After the gigantic Ruf typewriter, now to some smaller, yet essential items for typing: ribbon tins. Here are some I picked up locally over the last couple of months, both in Switzerland and Austria.
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| Technically speaking, the above is not a typewriter ribbon "tin", but a little carton box. It contained a new old 16mm ribbon, quite rare these days. At least I don't see them often. It's a silk ribbon, which it top quality. |
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| This one I like a lot, the two gold strips on top and left even seem hand-painted. Maybe by Oskar Vogler himself? Swiss, from Wintherthur. |
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| This one is a true classic, and J.F. Pfeiffer ephemera turn up often in Switzerland. J.F. Pfeiffer was a big company dealing in office furniture and machines, based in Zurich, but with branches all over Switzerland. The logo is a piper (= "Pfeifer" in German). |
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| This Helvetica Spezial-Farbband is pure Swissness. The logo is Helvetia herself, a female personification of Switzerland. You see a similar depiction on Swiss 1 franc coins. |
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| There is is: the ribbon fit for a Hermes typewriter. This is one of the most frequent questions I get over my website (I would rate it No. 2, just after: How much is my typewriter worth?): which ribbon for my Hermes typewriter? The answer is: 13 mm. Standardized since 1926. Which is half inch, roughly. |
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| top view of the box described above. also not a "tin" in the strict sense, but made of some plastic. |
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| British Made Columbia Classic |
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| This one I couldn't place really. Despite of the English name of "Three Stars", my guess is it was made in Switzerland. Bachmann, e.g., is a frequent name in Switzerland (King is not). The tin itself looks very similar to the Pfeiffer one shown above. |
That's all for today. To be continued.
