Wheelwriter Wheels

Looking back at the archive for this blog, I don't think this typewriter ever made its way into a post. That's odd because I've had it for a long time and it does get used on occasion. I did post about a typewriter that used the same mechanism, but I was apathetic about it. That Wheelwriter had a host of bells and whistles that made it fun to use. I liked the memory function where you could store several pages of text and have it spit them out on demand. 

This typewriter, however, is much more modest. The Personal Wheelwriter 2 has many of the features of the other Wheelwriters including bulking spring keys, auto centering text, spell check, and interchangeable type wheels. Those typewheels/daisywheels are the subject of this post.

I keep my wheels in a metal drawer on the cart that holds the Wheelwriter.

There's some other stuff in there too.

Each wheel has the typeface printed on it along with pitch information. PS wheels are for proportionally spaced Wheelwriters which this one is no. Being made of plastic I don't know how rugged the wheels are, but golf balls for the Selectric are also made of plastic and those last a long time.

A cursory look at printwheels on a major online auction site shows many wheels available, but the prices are not what I would be willing to pay. 

This is my current wheel list with sample type in Rev. Munk format (sans sentence):

That Courier 15 is tiny!

If you open the hood you see that these typewriters were manufactured by Lexmark for IBM. This is also true for Model M keyboards of the same vintage. The dark history of what happened in Lexington is best saved for another post. 

This typewriter was a donation from a secretary (now retired) at Alhambra. Janet was her name and this was her departed mother's typewriter. She was, from what I remember, an active participant in her church and a regular contributor to the Sunday bulletin. Not pictured is a paper support arm that slid into the vented slots in the back. The one that I have is broken and just falls out. It's of limited use anyway.

I dust this typewriter off for form-filling. It does the work admirably. I love how you set the margins; just a button press.

A great typewriter if you have a stash of ribbons (I am down to my last two).