Talk:IBM Selectric

message: FRom my experiences with Selectrics, I'm pretty sure that the early Selectric II's didn't have correcting tape, but this article kinda blends the versions together.  Anyone have a good reference to doublecheck this? Kaszeta 12:41, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Selectric II vs. Correcting Selectric II 

message: The ability of typewriters in the 70s to insert superscripts has become an issue in the presidential campaign.  Somebody (anonymous, first and only wiki-contribution) whipped in here last night with a can of white out and removed the statement that the platen-adjustment on Selectric II's was for inserting superscripts.  I put it back in and now add a note here just to make sure no ax-grinder takes it back out.  I also web logged on this, if anyone's interested.  Ortolan88 15:20, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: What superscripting?  I see no superscripting here

message: Vertical line spacing:  A quick check of the stack of Selectrics shows that the half spacing appears to have been introduced with the Selectric II, but as an option.  My original Selectrics and some of my Selectric IIs have only full spacing.  The 1973 II Operating Instructions note that some models allow single or double line spacing (on carraige return), while others allow single, space-and-a-half, or double.  The mechanical differences include twice as many teeth on the detent wheel on the platen.
Selectric II models from 1971-1973 did not have the correcting feature.  Starting in 1973, with the introduction of the Correcting Selectric II, the correcting feature was available.  However, non-correcting models were still available, even in the time of the Selectric III (I have some cloth ribbon non-correcting Selectric III typewriters in my collection).
The Selectric does not appear to be designed to use superscripting per se, but the Symbol type balls have a set of numbers (0-9) of reduced point size, in the superscript position.  Per a mid 1970s IBM Selectric Type Styles brochure.
RS-232 Link:  I would like to see some documentation on this!  I know that the first use of the Selectric mechanism was as a terminal for mainframe computers, and that many machines were modified in the early days of the microcomputer revolution to be used as terminals.  But I am not aware of the widespread use of factory built Selectrics as RS-232 interface terminals.
Rollover is two-key, using a tube filled with balls that will let only one key be pressed at a time.  It's just a mechanical lockout system, but in use it feels like a buffer.
The Operating Instructions call the platen detent release lever the "line finder".
by jforb, 13 sep 04, the stamping doesn't seem to be working?
----
Okay, infrogmation, why did you delete the images?
Atlant 23:17, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Because there are good reliable sources, like this one, that say 1961.  Per WP:RS, your personal recollections cannot be used as sources on Wikipedia. Jeh (talk) 05:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

text: It wouldn't have been a Selectric, but possibly one of the earlier IBM electric models you used in 1957, such as the Model B.  These had conventional type hammers and a moving carriage, not the golfball mechanism of the Selectrics.  97.86.156.248 (talk) 19:12, 25 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some info from the Musuem 

message: Just a bit of idle speculation here, but does anyone else notice that the Selectric strike balls look a lot like the Wikipedia logo? -Litefantastic 14:59, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Golf balls and the Wikipedia logo

message: The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard article says that "the original ANSI Dvorak layout was available as a factory-supplied option on the original IBM Selectric typewriter". One slight problem is that the ANSI standard for Dvorak dates from 1983... So did ANSI just take the Selectric's Dvorak layout, or is the Dvorak article wrong? (After this has been cleared up, I think that a short sentence in this article mentioning Dvorak might be a good idea.) --StuartBrady (Talk) 02:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dvorak Simplified Keyboard 

message: The lengths of the carriages were 11", 13" and 15 inches w/the 13" and 15" carriages commonly refered to as 'letter' and 'legal' respectivly as that was the size of paper you could put in sideways. 
Only the selectric 1 came in all three sizes.  The Selectric 2 & 3 only came in 13" and 15".--Miconis 22:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: For Google's sake, let's call it "width"! Unfree (talk) 16:45, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Carriage length 

message: This was a limited edition Selectric model called the Personal Selectric which was a hybrid of the Selectric 2 & 3.  It only came in a 11" carriage and was also only single pitch.  It used the 72 charecter ball from the Selectric 2 but the "bicycle" ribbon from the Selectric 3. --Miconis 22:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  IBM Personal Selectric 

