‘Charles Spiro: Reaching Back in Time’ – An illustrated article
The exquisite Columbia 2 typewriter shows several primary changes from the Columbia 1. Most notably, the type wheel now prints directly onto the top of the platen, with the anvil and leather cushion strip, present on the model 1, no longer used. Upper and lowercase characters now appear on a single, larger type wheel, and the index pointer has two ends, one for selecting lowercase characters and the other, marked with a “C,” for uppercase characters.
As shown in the illustration below, the black handle is rotated by hand to turn the pointer and select characters. The handle is then depressed to bring the type wheel down into contact with the paper.
The type wheel could be changed to produce different fonts by unscrewing the black handle and switching the wheels. One of these type wheels can be seen in the photo below, which shows the Columbia with its case. What appears to be an oiling can in the same photo is actually used to apply ink to the felt ink pad.
The transition from model 1 to model 2 is quite remarkable and clearly shows that a brilliant inventor was at work.
“Its work is the full equal of book-print, whether done by an expert or a novice; whether written on a table or in a train at full speed.”
“The only writing machine that attains an Invariable Alignment, and a variable spacing to accommodate wide and narrow letters …”
