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The concept of offset printing. Typewriter Serial production in Russia

How would you behave in the place of the old king, whose heirs began to die one after another? Would you be more accommodating at the negotiating table? The question is complex, and everyone solves it in their own way. "King-sun" went to the negotiations. In 1713, the Peace of Utrecht was concluded, which devalued eleven years of French struggle. And then the heirs to the French throne stopped dying...

Louis XV double louis d'or 1764, gold

The heir was a five-year-old baby, the great-grandson of the "Sun King", the future Louis XV. A Dauphin child under a seventy-four-year-old king who could die of old age at any moment. Die king - who will help, who will protect the child? The French state would have been in a very vulnerable position if it were not for the handsome twenty-eight-year-old Duke of Berry, the second grandson of Louis XIV, the uncle of the heir. The aged king made him responsible for the fate of the country and the infant king. And... Yes, that's right. The Duke of Berry also soon died. He was injured while hunting and hit the saddle pommel with all his might.

Usually they write: fell from a horse and crashed. It looks like he broke his neck or spine. But it's not. The unfortunate Duke of Berry died on May 4, 1714, after a "four days' illness". Now they write that the cause of death is "internal injuries after a fall from a horse." How could this happen? It could have been, if another participant in the turbulent politics of that time had not died in a similar way, also falling from a horse ...

After an accident with his grandson, Louis XIV lost interest in life. Fearing further "accidents", he even changed the law. Until then, only children born to the queen were heirs to the throne. Louis XIV had several illegitimate children. The king legitimized them and placed them in the hierarchy of the royal house after the princes of the blood. A couple of months later, Louis XIV specifically stipulated the following: in the event of the suppression of the legitimate family, the newly-born princes could take the throne. He knew who was destroying his family, and he understood that the series of deaths was not accidental, and it could continue.

In 1715, the "Sun King" died. It seemed like the end of the story. But in reality, it was just getting started. Less than a year after the death of the old king, the shareholders of the Bank of England were convinced of the justification of their fears. They tried to steal their know-how, their invention. Copy how cunning Chinese manufacturers today copy the shape of famous brand cars. It was impossible to keep the secret of the "typewriter". The advantages and ingenious simplicity were evident. Instead of the complex procedure of extracting gold and silver, there is a simple process of printing money.

France, defeated in the war due to "lack of credit", decided to open its own "typewriter". In 1716, the Scotsman John Low received a patent for opening a private bank with the right to issue bank notes exchanged for metal. King Louis XV of France at that moment was a baby and, of course, was not interested in financing issues. But the regent, Duke Philippe d'Orleans, happily seized on a great idea. He commands that bank notes should be accepted as payment of taxes on a par with specie.

In 1718 Lowe's bank was renamed the State Bank. Although in fact it was the same "joint venture", where the shares were divided among themselves by cunning bankers and royalty. Now the military and diplomatic rivalry between England and France has taken on a secret financial turn. Two groups of bankers, who received two different state "roofs", fought among themselves for the right to print empty money uncontrollably. And thus gain power over the world.

But we digress a little. Let us return to the French cloning of the "English" idea of paper money. The story of the rapid rise of England under William's scepter began to be repeated in France. There is nothing surprising in this - your personal economy will also flourish at once if you find a suitcase with money on the street. The Bank of France was very successful. John Law, like a good wizard, solves the financial problems of the royal power at once: he lends the government 100 million livres at 3% per annum. For comparison: at the time of the death of the "sun king" there were only 700 thousand livres in the treasury. And at the end of 1716, when John Law turned on his "typewriter", the budget deficit reached 140 million livres.

And now France can continue its global expansion because it has money. The French copy the British system not only in the main, but also in private moments. Power gives to John Lowe at the mercy of the development of gold deposits in Louisiana and all overseas trade. All this will be done by the India Company, a complete analogue of the British East India Company. The shares of the new enterprise are sold at first to everyone, and then only to those who pay with bank notes that could be obtained in exchange for their gold coins.

“It turned into a competition to see who could get rid of their gold the fastest.” But the successes will be short-lived, surprisingly short-lived. The monetary basis for the expansion of the French Empire will be destroyed in just a few months. Here is a timeline of the rise and fall of the Bank of England understudy on French soil. In January 1720, the banker John Law, in the wake of the phenomenal success of the "shop", becomes the general controller of the finances of France, because the Bank he had just led had lent France 100 million livres. And at that moment, something terrible happens.