message: To say that the Selectric "was" an "influential design" (as opposed to "influential typewriter" or "model") in the opening sentence sounds off-topic, if not judgmental, something you might read in a trade magazine.  Its design might have influenced typewriter engineering, but who cares about that?  Its design does matter; its influence matters; but would you start an article "The Stradivarius violin was an influential violin design"?  It's of interest to violin makers, those who design, but to the vast majority of people, who listen to or play violins, it's the instrument itself, not its design, which is of interest.  A violin made by Stradivarius sounds good.  (I know that's judgmental, but it's not the writer's personal judgment.)  In today's world, new models of things come out every few minutes; you can't get the model you like, because it's yesterday's.  But the Steinway model B piano won't change, and can't be improved upon.  (The model C can be improved upon; that's what a model D is: an "upgraded" model C.  Or so I've heard.)  What about that classic jazzy electric organ (I forget the name) with the slidebars?  Who wants something "like" it?  You want the original.  Its design is trivia; it's the thing itself that matters.  The Selectric was more than a "design".  It was a phenomenon. Unfree (talk) 14:51, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed by substituting "model line" for "design". Unfree (talk) 16:17, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Influential design

message: Neither "thirt" nor "13" show up in the article, except in "IBM 1130".  Here in the discussion, 13 has come up in discussing platen widths.  But I recall hearing somewhere that the Selectric had a top speed of 13.5 characters/second.  True? Unfree (talk) 16:17, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Hard to say. The IBM 2741 version could and did achieve 14.1 char/sec (this is calculated from the serial bit rate and character format) but that was a ruggedized mechanism; it may have been slowed down a bit for reliability and that still might not be the mechanism's top speed. This person seems to be pretty knowledgeable about them and says "over 15 characters per second." I believe I read 15.5 somewhere, way back when. Whatever the limit is, it's enforced by the basic rotation rate of the motor and hence the main drive shaft after the clutch - the machine completes one print cycle per rotation of the main shaft and however fast the shaft turns, that's the limit. I do know that if you type fast enough, the clutch doesn't declutch between cycles, so the main shaft turns continuously, but this doesn't require typing at exactly the maximum speed - there's a small window. This was a critical factor in adapting an office Selectric for computer output, as constantly declutching and clutching would wear out the clutch very quickly, so you wanted to keep the machine busy.  Jeh (talk) 01:46, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: 13

message: "(occasionally known as the IBM Golfball typewriter)"  That's pure hogwash, isn't it?  Is it a verifiable registered IBM trademark? What's it doing with a capital G and a small t?  What was the nature of the "occasion"?  Even as a colloquialism, I doubt it's worth mentioning very prominently.  How often, and why, would one refer to a "golfball typewriter", and why mention IBM?  Can you imagine being in a room full of various typewriters and asking for the "IBM Golfball" one?  I bet "golfball" was never used except in reference to or describing the typeball, or to tell somebody to look for a machine with a black golfball in it. Unfree (talk) 17:16, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I worked in many places with Selectrics and heard the term only very very rarely and absolutely never from anyone from IBM. (IBM was a very no-nonsense organization.) Jeh (talk) 01:49, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Golfball

message: The article says
:The keyboard and printing mechanism were mechanically separated (so that keystrokes do not necessarily result in immediate printing)
but I seem to remember that, in the IBM 2741, the connection was mechanical.  The online 2741 manual says on page 9, in the section "IBM 2741 Keyboard" of the chapter "IBM 2741 COMMUNICATIONS TERMINAL DESCRIPTION", that "the 2741 keyboard is physically identcal to the standard IBM Selectric® typewriter".  There was a "Print Inhibit" feature that allowed the host to put the 2741 into a mode where "all printable characters received or keyed at the 2741 are recognized and cause the print element to function, but no printing takes place", but, as I remember from that feature's use in Multics to suppress the echo of passwords, it worked by the high-tech mechanism of raising a small bar that prevented the golfball from striking the ribbon or the platen.
I didn't use an IBM 1050 as much, but I have the impression that, in the 1050, the keyboard and print mechanism weren't mechanically connected, and echo suppression could be done purely electronically. Guy Harris (talk) 06:40, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: From my further recollection I believe you are correct on all points for the 2741, and related machines like the Mag Card Selectric. On the 1050 series the keyboard and printer were manufactured, packaged and, in some cases, offered as separate units in the first place (in the "remote terminal" version of the 1050 you could configure a system with printer only).  But that sentence fragment is about converting a Selectric, so the 1050 example doesn't apply. I'll remove that bit. IIRC I wrote it in the first place, I don't have a problem with pulling it. Jeh (talk) 20:37, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Selectric terminals - mechanical vs. electronic connection between keyboard and printer (1050 vs. 2741)?

