What do the three (red, black, white) colored switches on manual typewriters mean?
I am shopping online for a manual typewriter. Many models, including surprisingly old ones, will have a switch with a red and black or, at times, red, black, and white options.
However, the ribbon in the machine will be all black, or black and red with no white (though there’s a white color).
Is the white for correction tape? If so, does the lack of correction tape on the ribbon mean someone put a black/red ribbon in it but it could theoretically hold white correction tape too?
I am seeing many older models, as old as the ‘40s, with that white option and I do not know what it means.
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Gosh it’s been so long, but as I remember from my childhood(!) is that on the black setting the black part of the ribbon moved infront of the key and the letter typed black. Same follows for red. When it was on white, no part of the ribbon was struck. Yes, it was so you could use the correction tape without the ribbon being involved.
They are for changing the color of the ribbon, and if the ribbon is all black, you can use each setting to help the ribbon last longer. Ideally, the correct ribbon would have the proper colors on it.
Ooooh. See, I was fiddling with a late-sixties/early-seventies model that had a /ribbon/ of correction tape.
Does this mean that, without that correction-tape-ribbon, you need to put a square of similar material right up to the letter and strike it?
Yeah, they had these little squares of plastic tape with some kind of white backing that then came off in the shape of the letter. Yes this would have been used on models just before they added electricity.
BTW: I’m a sucker for an old IBM Selectman model. It had that rotating ball thingy that typed the letters. And you could pop the ball off and put on other fonts. And it was so loud.
Yeah, those golfball models freak me out. But that makes a lot of sense about the correction tape. Thanks!
That’s what Fluther is for!
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Does that typewriter have a white-out option I am not seeing?
Oh man, I love those IBM typewriters. That’s how I learned to type. SO loud and amazing.
No. That SmithCorona model doesn’t seem to have that feature.
@andrew: Right? Remember how loud a room full of 20 of them could be? And they had some sort of loud “hum” when you turned them on.
The red option was mostly for accounting purposes. Things entered in red were debts – black was for profit. (“In the red” or “in the black”.)
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