“Anxious rumors immediately spread with incredible speed, and all of Paris was in the grip of a monstrous panic,” writes the French writer Guy Breton in his book Love Stories in the History of France. And already at the beginning of 1720, a massive pressure began on the bank of those who wanted to exchange paper bank notes for coins. The exchange was first slowed down, and then completely suspended. When did it happen? February-March 1720. It is difficult to trace how the "panic of depositors" was organized over the past years, but I think that the technologies are no different from today's ones.

Please note that this happened after three years of operation of the State Bank of France. So, at first, his business went uphill. And suddenly they went down sharply - after a "record" loan of 100 million livres received by the government. Coincidence? Judge for yourself - the blow was delivered quickly and ruthlessly. The bank, which issued 3 billion paper money under the guarantee of 700 million cash coins, was unable to pay. But the French government did not want to give up without a fight. And found a very "original" way out of the situation.

Since the population does not want to use paper banknotes, but prefers coins, it means that it is necessary ... to ban the circulation of coins. “A decree of March 11, 1720, announced a ban after May 1 on the use of voiced coins; found with someone, it was subject to confiscation. You can imagine the reaction this decision caused in France. Of course - universal rejoicing and full enthusiasm of the masses. After such a decree, the popularity of paper tickets fell altogether, as did the popularity of royalty. Everyone started chasing the forbidden coin and running from the permitted banknotes. And it ended in disaster very quickly.

The next decree of May 22, 1720 announced a halving of the nominal rate of bank notes. That is, those who law-abidingly complied with the previous decree of the king and used paper money, became twice as poor at once. Then, on October 10, 1720, a third decree was issued to stop the circulation of tickets after November 1, 1720. It was decided to exchange small tickets for government bonds with a reduction in the nominal rate by a further two times. As a result, there was a very quick double robbery of law-abiding citizens.

It is clear that the royal government, which has committed such tricks in France (directly "written off" from our Russian reforms), has become extremely unpopular. It was at this time that the charge of hatred for the French monarchy and the country was laid, which in 1789 would lead to a revolution and smash the royal power to pieces. In November 1720, the State Bank went bankrupt, and its founder was forced to flee France a month later. It is only interesting to know - WHERE? That would clear up a lot...

The further fate of the founder of the "printing machine" in France is unknown to me. But the fate of the founder of the Bank of England is known. As we remember, William III of Orange, King of England, agreed with the bankers. And he didn't break the deal. Perhaps because he also died at the right time. In March 1702, he died at Kensington Palace from ... (again?!) the consequences of a fall from a horse. Could this happen? Could. Only two facts arouse suspicion: a similar death of the Duke of Berry and the officially announced cause of death of the founder of the "typewriter". Why exactly did he die?

Wilhelm died of pneumonia, which was a complication after a broken shoulder. Which, in turn, the king broke when falling from his horse. Who would have thought that pneumonia starts with a fracture? What is the relationship between a fracture and pneumonia? Agree, all this is extremely curious. And it is very suspicious... The founder of anything is necessary for the iconostasis. After all, it was this king who signed all the laws the bankers needed: he gave everything he could and what they needed at that time. The next kings will get the system already as a given. And the secret of his agreements, William III of Orange will take with him to the grave and will strictly look at the heirs to the throne from the front portrait.

The Bank of England will become a given for the new monarchs. Covenant and command. Unchangeable decision of the ancestor. It was time to start thinking about further steps to establish world hegemony. There has always been one way to do this - war. The banker-led British elite will add another one to the global geopolitical treasury - special operations. Both are abundantly "lubricated" with money - fortunately now they appear out of thin air. The War of the Spanish Succession is the beginning of the long typewriter journey to the July morning of 1944 in Bretton Woods, when the pound gives way to the dollar.

The time will come to change the location, and the "typewriter" will move overseas, where it will be more secure. But first there will be the First World War, which will destroy the gold ruble and the gold German mark. The currency of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires will go into oblivion. Only one step remains before world domination, only one global war. And the scenario of World War II, which was written in London, will be different from what will happen in reality.

... And the main rule - there are no rules

The glory of the typewriter has already sunk, and yet quite recently it was truly grandiose. At the end of the last century, the typewriter had to pass the baton further - to the personal computer. But what was the first typewriter? Photos, history of invention and design features - further.

