IBM Selectric II Typewriter Golf Ball Madness!
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- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
- My 1973 all-mechanical Selectric II "golf ball" typewriter has just been repaired. Let's try my collection of balls! OK, I have quite a few... You'll be surprised by the quality of the result. Oldie but goodie as they say.You can see the inside and short repair video here: • IBM Selectric II typew... , and an explanation of how the amazing mechanism works here: • IBM Selectric Typewrit...
Special thanks to Stan P. for the donation of this machine!
I used to work as a secretary. I was temping only and it was always a good surprise when I found font balls I had never used before. Selectric II was my favorite and I remain a typewriter fan but not a collector. The Orator font, as the name indicates, is for typing speeches that can be read from a standing distance. The manifold (all caps sans serif) is the same font as the one used on telexes (e-mail's ancestor). It's originally for internal use only, for making several carbon copies that will be clear and legible to the last, as for orders listing goods, where several departments need one copy.
This is great information, thanks!
And when it broke, you called the 'angel in a business suit' the IBM Customer Engineer. I worked on these from '68 to~'86, then went on to PCs and mid-range systems. I Retired in '98. Great career but IBM today "ain't your grandfathers IBM" No more 'customer service', just 'profit'.
I worked on the 79 which had a magnetic card or cassette data storage. It was based on the Selectric II with added circuit board to handle the electronic commands. These last machines before IBM stopped making them were too delicate imo, and required frequent tune-ups. I got one for free and the service card inside listed several service visits in one single month for many months.
Now I wish I had one of those IBM angels to fix a Selectric II for me. I loved the first model too, it was much simpler and smaller with a great body. Later model bodies were not so great.
These machines are high-maintenance needing specific lubrication to run well. That's the reason service contracts were popular. When I started in '68 we CEs did five 'inspections' per year for ~$60 for each typewriter. which was pretty cheap for the time.. I did the MT/STs and MC/STs too as well as the Composers. I gave up all my parts when the need went away. I think there's a shop in Phoenix that still handles these repairs. Good luck.
Yeah I know about that shop in Phoenix. Too bad I live in France where the angel in a business suit is even harder to come by.
This video, along with Model M keyboards, has cemented my impression of IBM as purveyors of the greatest typing equipment in human history.
I used to fix these when I worked for IBM in the 70's. Great machines.
Late 80s. A junkyard had about 200 of them trashed. They went to pc and dot matrix printers in a room......
I started my life as daisy wheel typewriter mechanic in 1990 s in India . This video brought my memories back. Thank you.
I love how solid and utilitarian it looks. Purely a function-over-form business machine.
My mom had a Selectric 1 in that exact cappuccino colour in the seventies. I remember playing with it as a child. My parents started a small company and had beautiful stationery printed up, all in the earth tones popular at the time with the letterhead in brown ink, and matching beige envelopes. Their correspondence looked pretty spiffy. I still remember it. I wasn’t allowed to use the fancy paper for playing with but sometimes I would steal a page and matching envelope for an “important” document, from my ten-year-old perspective.
It's an attractive looking typewriter and the fonts are beautiful and very sharp on the page.
When I was in high school, back in the early eighties, we had a class called "Office Machines" where we were learning how to fix different types of office equipment, typewriters, photocopiers and such. One of the most difficult task was to dismantle an IBM Selectric and put it back together without any parts left... lol ! What a crazy undertaking for such young guys. But we worked in teams, if I remember right. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Marc !
Une superbe machine qui regorge d'ingéniosité, et de pièces !
Asked a lot of us didn't they.... I still remember struggling with the mimeograph machines in high school. How far we've come since then.
Uf. Very cool lesson on disassembling this machine. In Indonesia, only a few technicians are directly trained at IBM companies in Indonesia. And I am one of the third generations.
imagine a office full of these clackety-clacking all at once... true madness
Nah....you get used to it. You think this is loud, you should have heard a classroom full of beginner typists on manuals...now THAT'S loud... lol My class circa 1982.
That was the sound of an office. If an office is so silent, then it means that nobody working.
It was beautiful music to our ears in high school in the late '90s as we typed on these! It's like music that spurs you on and keeps you productive!
Matrix printers and loud phones.
The sound of my childhood.
We had one of these in our house in the 80s, my mother could type 120 words/minute and very rarely making a mistake, it was truly amazing to watch. 🇦🇺
I love old typewriters. Really made you feel alive hearing the sounds as you worked. Best machines ever to actually address an envelope too.
Bringing back far too many wonderful memories. My favorite typewriter of all times!!! I would love to have a nice working IBM Selectric II again.
