Type-in Basel wonderful

Café La Cuna in Basel, Switzerland, is just the kind of place you need for a spontaneous type-in: space, friendly staff, typewriter-friendly clients, and also great coffee.

It was a pleasure hosting Peter during his Tour de Suisse, and Florian joined us for the day in Basel. We started warming up at the location of the typewriters.ch museum - "home to 300 typewriters and still counting", testing new old machines, amongst others an intriguing white variation of a Urania piccola Florian brought, and a classic Voss, a Mercedes Selecta, and a Smith-Corona Galaxie (sic!) I don't want to talk about too much because I totally love its typeface and find it hard not to keep it here with me in Basel.

We then set out for a spontaneous type-in at Café La Cuna, which produced the following on-the-spot protocol, and also the first special award to the owner of the café for "typewriter friendliest café", as certified by the present members of the typosphere.

 some more impressions from our great day, adding to the glory of the already all-so glorious typosphere:

Fraulein an die Schreibmaschine

Some typewriter ads for Hermes, Switzerland, 1940s and 1950s (source for all: DU, Schweizerisches Monatsmagazin). Still the time of the "Frauleins":

September 1948: Fraulein on Hermes Baby "At home, for travel, for the holidays"

January 1949: business on Hermes 2000 "easy, quiet, nice font"

October 1949: Fraulein yet again on Hermes 2000, "with ease, quiet, and beautiful"

March 1950: She hasn't even changed her blouse and skirt from the last picture! Office work must have been so much fun back then.

August 1952: different atmosphere from the previous pictures. A very business-like Fraulein reading the correspondence from her Hermes Baby. Or on the contrary, is she the boss, and her secretary has already left?

April 1953: Back to secretary work on the new Hermes Ambassador. Note the detail: a shorthand writing pad could be placed perfectly in front for transcription, which was a special feature of the Ambassador line. Above: wife handing her husband the Hermes Baby just minutes before the train leaves; a Swiss army officer typing his report on a Hermes-Media, then official typewriter of the Swiss armed forces; and "scientists, merchants, business-men" on the Hermes 2000.

April 1955: business break and fresh air with Hermes Baby

July 1959: Hermes Baby, Madame and two fox terriers, an idyllic picture set in the private sphere, with Hermes Baby in the centre.