Dirk van Weelden

A few nights ago I visited friends for a dinner party they had thrown to mark the end of summer and the start of a new season of work, school etc. While all the approximately 25 guests were enjoying their meal, sitting at a long table by candle light, the host presented me this blue case. He had found it just that afternoon in the street, on a pile of discarded bookshelves, soaked magazines and a broken alarm clock.

See, typewriters find their way to me all by themselves. This is a Imperial 200n, with the inscription ‘Litton’ and Made in Japan. Must be a seventies, Japanese portable of the originally English Imperial company.

I don’t know how it ended up in a street in Amsterdam, but is has an English keyboard. It doesn’t have a dollar sign. The most peculiar key I found was the one that produces an elevated period. Not as high as a ‘ but not as low as a . Is that a symbol used in algebra or accounting?

Here are a sample of writing and a picture of the machine.