First experiences

When did the first typewriter appear? The history of the portable printing device begins long before the twentieth century. Many people, together or independently of each other over the years, invariably came up with the idea of quickly typing a wide variety of texts. This happened for the first time at the beginning of the eighteenth century, namely in 1714.

Then the English Queen Anne issued an official patent to the worker of the waterworks in London, Henry Mill, for a machine in which the artificial method of imprinting letters allows each one to be placed separately and in the required order. At the same time, the text is printed on paper clearly and clearly. Unfortunately, apart from the text of the patent, nothing has been preserved.

The second typewriter was designed already in Germany in the fifties of the same century by Friedrich von Knauss. This device was not destined to become popular, the typewriter was again forgotten. Then it was Spain's turn. Around 1808, the talented mechanic Terry Pellegrino created his own typewriter. This device gave birth to love.

A touching love story

Terry Pellegrino fell in love with the lovely Countess Caroline Fantoni. The young girl suddenly became blind, but her chosen one turned out to be a faithful and rather enterprising person. For his blind beloved, Terry created the first typewriter. On it, the blind Carolina Fantoni wrote letters to her lover and composed poems.

The device worked as follows. With her fingers, the countess found a key with the necessary letter engraved on it, pressed it lightly, and the letter fell, imprinting the letter on paper through a carbon paper. After Karolina's death, the typewriter itself was lost, but several letters printed on it have survived.

First carbon paper

In the autumn of 1808, Caroline informed Terry that she was running out of paper, without which she would no longer be able to write letters to her beloved. Thus, the enterprising Italian can be considered the creator of not only the world's first typewriter, but also the prototype of modern carbon paper.

Terry Pellegrino impregnated ordinary sheets with printing ink and dried in the sun. After this touching story, various experiments on creating new versions of cars for the blind became widely known in many countries of the world. To the bitter end, the typewriter began to be invented in the USA.

American inventions

In 1829, American citizen William Austin Burt patented a typewriter for the blind called the Typograph (printer). Using a special embossing method, letter blanks left a clear mark on a thick paper tape. In 1843, Charles Tober received a patent for a printing device.

The inventor was worried about the fate of the blind. Like his predecessors, the American wanted to provide jobs for blind people who had not previously participated in social life in any way. Tober's typewriter did not find a response from manufacturers, but his invention uses the fruitful idea of \u200b\u200blever transmission of the movement of letters.

The next "first" typewriter was the invention of Samuel Francis. His 1856 typewriter had a movable carriage, and levers with letter blanks, and a ribbon soaked in special printing ink, and even a bell that warned of the end of a line.

Other inventors

So who invented the first typewriter? In the middle of the nineteenth century, another prototype of a typewriter was created by a certain Italian. He called his invention "harpsichord writing", or "keyboard writing machine". It was already a more modern device that allowed you to see the written text in the process of printing.

In 1861, a Brazilian priest created his own version of the device. Inspired by this invention, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil awarded the priest with a gold medal. The father became the real pride of the Latin American country. In Brazil, he is still considered the only inventor.

Russian writing machine

Who created the first typewriter in Russia? In 1870, Mikhail Ivanovich Alisov designed a "quick printer", or "scribe". Its purpose was to replace the calligraphic rewriting of manuscripts and various documents. The rapid printer turned out to be quite suitable for this, for which he received high reviews and medals at three exhibitions: in Vienna in 1873, in Philadelphia in 1876 and in Paris in 1878.

The inventor who came up with such a device was awarded a medal by the Russian Technical Society. That typewriter was very different in appearance from most devices familiar to the modern man in the street. Wax paper was used, which was then multiplied on a rotator.

QWERTY keyboard

Different types of printing presses gradually became more practical for daily use. The familiar QWERTY keyboard was invented by a certain Scholes. The inventors analyzed the compatibility of letters in the English language, and QWERTY is an option in which frequently combined letters are located as far as possible. This prevented sticky keys while typing.

Timeless classic

The classic "Underwood" appeared as early as 1895 and achieved dominance in the early twentieth century. It is the first typewriter in the world to truly become a resounding commercial success. Soon another classic model appeared. American Christopher Latham Sholes patented a device that, after several improvements, received the commercial name "Remington No. 1". These machines were mass-produced.