Kelley they sell em on eBay. I saw one on there for $95
We just found one at Goodwill for 20 dollars on a Saturday afternoon. It's possible.
Finding one that works reliably is the problem. Plus, most of the old repair technicians are no longer around.
Awwww, Marc! You are in Fifth-Gear! The little lever next to the type element, the one with the bright RED knob, is the impact adjustment, and No.5 is for many manifold! Carbon Copies! Smacking as hard as it can! For your single page use, flip it down to No.1, rendering a longer life for all the mechanical components. With good ribbons, No.1 is usually enough for a good impression, but you can hoist it up to No.2 if you are after the slightly embossed look.
I have two of these! I tore apart and repaired both, after doing my ASR33. I also found a nice collection of a few dozen type balls in both pitches. Love your videos.
Are the old ones worth much?
These were the backbone of most businesses for a couple of decades. It (or it's big brother) even survived into the early computer age: the IBM 1050 was the console input/printer for the IBM 360 computer, and was just a really beefy bouncing ball typewriter.
My dad used one of those to write his master's thesis when I was a kid. He'd write from 8 PM to mid night approximately and the noise didn't let me sleep until he stopped
My mom used to have one of these, I used to fall asleep listening to her type documents for my dad. I used to type my elementary reports on them in elementary school.... Now I want one of these again. We only had two different fonts.
I typed a few of my sister's university papers for her Plant Science degree on my mom's old Smith-Corona. I would have LOVED this machine instead. They were good workhorse typewriters (and so were we! 😉).
There's an episode of the old "Perry Mason" TV show in which Perry proved the murderer framed Perry's client by switching typing balls to make it appear the client had written the incriminating note. The script never mentioned IBM, but I'll bet that show introduced a lot of people to the concept of interchangeable typing balls.
That was super cool and brought back so many memories, especially the threading of the paper at 1:20. Man, back in my day, you had to load paper into the printer like it were a friggin' torpedo. But you always had that sense of accomplishment, look! The words on the screen are now words in your hand! Ah man.
Ty for this with the many fonts too! Ive never seen this before and being slightly a typewriter finatic myself when i see one i cannot help but to learn about them. NEVER SEE THIS! and your video was perfect for that fix of knowing the fonts and the correction feature! And the overall complexity like this fatastic feat of engineering
The print quality on that is marvelous. Wow.
If it wasn't, they'd never have tried to make the Selectric Composer.
The technology making a ball move with such speed and precision made many people aware that something even better was right around the corner. I wasn't one of them. I'm not a typist but always amazed by the ball moving at such an amazing speed. This guy can surely change the balls like a pro.
Compare and contrast with the mechanism used in the Teletype Model 33
I learned to type on a (I think older version) Selectric that my mom bought cheap 2nd hand in the 80s. I was just a little kid, but I really liked typing on it. I remember it being very satisfying and you could type very fast without the machine screwing up, something that wasn't possible on the type arm machines. Perhaps that's where I learned to love mechanical keyboards before I even knew they existed.
Typewriters are so satisfying to watch, the letters are so crisp and dark. But I think what really makes them special is that bit of finality each keystroke has. Of course you can correct it but it leaves marks. If I only knew what to do with them I would get one.
The Selectric will always live on in Columbo reruns in the episode where the latent image on its carbon film ribbon was the evidence that caught a murderer.
I remember the episode!
And in any Steven J. Cannel show.
It'll live on in every Stephen J. Cannel production show ending
In 1983, I wrote a 30 page report with one of these, storing the text on a mag tape. Then i was introduced to Word Star on an 8 bit PC running CP/M. I must say, Word Star was leaps easier to work with.
This is the machine I learned to type on. I took typing my senior year of high school (‘87-‘88) and they were still using these machines.
That was the year I was born, haha. I missed out on all the cool shit. 😔
Typewriters are very cool!! Hello from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan!
That must have been a holy grail to own in the days of electro-mechanical typewriters. I've once seen a computerized-typewriter, that is, a typewriter with a memory of a few lines so you could actually skip back and correct. Its other featuer I've never seen again is the fact that it had a proportional font... so an m was about three times wider than an i... It also was really fast, only outrunnable when you entered bold (every letter struck twice a teeny bit offset) and underlined text.
