of a novel, automated, diagnostic on iPhone. He usually blogs on Attila’s Den.
The earliest pocket typewriter I know off was British, and dates from 1887. While it is admittedly cute it was nothing like the Virotyp, as the paper had to be moved manually between punching consecutive letters, see the gallery here ?
I came close to getting a Remington 7 a few years ago, to be outbid at the last minute. Enraging. I have never been able to bid on a Virotyp though. ?
The most forgiving writing implement happens to be one of the oldest: a fountain pen, which provides a "fractional amount of feedback," explained Mr. Craver. "It makes you slow down just a little and makes your writing more legible."
The Future Library project, conceived by the award-winning young Scottish artist Katie Paterson, began, quietly, this summer, with the planting of a forest of 1,000 trees in Nordmarka, just outside Oslo. It will slowly unfold over the next century. Every year until 2114, one writer will be invited to contribute a new text to the collection, and in 2114, the trees will be cut down to provide the paper for the texts to be printed – and, finally, read.
What an unbelievably cool project. As a writer, it would be my dream to be a part of such a thing.
Physical work remains. Physical stuff has edges, can be “completed,” becomes vessels of wood or pulp or iron into which ideas are made immutable. It’s easy to forget this solidity as we live and make things online. Online has no boundaries and online can be fiddled with indefinitely. We trade solidity for instantaneous and boundless distribution.
There is so much “yes” in this piece. So… much… YES!
Sir John said that he keeps a special coloured pen in his desk for official correspondence and to inspire junior agents with the history of the service.
MI6 bosses have been known colloquially as the "green ink brigade" since the days of Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the former Royal Navy officer who established the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, to gather intelligence on the Germans before the First World War.
Had never heard of this before. Interesting piece of history.
The Taschenbegleiter (“pocket companion,” Google Translate tells me, but I’ve been amusing myself thinking up alternate translations, such as “satchel chum,” “bag buddy,” and “enclosure associate”) is a German-made personal organizer that comes in three sizes A4, A5, and A6. Each Taschenbegleiter is custom-assembled by Roterfaden and shipped worldwide; lead time seems to be a few weeks. The basic product is a portfolio composed of a leather or leather-like “originally designed for ballet dance floors” exterior material sewn to a thick felt inner lining. You can choose among many different colors. I went with orange and black, which, because they are the colors of the standard Rhodia notebooks, are synonymous in my mind with getting one’s shit together (immerscheißezusammen).
Looks like an interesting, if expensive, product I was not otherwise familiar with.
I’ll be the first to admit how digitally entrenched I am. I buy the latest gadgets, use the most current apps, and am thankful that this online world of ours has helped me start and grow a business. Without these digital tools my day to day life would be more difficult. Without my analog tools paired with the digital tools at my fingertips? My life would be unfulfilled.
A lovely ode to the analog in the age of the digital.
