Rare Italic Font Vintage Olivetti Lettera 32 Portable Typewriter Carrying Case

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This Olivetti Lettera 32 machine is a great typewriter, it is fitted with a new red/black ribbon and has been cleaned. The machine is in working order and excellent condition. Italic Font It was understood that this was used by a member of the British Armed Forces who was certainly based out of Gibralter and who original bought the machine in the Yeman! Considering the distance the typewriter has travellled it is in excellent condition. Although not a trained typewriter repairer I have cleaned and checked a number of machines and can confrim that this is in excellent condition - shame to sell it especially with some history behind it. The machine benefits from a cast aluminium casing, Full Tabulation, Touch Control and a Paper Support Lever. The casing is in excellent condition, there are a couple of very minor marks hardly noticeable, has some previous use as you would expect with age - but a very good example The carrying case has the some very minor scuffs and marks which come with age, but again in excellent condition. Comes complete with guarentee [no longer valid, but you will not be disappointed], brushes in case and internal cover. Great typewriter for use,prop or furnishing. Generally The Olivetti Lettera 32 is a portable mechanical typewriter designed by Marcello Nizzoli for Olivetti in 1963 as the successor of the popular Olivetti Lettera 22 . This typewriter was popular amongst journalists and students. The typewriter is sized about 34x35x10 cm (with the carriage return lever adding about 1-2 more centimeters in height), making it portable at least for the time's standards. The Lettera 32 is a downstrike typebars typewriter. The typebars strike a red/black inked ribbon, which is positioned between the typebar and the paper by a lever whenever a key is pressed; a small switch located near the upper right side of the keyboard can be used to control the strike position of the ribbon, in order to print with black, red, or no ink (for mimeograph stencils). Ribbon movement, which also occurs at every keypress, automatically reverses direction when there is no ribbon left on the feed reel; two mechanical sensors, situated next to each wheel, move when the ribbon is put under tension (indicating ribbon end), attaching the appropriate wheel to the ribbon transport mechanism and detaching the other. The keyboard uses QWERTY . Apart from the typing keys, the keyboard includes a Space bar , two Shift keys , a caps lock , a backspace key, margin release key, paragraph indentation key and a tab-stop set/unset key. The character set conspicuously lacks the number 1 , which is supposed to be substituted by the lowercase l . Although this may seem like a strange absence today, this was common on older typewriters. There is also no exclamation mark character on the keyboard; instead this is typed by a period, then a backspace, and then an apostrophe. This type of typewriter has been used by many famous people including Cormac McCarthy used an Olivetti Lettera 32 to write nearly all of his fiction, screenplays, and correspondence over a fifty year period from 1960 to 2009. In 2009 the typewriter was auctioned by Christies to benefit the Santa Fe Institute . On 12/4/09, McCarthy's typewriter sold at Christie’s to an unidentified American collector for $254,500, more than 10 times its high estimate of $20,000. [1 ] McCarthy paid $20 for a replacement typewriter of the same model, but in newer condition. read more

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