The Remington trade was hard until the Treasury ordered the machines. By 1910, over two million of these typewriters were in use in America. Even the writer Mark Twain purchased one printer from this series.

Serial production in Russia

In Russia, before the revolution, typewriters were not produced, but were actively used. Due to the pre-revolutionary spelling, the letters on them were located rather unusually. On portable devices, there were no numbers that were replaced with the corresponding letters (O, Z, and so on) when printed.

The first typewriter in Russia, which was mass-produced, was called Yanalif. The device was produced since 1928 in Kazan. In later times, the most common domestic brands of cars were portable "Moscow" and "Lyubava", stationery "Ukraine" and "Yatran". Of the foreign devices, "Optima" and "Robotron", "Erika" from the GDR, "Consul" from Czechoslovakia, "Olympia" from the FRG were popular.

The first typewriter could have appeared in 1714, when in England a mechanic at the London Waterworks was ordered to build a machine for printing texts. Unfortunately, historians in the chronicles are not told about the fulfillment of this prescription. Another 150 years passed before the first mass-produced typewriters saw the light of day. The first typewriters were very different from modern ones and used different methods for printing text.

Of all the developments, only about twenty subsequently retained their significance. The most successful was the design of the American Scholes. His "Remington" became the ancestor of the modern typewriter.

Sholes lived in the American town of Milwaukee and was a printer by education, but then he earned money by collecting taxes. He invented a mechanism for putting page numbers in books and devoted all his free time to trying to make it. The farmer-inventor Glidden also worked on his original plow there. Once Glidden came with a magazine article about Pratt's typewriter and persuaded him to make a similar typewriter based on the Scholes mechanism. In 1867 the typewriter was made..

Satisfied friends sent letters printed on this typewriter to all their acquaintances. Glidden was among those who received the letters. He offered the inventors financial support from future profits, but pointed out the need for improvement. Despite leaving the Glidden enterprise, Sholes single-handedly made the necessary improvements. He made about thirty cars, and in 1873 a prototype went into series at the Remington factory.

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Inventor Story by: Christopher Lettham Scholes and Samuel Soulle
A country: USA
Time of invention: 1868

The machine revolution in the 70s of the 19th century affected even such a seemingly far from technology area as writing. From time immemorial, people have used only their own hand to draw written characters. With the invention of the typewriter, he could entrust this operation to a mechanism. Instead of writing out letters, now it was enough to hit the right key.

The appearance of the typewriter has led to significant shifts in many areas of human activity and has raised the culture of office work to a higher level. The speed and quality of clerical work has increased several times.

Indeed, everyone can learn to write, but not everyone can write quickly and at the same time clearly, legibly and beautifully.

Meanwhile, the spread of written communications between people, the increase in the number of business papers and commercial correspondence that require special legibility of the manuscript, as well as many other reasons (for example, the desire to speed up the work of typesetters, who, typing text from a blind manuscript, often worked slowly and made mistakes) caused the desire to invent a type-printing machine that would be accessible to everyone and would allow one or more copies of a neat and quickly read manuscript to be obtained immediately and quickly.

Several models of typewriters appeared as early as the 18th century, but they worked so slowly that they could not be of practical importance. One of the first known typewriters was assembled in 1833 by the Frenchman Progrin. His typograph consisted of 88 levers connected to letter and number stamps. The levers were arranged in a circle and moved along and across the sheet of paper on a special sled. It is clear that working on such a machine was difficult and inconvenient.

In 1843, Charles Thurbert took out a patent for a typewriter he invented for the blind. It was to him that the very fruitful idea of the lever transmission of the movement of letters belonged, which was later applied to all typewriters. There were other designs of printing devices. However, the typewriter in the modern sense of the word appeared only thirty years later, and not in Europe, but in America.

In 1867, two American printers, Lettam Scholes and Samuel Sullet, invented a number printing machine that could be used for page numbering, as well as for printing numbers and series of bank notes. One of Scholes' acquaintances, interested in the new device, suggested that, using the principle of this simple typewriter, they create a typewriter that could print letters and words instead of characters and numbers. This thought captivated Scholes. Initially, he continued to work with Sulle.

In the summer, the first single-letter typewriter was ready. It consisted of an old key-shaped telegraph key, a glass plate and some other parts. Scholes placed charcoal tape and a thin sheet of white paper on the plate, then, moving the paper with one hand, he pressed the telegraph key with the other, on which was the letter "B" carved from brass. As a result, a print was obtained on paper.

