Hello NV87148

I inherited my grandfather’s typewriter from my mom. The longer (unverified) story is that my great-grandfather (Ynocencio, my maternal grand mom’s dad) worked in an import company in Buenos Aires (Palmer & Co.) and there was a fire in a warehouse. Everything was destroyed, and among those unfortunate items was a batch of typewriters. My great-grandfather was a handyman, so he salvaged pieces from one machine and another and built this one that is sitting next to me:

Somehow, it ended up in my mom house. And it was the machine my grandfather (Eugenio, my mom’s dad) used to write his poems, stories, and essays.

My mom would always tell me about how Eugenio would stay late, writing (like I’m doing now). The sound of the keyboard piercing through the night.

For a few years, it was lost. It had been sent for repairs, and never reclaimed. I had been fascinated by my grandfather’s writing, so I asked my mom and dad about the typewriter. My father remembered the old address of the mechanic, so one afternoon we drove there, and ….voila! There he was. The old mechanic, still alive. And yes, he had the old typewriter. Recovered from oblivion for the second time.

In late 2017 I went to Buenos Aires, visited my parents, and my mom decided to give me the typewriter. And I brought it home. I changed the ink spools (that I got from Amazon), and here we are, writing this.

The machine has no visible marks or brands, so I decided to do some research. Remington was my first guess, and after some googling, I found a perfect match for it: it is a Remington Portable Model 1. Some more research led me to the Typewriter Database. And after some cleaning, I found the serial number: NV87148:

Turns out, our adventurous typewriter is 90 years old, was born in July 1928:

NV87148:

• N: Model 1
• V: July
• 8: 1928
• 7148th machine built that month

It still works perfectly, and perhaps more amazingly its keyboard is highly compatible with its distant cousin in the future, one reason I can type (almost) as fast and double as loud.