message: I picked up a Selectric II at a garage sale that reads "IBM Selectric II" on the label without the word "Correcting" but it does have the correcting feature. Does anyone have an explanation for this?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.126.174.176 (talk) 04:53, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Either - Perhaps in later years IBM only offered the "Correcting" version and so dropped that designation from the machine's name. Or - It's possible you got a "refurbished" machine that has a cover from a non-correcting model. Both of the above are pure speculation. Jeh (talk) 20:39, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correcting feature 

message: I just put a video in wiki commons []that shows the IBM Selectric type element in motion - using a high speed camera - and which discusses the whiffletree mechanical digital to analog converter used to control the ball. I am the author of this video and so cannot attach it to this wiki page without a conflict of interest ... I leave up to those editing this page. If anyone has comments about what would make it more appropriate for wikipedia let me know ... might be able to revision the vids currently being released to meet wikipedia needs. These are, of course, licensed under creative commons ShareAlike 3.0.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hammack (talk • contribs) 22:08, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Video in wiki commons showing Selectric Type Element in Motion 

message: Could someone please provide the date production stopped.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.51.120.145 (talk) 15:24, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I added info on the Wheelwriter's introduction in 1984.  Selectric production presumably stopped around then, but I haven't found any source that gives a specific date.--agr (talk) 20:31, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  End Date 

message: Maybe this is too trivial to include, but how about a comment on the noise the machines made?  It was loud and quite different from conventional electrics and manuals. Kdammers (talk) 10:31, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I too remember the noise, not of the machine running, but the tremendous pounding of each ball-strike. The Selectric was heavy, and the pounding vibrations could damage the common wooden desks and their spring-loaded, swing-down typing platforms. Do I remember the pressure being settable for multiple-carbons? This is 1964–67 high-school I'm trying to recall, so Selectric I era. A current neighbor who did compositor work at home in '69, reports no noise issue. I would have thought noise was noteworthy in the article; maybe not, though. John Sinclair (talk) 22:21, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, there was a little lever with a small round red knob with five possible positions for the impact force. However the notion of damaging a wooden desk's swing-down typing platform seems to me to be preposterous. I could see that happening on a manual typer, where you're pushing down to make the typebars move, but on the Selectric (or any other electric for that matter) there is no such downward impact at all. It is all typebar or element against platen, and this is resisted by the frame of the machine, but it is in the fore-to-aft direction, not downward. Also, consider that the impact force, even set to maximum, was not even as great as on a conventional typewriter; the Selectric was known for not being able to cut carbon copies (or mimeo stencils!) all that well.... though this could be improved by picking a fine-lined font rather than the heavier Courier. I also agree with .82 above that it was quieter than a conventional typewriter too. Probably those desks had already been damaged by years of use with manuals. Jeh (talk) 00:11, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

text: Another feature in this area - the Selectric II was available with a transparent "noise shield" that covered most of the carriage area. However I distinctly remember a Consumer Reports article on the machine commenting that they didn't find it particularly noisy without the shield, nor much less so with it.Jeh (talk) 21:43, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Noise

message: It's arguable that much of this is more about the IBM 2741 than about the Selectric, and maybe should be moved to that article. Jeh (talk) 21:41, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: As is described at IBM 2741 there were actually two different line codes available, "correspondence" (elements were interchangeable with ordinary office Selectrics) and "PTT/BCD" (elements were interchangeable with the ones used on e.g. a S/360's 1050 console typewriter). A 2741 had to be ordered for one or the other. 2741's certainly did implement "print inhibit". It's described in the IBM manual, referenced from this article. The control codes to do it are called "bypass" and "restore". Perhaps the OS you were using wasn't written to take advantage of it. Jeh (talk) 21:18, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

text: Who is claiming that anything is EBCDIC? The article says ... oh, I see. The second mention of EBCDIC. WP:SOFIXIT :) Jeh (talk) 02:59, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

text: Re the "bypass" command, I didn't write that portion. But again, it's documented in the 2741 manual (which is linked from the mention) and not mentioned as an option. And the character codes for "bypass" and "restore" are certainly in the codeset (also in the manual, and in the IBM 2741 article). Why is this such a point of contention? Jeh (talk) 03:08, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Selectric as computer terminal" section 

message: In Rėgis Roinsard's film Populaire (2012), character Louis Échard shares his idea for a 'golfball' with friend Bob Taylor, who offers it to an American manufacturer at the World Typing Championship. When asked why the French would offer this idea to Americans Bob Taylor, (American born, naturalised French), offers "France for love, America for business!".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.137.58.249 (talk) 12:00, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  In Popular Culture 

message: There is a Wikipedia entry for "Wheelwriter", but it is just a redirect to this article, and there is scant information about the Wheelwriter here. I don't have much direct experience with the Wheelwriter, because I moved on to a different job, with mostly non-IBM equipment. But it seems to me that there is enough historical information for a separate (probably much smaller) article about IBM's successor to the Selectric. Is anybody up to starting such an article?  Reify-tech (talk) 19:30, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I paid little attention to the Wheelwriter series, but it seems to me it was not particularly significant. Certainly it did not not revolutionize the typewriter business the way the Selectric did. It was also not a new mechanical concept as the Selectric was; it was a late entry to the category of typewriters built on a daisy-wheel mechanism, a trend that was already well started (by Xerox, Brother, and others) while IBM was still selling Selectric III's and Electronic Typewriters to a shrinking market. Maybe we need an article on "Daisy wheel typewriter" to cover them, or maybe these machines should be covered in a section of the Typewriter article, or Daisy wheel printer. Jeh (talk) 22:56, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  IBM Wheelwriter article needed 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Reference #25 now goes to a placeholder website.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.130.68.55 (talk) 00:01, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for letting us know. I've replaced the dead link with a link to an archived copy. 28bytes (talk) 01:40, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link 25 is dead 

message: My mother had one of these in the early 1980s (with the correction ribbon). Not mentioned in this article (that I could find quickly), these things were real brutes. If a poltergeist was levitating your office desk, one of these babies put an end to that in short order. 
The internal mechanism had quite a bit of recoil, but due to the incredible mass and stiffness of the steel enclosure, it didn't actually rock your desk very much. There was very much a Howitzer-style recoil issue that the design had to somehow resolve. 
The Selectric was also unkind to "burst mode" touch typing, where familiar words burst out of your fingers almost like a complete pattern. I've been touch typing almost my entire life: 30 wpm on an Underwood at age 14, a manual typewriter with a shift key so heavy and with such a deep throw I used to call it the pinky-finger pole vault (poor technique buckled the last knuckle on my youthful pinky finger more than once). At this point in life, especially during email (idiomatic), full words pour out in rapid pulses. But you can't do this on the Selectric as I recall it due to the mechanical interlock. Far better to pace yourself to a uniform typing speed. You had to be pretty metronomic to achieve typing speeds anywhere near 90 wpm as I recall it. I doubt I ever got over 60 wpm on this beast, though I now burst easily up to 120 wpm on an electronic keyboard with a completely different typing cadence. 
I found the Selectric much better suited to "production" typing at the pace of known material than composition at the pace of your imagination over your desk. 
Much of that is mere opinion, of course, but the industrial "heft" of this machine could certainly be mentioned in the article. 
Psychologically, for me at least, the correction function was a disaster. Instead of worrying about getting you words straight, one became far too fixated on obtaining "clean" copy in the first pass. It would have been far better to leave mistyped words behind—starting each mistyped word over again—and then to go back later with a pen an cross out the corpses. The worst pages could have been retyped later. But as an adolescent, I lacked the judgement to figure this out. I ended up doing my essays with a pen, which I found unbearably slow. Seven times out of ten, when handwriting a long word with barely any stem (such as "unforgivably"), one or more letters would go missing en route as my brain raced ahead to finish the sentence. And this would often happen again if I crossed the mess out to rewrite it properly (though if I slowed myself down enough to voice each letter out loud, I could finally defeat this: you en ef oh are gee eye vee eh bee el why). My "missing letters" handicap goes away above 60 wpm, which is not achievable with a pen. Once I got my first computer with a printer, I've never used my cursive handwriting since for anything other than signing my name. — MaxEnt 16:16, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  On upgrading from pole vault to Howitzer