Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: sinkspur

Not exactly.

Later models of Selectrics replaced inked fabric ribbons with "carbon film" ribbons that had a dry black or colored powder on a "once-thru" clear plastic tape. These could be used only once but they were in a cartridge that was simple to replace. They also introduced auto-correction, where a sticky tape in front of the print ribbon could remove the black-powdered image of a typed character, and introduced selectable "pitch" so that the typewriter could be switched among pica ("10 pitch"), elite ("12 pitch"), and sometimes agate ("15 pitch"), even in one document. Even so, all Selectrics were monospaced -- each and every character was the same width. Although IBM had produced a successful typebar-based machine, the IBM Executive, with proportional spacing, no proportionally-spaced Selectric office typewriter was ever introduced. There was, however, a much more expensive proportionally-spaced machine called the Selectric Composer which was considered a typesetting machine rather than a typewriter.


817 posted on 09/09/2004 5:15:47 PM PDT by calenel (The Democratic Party is the Socialist Mafia. It is a Criminal Enterprise.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies ]


To: calenel; sinkspur
HA HA!

Sink -- prove it or lose it. cal's factoid matches what I remember of the selectrics. They had quickly replacable type balls -- a lovely feature in those days -- but no proportional fonts!

825 posted on 09/09/2004 5:28:33 PM PDT by bvw
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 817 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson