Olivetti Lettera 22

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A Lettera 22, first model

The Olivetti Lettera 22 is a portable mechanical typewriter designed by Marcello Nizzoli in 1949 or, according to Telecom Italia (the current owner of Olivetti), 1950.

This typewriter used to be very popular in Italy and still has many fans. It was awarded the Compasso d'oro prize in 1954; in 1959, the Illinois Technology Institute chose the Lettera 22 as the best design product of the last 100 years.

The typewriter is sized about 27x37x8 cm (with the carriage return 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 weight may limit portability somewhat.

1 Mechanics
2 Keyboard
- 2.1 Layout
  - 2.1.1 Normal
  - 2.1.2 Shifted

[edit] Mechanics

The Lettera 22 is a downstrike typebars 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 carbon copies).

Ribbon movement, which also occurs at every keypress, automatically revers direction when there is no ribbon left on either wheel; 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.

[edit] Keyboard

The keyboard is in the QZERTY layout(although Lettera 22's which were sold in other parts of Europe used the QWERTZ layout), as typical of Italian machines (excluding modern computer keyboards). Aside from the typing keys, the keyboard includes a Space bar, two Shift keys, one Caps lock key, a Backspace 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 uppercase 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; however, these characters usually aren't found in today's keyboards, either.