1964 receipt for my grandmother's Olympia SM3 typewriter

When Mom, Adriane and I moved from Florida into my great-grandmother's and grandmother's house on Oak Crest Lane in Wallingford in 1986, the upstairs room that had been used for storage and my grandmother's desk/office supplies was converted into my bedroom. It was absolutely filled with office supplies at first: pens, pencils, paperclips, tape dispensers, notepads, gummed reinforcements, staplers and much more. I still have a stapler and tape dispenser from that bedroom. Probably one or two other things, too.

There was also the typewriter that belonged to my grandmother, Helen Chandler Adams Ingham (1919-2003), and today's post features the receipt for when she originally purchased it. It was an Olympia SM3 and it cost $65 in 1964, which is the equivalent of a whopping $677 today! I remember using it for some schoolwork and hobby stuff, although at some point I would have fully converted to my Commodore 64's dot-matrix printer. Later, I had a lightweight electric typewriter that I took with me to Penn State and that I used for the final Steve Jeltz Fan Club newsletter. (And, yes, I STILL need to do the damn post on the history of the Jeltz Fan Club.)

The typewriter was purchased at Central Typewriter Exchange on 3433 Walnut Street in Philadelphia. I can't find anything specifically about that business, but maybe someone who knows something will see this post and leave a comment. I have to think this is one of its few receipts still in existence. The purchase came with a guarantee for one year on shop parts and labor, according to the cursive note added to the receipt. 

There is a lot of information about Olympia SM3 typewriters online. On Paper Blogging, Michelle Geffken writes of "the gorgeous lines of a stylish typewriter body, with the heavy-duty work capacity that is true of all machines in the German Olympia line, the Olympia SM3." Geffken adds that Olympia SM stands for Schreibmaschine Mittelgroß or Medium-sized Typewriter, and that 800,000 were made between 1953 and 1957. It was apparently a favored typewriter of the likes of Harlan Ellison, John Updike and Patricia Highsmith. Geffken has a whole subsection called the Typewriter Diaries that you'll definitely want to check out if that's your jam.

Meanwhile, on Typewriter Review, Daniel Marleau describes the Olympia SM3 as "a reliable workhorse, from a solid body construction to keys that provide good response and feedback. When you first sit at this thing, you marvel at the beauty and how it exudes a certain egalitarian work ethic. These machines were meant for typing — lots of typing. Rolling paper in for the first time, a reassuring clicking sound is made, like loading a weapon for words. The platen moves with rigid precision."

I'm sure I have a photo of Beembom's Olympia SM3 somewhere in the family photos, but that would involve a search and will have to be a post for another day.