In the autumn of the same year, the first sample of a multi-letter typewriter was created. She worked so well that she wrote quickly and clearly, but was still very inconvenient for practical use, since she had a flat keyboard (like a piano) and typed only in large letters. In 1868, a patent was obtained for this typewriter, after which Sulle lost interest in it.

But Scholes decided at all costs to create such a model of the machine that could be put into production. One of his acquaintances, Deximore, gave him financial support. Scholes threw himself into his work. Over the next five years, he made about 30 models of cars, each one better than the last, but still far from perfect.

Only in 1873 was a sufficiently reliable and convenient model of a typewriter created, which Scholes offered to the famous Remington factory that produced weapons and agricultural machines. In 1874, the first hundred machines were already put on the market. The famous American writer Mark Twain was one of its first customers. It was on it that he printed his "Tom Sawyer". It may have been the first classical composition written on a typewriter.

On the whole, however, the situation remained unsatisfactory. Another eight years had to accustom the public to this amazing technical innovation. Many cars from the first series were returned to stores, some with damaged parts. For a long time, typewriters were viewed as a luxury item. But gradually the situation changed. Business offices, firms and banks were the first to appreciate the new invention.

Already in 1876, mass production of cars was launched. The first "Remingtons", although they had the same principle of operation as modern typewriters, still differed in some specific features. For example, the text in them was printed under the roller and was not visible. To look at the work, it was necessary to raise the trolley, for this purpose located on hinges. It is clear that this was not very convenient.

Meanwhile, Sholes' example inspired other inventors. In 1890, Franz Wagner received a patent for a typewriter with a horizontal lying letter levers and with a font visible when printing. He sold the rights to its production to the manufacturer John Underwood. This machine was so convenient that it soon became a mass demand, and Underwood made a huge fortune on it. The inventor himself was not, however, so lucky and died in poverty.

Since 1908, Remington also began to produce typewriters with visible type. After "Underwood" typewriters of other firms appeared, including several European designs. But in the first decades of its existence, this invention was more in line with the American way of life. At least until the beginning of the 20th century, the lion's share of all manufactured and purchased cars fell on the United States. The principle of operation for all these machines in general terms was the same.

There is probably no person who has not seen the work of a typewriter. Therefore, there is no need to describe in detail its operation and device. The main parts of the typewriter were: a keyboard with a lever system, a carriage with paper rollers and a cast-iron frame of the mechanism mounted on a wooden board. The carriage (a movable cart carrying paper) carried a solid rubber cylinder and a wooden roller parallel to it, between which it passed.

During the operation of the machine, the carriage automatically moved from right to left after each letter was printed. When a certain key was pressed, the lever associated with it rose, which had a carved steel letter on it. This letter struck a rubber roller along which the paper moved. All letters hit at one point, as they were located along the generatrix of the cylinder.

A special tape impregnated with black or colored paint automatically passed between the paper and the letter. The steel letter, striking the tape, imprinted its imprint on the paper. Two letters were placed on each lever. In order to print the second one, it was necessary to move the rubber cylinder by pressing a special key (move it to uppercase).

When a key was struck, not only did the lever connected to it set in motion, but by means of a gear-conical gearing, a coil with a tape turned through a certain angle, which was wound from one of them and wound onto another, so that the next letter hit another place on the tape. When the entire tape passed under the font, the direction of its movement was changed by a special lever, and the coils began to rotate in the opposite direction. Simultaneously with the movement of the tape towards it, under the action of a spring, an elastic rubber roller moved, carried by the carriage and supporting the paper. The reverse movement of the carriage was made by hand.

Thus, each keystroke caused three actions of the typewriter at once: 1) the letter left an imprint on paper; 2) the carriage moved one step to the left; 3) the tape moved. All this was achieved through the interaction of various parts of the typewriter, the main of which were the printing mechanism, the stepping mechanism and the tape mechanism.

In pre-revolutionary Russia, typewriters were not produced, but were used. However, due to the peculiarities of pre-revolutionary spelling, the placement of the keys was somewhat different from the current one. The first typewriter in our country was produced in 1928 in Kazan, it was called "Yanalif".

At a later time, the most common domestic brands of typewriters in the USSR were "Ukraine" (stationery) and "Moscow" (portable). Of the foreign ones, Optima (GDR, stationery) and Consul (Czechoslovakia, portable) were quite widespread. However, in terms of prevalence, typewriters were significantly inferior to computers.

