Hammond Model 1
The oldest machine in the collection, and one of the machines behind the type element project. It arrived complete in the ways that matter: original split shuttle, wood base, and wood cover, all intact.
| Manufacturer | Hammond |
|---|---|
| Model | Model 1 |
| Year | 1890 |
| Serial No. | 15058 |
| Size | Standard |
| Drive | Manual |
| Layout | QWERTY |
| Status | Original, uncleaned, fully functional |
| Acquired | 15 September 2024 |
The uncommon part: a QWERTY keyboard
The obvious oddity here is the keyboard. Most Model 1s came with Hammond’s own Ideal layout — a curved two-row keyboard arranged to Hammond’s argument about letter frequency — and were sold in a decorative wooden cabinet. This one is QWERTY, on a wood base with a wood cover rather than in a cabinet.
That combination is what made it worth buying. An Ideal-keyboard Model 1 in a cabinet is the configuration you expect to find; this isn’t.
The split shuttle
The Hammond doesn’t use typebars. Its type sits on a shuttle — a curved element carrying the whole character set, which swings into position so the hammer can strike the paper against it from behind. The Model 1 uses a split shuttle, in two pieces rather than the single-piece shuttles of later Hammonds like the Multiplex.
It is the most delicate part of the machine by a wide margin: intricate, precise, and carrying fine type detail on a thin section. It is also, predictably, the part that is most often broken. A Model 1 with an undamaged original split shuttle is meaningfully rarer than a Model 1.
The originals appear to be vulcanised rubber, which explains both the crispness of the type and the failure mode — vulcanised rubber embrittles with age, so a shuttle that has survived 135 years intact has been lucky as much as careful.
How the shuttles were actually made is described in Scientific American, Vol. 74, No. 10, 7 March 1896, which is close to contemporary with this machine — six years after it left the factory, while the Model 1 was still in production.
Reference machine for the printed shuttles
This machine is one of those I designed and iterated the 3D-printed Hammond Model 1 type elements against. Having an intact original to measure, fit, and compare against is the difference between a part that drops in and a part that nearly does — and since broken shuttles are the normal condition for these machines, an undamaged reference is worth more than a spare.
The printed replacements are the practical answer to a part that can’t be bought, can’t easily be repaired once cracked, and was made from a material that was never going to last indefinitely.
Condition
Original and uncleaned, and fully functional as it stands. It did not need cleaning to work — it worked when it arrived, which is not the usual way these turn up. All the roller rubber is original and intact.
That’s a deliberate position rather than a backlog. A machine that already works is a machine there is no good argument for stripping down, and “original, uncleaned” is a condition you can only lose once.
The feet
The one thing that did need doing was the feet.
The machine sits on its wood base in countersunk holes, and the rubber feet set its height in those holes — get that wrong and the machine sits too low and fouls its own mechanisms. When it arrived the original rubber was squashed flat, with extra padding underneath that may or may not have been original. Even with the padding it still sat too low and interfered.
New rubber feet, cut to set it at the correct height in the countersinks, fixed it. That is the entire extent of what has been changed on this machine.
The shuttle in operation
The shuttle’s motion is the part that doesn’t survive description. It has to rotate to the right character and be struck from behind, once per keystroke, at typing speed — which is also why a part this fine-sectioned fails as often as it does.
Type specimen
Gallery
Period documentation
The contemporary source on how these shuttles were manufactured is Scientific American, Vol. 74, No. 10, dated 7 March 1896 — the issue is catalogued on JSTOR.