I worked on one of these from abut 1978 to 1983, then another job we started using the more electronic Selectrics. Loved the Selectric II though. It was fun to use. With about 8 of us typing at once all day it was noisy LOL
I don’t understand why someone would dislike this
Good idea! I think I'll do the same with my "golf balls" Thanks for the video
APL was a programming language popular on IBM 360 & 370 machines. It used an alternate keyboard layout using Greek and math symbols so it was perfect for timesharing with a 2741 Selectric remote terminal. I always wanted to swap it's typeball with one on a regular Selectric to see how people would react when their typing came out as gibberish.
The APL typeballs are super rare. Carl would love to have one for is 1130!
@@CuriousMarc So are APL programmers. 😂
I love the Script font. I keep that ball on all the time, it's what I use to type thank you's and quick notes and sometimes I use it to just type.
holy good lord.... I had NO idea that 'script' font was possible (or originated) on typewriters!
If you make your patterns right, its possible. Someone probably had some patience making sure the leading and trailing lines on each of characters was lining up perfectly.
Oh yeah! Back when I was in high school taking "work experience," to come across a script ball was like Christmas. We usually just had the Elite or Pica and that was it.
Very disappointed that they missed Comic Sans!
Wonderful machine - and apparently many still in use today as I see ribbons are still available for the Selectric II.
That had to revolutionary at the time. The ability to rapidly change fonts
WONDERFUL MACHINE 👍🏻👍🏻
Wow looks better than a laser printer.
selectrics had super sharp output but also had the indentation on the rear from the impact strike, this made the printed output really look like a piece of artwork.
@@oldtwins Yes. We used to use two sheets of paper to help with that. Less wear and tear on the roller too...
These and a couple of other typewriters were actually the standard that laser printer companies used as the standard for if their output was good enough. The same with some of the desktop publishing software that came out in the late 80's. They would sell themselves as doing output like premium machines of yesteryear.
FYI: Just about everyone means "typeface" when they say "font". "Font" is the actual pitch (or size) of the printed characters ("10 font", "12 font", etc.) The typeface is the actual design or "style" of the printed characters. Examples of typefaces: "Courier", "Times New Roman", "Ariel", "Baldwin", "Impact", etc.
You're slightly mistaken. Traditionally-speaking a "font" is a typeface in a certain point size and style. The size of a character is known as the "point size." There are various "styles" and they have titles such as "semi-bold," "condensed," "book," et cetera. As you stated, typefaces have specific names like "Melior," "Univers," and "Souvenir." People often get the terminology confused because there is so much misinformation in computer applications and on the Web.
Imagine this technology in year 2020: the "golf" ball has now the size of a hot-air balloon to fit the entire unicode.
Why do I love this thing so much? In fact, I am loving it so much, that I have to order one for me from eBay.
Courier
Did you ever?
That printer has a lot of balls. It's a very ballsy design.
My father was on the original design team for this device, and yes, they were all avid bonzo golfers ...
Your father did a darn fine job!
nice looking product this machine produces
It takes balls to use this typewriter :p
they still used a giant version of these when I was in highschool just to fill out forms and carbon paper, they probably chucked it years ago and it probably made a big thunk when they did
3D print your own custom font ball, that is nothing but simple emojis.
Those golf balls are tougher than they look. Metal coated plastic. Their only flaw is how the release lever is attached to its axle. The plastic didn't age well, so now, when you go to remove them, the lever breaks where it wraps around the axle. Still, changeable fonts was a big deal in the 60s.
@@antronargaiv3283 That is only a problem on the early style with a chrome hinge. They changed to an all-plastic lever in the mid-70's, much more reliable. :-)
my dad used to have an 80-90's type writer and it had a correction function
i never knew typewriters could have so many fonts
1:40 Orator font, nice and sharp
Reminds me of my early 1900s Blickensderfer which has a very similar system of interchangeable cyclinders with not just different fonts but also different alphabets for different languages.
Excellent video!
I need to pick myself up one of these bad boys next
learned to what is called "blind touch type" ( without looking at the letters on the keys and the keys were covered up as well,.)on one of those .:)
5:05 How does the correction work? Does it scrape the paper? Or is something like white out applied?
Actually I am not entirely sure. It's from striking the same character on a whitish-looking ribbon coiled on the orange reel you can see at the beginning of the video. Which is called a "lift-off tape". So from the name I assumed it's lifting the carbon ink off the paper. Since I cannot see any whitish color added to the paper I assume that's indeed how it works. Quite amazing actually that it works so well.
Huh, I see. Does plain old tape stuck onto something printed by the typewriter also produce a similar effect? If so, is the carbon ink prone to smudging?
No, the ink does not smudge at all. But scotch tape will indeed remove some of it (provided the paper resists too).
