The Olivetti

Olivetti

Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, printers and other business machines.- Founding :The company was founded as a typewriter manufacturer in 1908 in Ivrea, near Turin, by Camillo Olivetti. The firm was mainly developed by his son Adriano Olivetti...

 Lettera 22 is a portable mechanical typewriter

Typewriter

A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...

 designed by Marcello Nizzoli

Marcello Nizzoli

Marcello Nizzoli was an Italian artist, architect, industrial and graphic designer. He was the chief designer for Olivetti for many years and was responsible notably for the iconic Lettera 22 portable typewriters in 1950....

 in 1949 or, according to Telecom Italia (the current owner of Olivetti), 1950.

This typewriter used to be very popular in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 and still has many fans. It was awarded the Compasso d'oro

Compasso d'Oro

Compasso d'Oro is the name of an Industrial Design award originated in Italy in 1954 by the La Rinascente company from an original idea of Gio Ponti and Alberto Rosselli. From 1964 it has been hosted exclusively by Associazione per il Disegno Industriale . It is the first and most recognized award...

 prize in 1954; in 1959, the Illinois Institute of Technology

Illinois Institute of Technology

Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly called Illinois Tech or IIT, is a private Ph.D.-granting university located in Chicago, Illinois, with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, communications, industrial technology, information technology, design, and law...

 chose the Lettera 22 as the best design

Design

Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...

 product of the last 100 years.

The typewriter is sized about 27x37x8 cm (with the carriage return

Carriage return

Carriage return, often shortened to return, refers to a control character or mechanism used to start a new line of text.Originally, the term "carriage return" referred to a mechanism or lever on a typewriter...

 lever adding about 1-2 more centimeters in height), making it quite portable at least for the time's standards, even though its 4 kg

Kilogram

The kilogram or kilogramme , also known as the kilo, is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units and is defined as being equal to the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram , which is almost exactly equal to the mass of one liter of water...

 weight may limit portability somewhat.
The model was eventually succeeded by the Olivetti Lettera 32

Olivetti Lettera 32

The Olivetti Lettera 32 is a portable mechanical typewriter designed by Marcello Nizzoli for Olivetti in 1963 as the successor of the popular Olivetti Lettera 22...

.

Mechanics

The Lettera 22 is an oblique frontstroke typebar

Typebar

A typebar is an 'arm' inside a typewriter with a character on the end of it. There are generally two characters per typebar, one which will be printed if the corresponding key is struck by itself, the other of which will be printed if the corresponding key is struck while the shift key is depressed...

 typewriter. The typebars strike a red/black inked ribbon, which is positioned between the typebar and the paper by a lever whenever a key is pressed; a small switch located near the upper right side of the keyboard can be used to control the strike position of the ribbon, in order to print with black, red, or no ink (for mimeograph stencils).

Ribbon movement, which also occurs at every keypress, automatically reverses direction when there is no ribbon left on the feed reel; two mechanical sensors, situated next to each wheel, move when the ribbon is put under tension (indicating ribbon end), attaching the appropriate wheel to the ribbon transport mechanism and detaching the other.

The Lettera 22 uses a basket shift or segment shift (that is, the unit including the typebars moves up and down when shifting, as opposed to the carriage shift system). The Lettera 22 is quite compact compared to other 1950s portable typewriters using a basket shift, such as the Smith Corona Sterling or Remington-Rand Quiet-Riter.

The Lettera 22 also features a tabulator setting and clearing system that is controlled from the keyboard, and an innovative margin release that does double duty as a paragraph indentation key (it indents a paragraph when it is held down as the carriage is returned).

Keyboard

For the Italian market the keyboard is in the QZERTY layout, as with most Italian machines (excluding modern computer keyboards). Aside from the typing keys, the keyboard includes a Space bar

Space bar

thumb|250px|A [[computer keyboard]], Space Bar is on the bottom center of the keyboardThe space bar, spacebar, or space key, is a key on an alphanumeric keyboard in the form of a horizontal bar in the lowermost row, significantly wider than other keys. Its main purpose is to conveniently enter the...

, two Shift key

Shift key

The shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters. There are typically two shift keys, on the left and right sides of the row below the home row...

s, one Caps lock

Caps lock

Caps lock is a key on many computer keyboards. Pressing it sets an input mode in which typed letters are uppercase by default. The keyboard remains in caps lock mode until the key is pressed again...

 key, a Backspace

Backspace

Backspace is the keyboard key that originally pushed the typewriter carriage one position backwards, and in modern computer displays moves the cursor one position backwards, deletes the preceding character, and shifts back the text after it by one position....

 key and a margin release key ; of these, only the Backspace key bears a mark on it (an arrow pointing right), while the other five mentioned are left anonymous.

The character set conspicuously lacks the number 1, which is supposed to be substituted by the lowercase L. Although this may seem like a strange absence today, this was actually common on older typewriters.

Also lacking are the keys for uppercase accented vowels, some of which are present in Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

; however, these characters usually are not found on modern keyboards, either.

Normal

é	"	'	(	_	è	^	ç	à	)	-
q	z	e	r	t	y	u	i	o	p	ì
a	s	d	f	g	h	j	k	l	m	ù
w	x	c	v	b	n	,	;	:	ò

Shifted

2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	&	°	+
Q	Z	E	R	T	Y	U	I	O	P	=
A	S	D	F	G	H	J	K	L	M	%
W	X	C	V	B	N	?	.	/	!

Popular culture

The Olivetti Lettera 22 is mentioned on pg. 15 of Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...

's 2009 novel Inherent Vice

Inherent Vice

Inherent Vice is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, originally published in August 2009.-Title:The term "inherent vice" is a legal tenet referring to a "hidden defect of a good or property which of itself is the cause of its deterioration, damage, or wastage...

.