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Why Is Heinlein's Typewriter So Odd-Looking? 
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Post Why Is Heinlein's Typewriter So Odd-Looking?
In 2007 a photographer known to Flickr as "Still Crazy" visited the Heinlein centennial exhibit at the Butler Public Library in Missouri. (I think I know the identity of "Still Crazy," but I'm not entirely sure.)

S.C. snapped a picture of Heinlein's Underwood electric typewriter:


Why is it so strange-looking? It has an enormous hinged hood that makes it look a bit like a steam-press in a laundry. And the bulbous hood makes it much wider than an ordinary typewriter.

Its roller doesn't seem to accommodate paper wider than normal.

I speculate that the hood could be a muffler, for quieter operation. The extra width might make sense to allow the carriage to travel, to the extremes of its motion, within the hood. But I don't really know, and googling for "Underwood models," "quiet typewriter," etc. has not enlightened me.

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Mon Oct 22, 2012 3:43 pm
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I saw it at the Santa Cruz archives. It is a muffler, and I believe he had it custom built (or maybe the one for his computer printer was custom built).


Mon Oct 22, 2012 6:55 pm
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Tue Oct 23, 2012 5:09 am
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I wonder if that table and chair were surplus items he picked up in Philadelphia as the war wound down?

When I started working for the Army in the early 1980s there was still a bunch of WWII era furniture in use, and it looked like those items.


Tue Oct 23, 2012 6:07 am
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Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:04 am
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Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:14 am
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Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:35 pm
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Thanks everyone, this is all new to me and very interesting. I sometimes have to layover in Seattle for many hours, or even overnight, so I'll give the museum a whirl.

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Wed Oct 24, 2012 4:20 pm
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Is it known as the "Little Wing?" ;)

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Wed Oct 24, 2012 4:47 pm
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Wed Oct 24, 2012 7:08 pm
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No, I'm serious, but the Tacoma museum doesn't appear to the one. Might be the Corning Museum of Glass in NY. The exterior is a continuous band of swoopy curved glass panes... that had to be made overseas. For a building that celebrates the history of American glassmaking. Talk about fragile irony.


Thu Oct 25, 2012 4:16 am
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I love Chihuly's stuff, most of all his Seaforms, which he doesn't seem to do much of anymore. The lobbies of the building where I work in San Jose and the professional complex where I see most of my doctors in Mountain View both have massive Chihuly chandeliers hanging.

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