The white ribbon actually works along the same lines as the old product “whiteout”. It was a white ink. So you typed the white ink over the black ink and it blended in with white paper.
CuriousMarc Your theory is basically correct. The ribbon was single-use carbon film, and when you hit the correction key it would back up one position, engage a transparent sticky ribbon, and re-strike the error character, lifting the carbon particles off the paper. The fact that this was almost invisible was a huge breakthrough compared to erasing and re-typing or using "white-out" fluid, both of which were easily visible on the finished document. Many demanding bosses would not allow sending out letters with ANY visible corrections, so until the Correcting Selectric arrived, it was often necessary to re-type a complete letter because of a single mistake.
Big machine!
I have a light blue one of these. You missed one nifty feature of this typewriter. If you had of turned it on first before loading the paper, there is a lever to auto load the paper every time!.
Nice. I believe they even made a ball with characters from APL🤔
Wonderful video! I just bought a smaller Selectric II from a man who refurbishes them; it arrived yesterday and looks brand new! Could you possibly list the fonts you used in your description?
he typed the font's name in the font itself.
i learned to blind touch type on one of these .:)
I love it ❤️
How does the eraser work? Is it a literal tiny eraser being yeeted onto the character?
Looks like an amazing machine but it sounds like a jack hammer. I would have to wear ear plugs all day. How does the correction work, do hold down one key an hit the letter you want to blank out?
Wow, I want wan of thoose! Wonder if they can be bought/found in Sweden.....
I need one of these now :/
Holy shit they're cheap on ebay!
On a scale of 1-10 how much of a pain are they to repair?
+LeiserGeist It highly depends on your skills and the state of the machine. Generally they are incredibly robust, so it's mostly freeing up obviously stuck things. And unlike my calculating machines, they are super well documented, the service manuals are available. So I'd say for me 5 on a scale to 10, mostly because of the doc. However, in absolute terms of mechanical complexity, they are a good 8 or 9/10. So if something is really broken (a main spring or an actuating band or something wrong in the head) and you have to take it apart and find replacement parts, it could quickly degenerate into a difficult project.
CuriousMarc
Thanks for the great reply!
There are specialists in the USA who completely restore only Selectrics. They clean them in a gasoline bath take them apart and rebuild them. The finished rebuilt machine is not cheap but it's like new. Not all of them are worth this treatment. I can't say why but they don't pass the test. You'll find these rebuilders if you look.
Better hold off on the gasoline bath. We specifically avoided anything flammable. The IBM approved degreaser was trichlorethylene which is no longer available to the public, it was used in small quantities mainly in an office environment. Total immersion (a bath) was done with some kind of strong detergent mix similar to what was used on automotive carburetors.
For some reason, this reminded me of Fringe (TV series).
Long story short, there is a conspiracy or a sort of cold war, between our universe and another (parallel) universe, and one of the spies communicated using a Selectric typewriter that was sort of entangled with another identical one on the other side.
Can someone Please explain hownthe Correction/Backspace works on this?
Great video!
It has a second white ribbon that erases the carbon ink deposited by the regular ribbon. It moves the carriage and the ribbon for you, but it’s up to you to first retype the same letter you had typed wrong so it erases it with the white ribbon, then type the new corrected letter.
@@CuriousMarc Wow!
Thank You for the Explanation!!
how does it know the difference between the balls? wouldn't it need different spacing for the different fonts?
That's what differentiates a typewriter from a compositor (typesetting machine) - variable pitch, called "kerning". Not quite true, the Selectric II has a 10/12 pitch option, but it's not part of the typeball mechanism and not tied to individual letters, it's a global setting on the machine. Each letter sits in the same size space (either 10 or 12 per inch), unlike computer output.
It's hard for me (I grew up in the 2000s) to believe there were typewriters with interchangeable "fonts". I can also very much imagine someone having to keep swapping between the "symbol" and whatever font they were using.
Also, I do believe the Gothic font still exists today, digitally of course.
This was the age of analog
5:22 The corrections make it looks like 'Helveticà' lol
...and I discovered an Orator ball in my box!
What kind of switches does this use? I know it's not electronic so it must be different from the beam spring switches around that era
It has no electrical switches whatsoever (except on/off)! This is
entirely a mechanical action, just levers that push on a whiffletree.
Quite an amazing mechanism. Well explained here:
ua-cam.com/video/bRCNenhcvpw/v-deo.html
Awesome!
I "cut my teeth" on a selectric like this in typing class in high school waaay back in 1985!
Such an amazing typewriter! Where can I buy one?