In 2011, the world's last typewriter factory, Godrej and Boyce, ceases operations. Collectors and lovers of rarities are buying up the latest samples of the keyboard "rarity". A whole era is gone...

Today, March 1, on the birthday of the first commercially successful Remington No. 1, we decided to recall which typewriters were the most famous and unusual and why they were useful to their no less famous owners.

Remington and Mark Twain

In the summer of 1868, American inventor Christopher Latham Scholes received a patent for the typewriter device, which later became the first mechanical writing apparatus. The prototype appeared on March 1, 1873. And in June, Scholes and his partners agreed with Remington & Sons to produce 10,000 typewriters. And the first Remington No. 1 entered the market on July 1, 1874.

Writers immediately became interested in technical innovation. For example, Mark Twain bought a typewriter from Scholes without waiting for the device to go into mass production. The writer liked to brag about being the first person to use a typewriter in literature. Of course, during his life he changed writing devices more than once, but Twain printed the legendary "Tom Sawyer" on Remington No. 1.

Hansen Writing Ball and Friedrich Nietzsche

Not so long ago, scientists managed to accurately recreate the typewriter on which the great Friedrich Nietzsche. This device has a very original form and is not very similar to the usual typewriters.

"Writing ball"- this is how the technical innovation was called - it was originally intended for visually impaired and blind people. As the years passed, Nietzsche began to lose his sight, and such a machine became the only way for him to continue his literary work. On a "writing ball" with serial number 125, the philosopher created his "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" and "Merry Science".

Underwood and Dovlatov

The name of this typewriter has long been associated exclusively with the name Sergei Dovlatov and his Underwood Solo. According to rumors, the writer was terribly fond of his literary instrument, inspired by touching its keys, and would not change it for any "remingtons".

It is quite understandable: a convenient frontal layout of the keys and a laconic but sophisticated appearance at that time made Underwood typewriters the most popular among such devices.

Corona 3 and Arthur Conan Doyle

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, someone came up with the idea of typing "blindly" (perhaps just falling asleep at work). It was most convenient to work “eyes closed” on Corona devices. Compact and reliable, they allowed for high print speeds and were easy to use.

Arthur Conan Doyle was a big fan of modern technology and "planted" many of his characters at the typewriter. Printed, for example, by Edward Mallone from The Lost World. The novel does not specify which device the reporter is using, but this omission was corrected in the 1925 film adaptation of the novel. "Cinema" Mallone works on Corona, model 3.

Royal Desktop for Jeeves and Wooster

Remember the TV series Jeeves and Wooster, where Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry played a British aristocrat and his valet? So, the author of stories about the adventures of Jeeves and Wooster, writer Palem Granville Woodhouse also turned out to be a big fan of typewriters. His favorite is Royal Desktop. In the preface to one of his works, the author even described the moment when he finally fell in love with his writing device: Woodhouse recorded several pages of text using a phonograph, but when he heard his voice in the recording, in his opinion, "very nasty", he realized that for him only keys work.

Olivetti and Cormac McCarthy

Do you know what the original "Blood Meridian" was printed on and "Old men don't belong here"? On a typewriter! Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and playwright Cormac McCarthy For the past couple of decades, he has created his works exclusively on Olivetti Lettera 32, 1963. The typewriter is fragile in appearance, but she "squeezed out" several million words and more than ten works by McCarthy. By the way, it was recently sold at auction for 254 thousand dollars. But McCarthy got a new copy after that for 11 "bucks".

Halda Portable and Hemingway

Few people know that hemingway honed his literary skills not only in notebooks (and bars), but also on the Halda Portable typewriter. The writer said that the clatter of the keys reminded him of the sound of machine-gun bursts. He said this with skill: until 1941, he organized several operations against Nazi spies in Cuba, then spent almost 12 months in Madrid besieged by the Nazis, and to top it off, he worked as a war correspondent in London.

OFFTOP. Below are just typewriters. We did not find reliable information about the stardom of their owners. But their originality, popularity or uselessness is absolutely impossible to deny.

Lambert and the housewives

Such devices were quite popular in the early twentieth century. And nothing that there was no keyboard on them - with one hand the “driver” selected the desired letter on the panel, and with the other he pressed the lever - and the letter was imprinted on paper.