Ebay
Sliced many a finger replacing the Tilt/Rotate tape on these machines.
The "most fun" one of all was the APL ball.
Do you know which golf ball is for writing in Greek? I saw one a long time ago, so I know that it exists, but I don't remember how its called ...
Thanks in advance
Nick
It's on some of the Symbol type elements, Symbol 10 and Symbol 12. Here I demonstrate the Symbol II, which is more fun, but definitely not as useful.
Is that ribbon used on that typewriter a carbon?
Yes, it’s a carbon ribbon.
its all mechanical, wow, thats awesome.
theirs no lever, does it return with a spring or whats going on inside.
Advances with a spring, but returns with the motor that winds the spring through a clutch. I show that mechanism in the repair video linked in the description.
This was amazing at the time but can we just say, a big thank you to OneNote, MS Word and Open office. The time savings compared to the old way of doing things are astronomical.
Steven Barnes you still have to type it in and proofread to keep from looking like an uncouth fool handing in reports full of mistakes to the manager. The only benefit to word is that you can quietly switch to ebay and look at shoes and jewelry. If milultiple copies are requested just make copies (that what the xerox machine is for)
Man, you can say that again! What I would have given, back in the 70s, to have had a word processor, a calculator and a spreadsheet! Kids nowadays don't know how good they have it :-)
Bought one last wk at auction $4 hope to sell soon.
These are cool as hell, but I'm going to keep using Word 😅🤣
The ball is actually called the element.
Wait what ?! You can correct mistakes on these ??? 0.o
I wish I had Script. I do have Oriental and Old English
5:11 Wait, you can do that on a typewriter? lol
You should see a IBM Memory 50/100 and the electronic Composer which uses very early IBM ICs and memory chips. Changing the main drive belt is quite different than on a Selectric I, II, or III.
IBM Memory Typewriter 50 (96 M)
ua-cam.com/video/H8P1JrivTsE/v-deo.html
Check out how that IBM element flies!
BTW the IBM Electronic Selectric Composer has three pitches (CPI).
Wow. No kidding. That is seriously impressive speed!
Just passed on a working one for $10 at goodwill🙁😢😭
I want one and i'm willing to get kicked out my apartment for it
wait wait wait... you could undo?!
Mm, childhood.
Phenomenal video, as usual, Marc. But quite strange to see you describe it as "all-mechanical". Surely you meant "electromechanical".
What I meant of course is that the principle of operation is entirely mechanical. You can operate it with a crank without electricity.
@@CuriousMarc, "Save for the motor" != "all-mechanical"
But I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
All of this said, I have long been a huge fan of your channel. This has to be one of the most historic things ever done on UA-cam. And until I learn of anything more historic, you hold the top slot in my view. For whatever reason, along the way, I got the impression that you upheld the highest standard of accuracy. I see now that I was mistaken.
@@CuriousMarc, what you could do with it versus what it actually does are two different things.
Did IBM name this their "Smechanical Typewriter"?!
If I am the dork here, then it looks like I'm in good company.
If you don't believe me, and you don't understand what the name "Selectric" means, then how bout we consult the legal documents...
_(my emphasis added)_
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the preferred embodiment described herein and shown in the drawings, most generally in FIG. 1, the inventive principles have been applied *'to an electric typewriter of the type designated Selectric,* manufactured by International Business Machines, and described, for example, in US. Pat. No. 2,879,876, in the IBM Selectric Instruction Manual dated Jan. 1966, and in the IBM Customer Engineering Manual of Instruction, Selectric I/O Keyboard Printer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
patents.google.com/patent/US3754631
0:16 - "Entirely mechanical". You are lying.
Those who were around when these typewriters were commonplace know full well that they were always called electric typewriters. This is why they have that cord which plugs into the wall. And most obviously, this is why IBM gave it that name. It was their ELECTRIC typewriter which had this snazzy ability to SELECT the letters on this wacky golf ball contraption. The concept is known as a portmanteau:
*_Select + Electric = Selectric_*
Ok, I have nothing more to add here. You are obviously free to continue ignoring the facts you are being presented with here. You are a brilliant human being who I deeply admire. And that is what has made this exchange so puzzling.
jeez that thing is loud
Suddenly you typed a wrong letter :>
aiee you spelt Manifold wrong too! :;
And favourite.
Using this typewriter requires balls.... of zinc...
Anyone else go directly to find the price of an old Selectric, just out of curiosity for a purchase? They are either cheap and broken or $5,000
more like 300 at most
Noise
Typewriters are for people who actually work