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L.T. Hanlon

Category: Chicago

16mm anticipation starts to set in

August 11, 2019August 12, 2019 L.T. HanlonLeave a comment

Photo of typewritten page containing the following text. Waiting for the film to come back. I spent far longer than I expected shooting test footage at Chicago's Oak Street Beach  yesterday. This was the first time I've used my vintage Cine—Kodak K—IOO 16mm camera since having it converted to shoot 16:9 widescreen. The test took several hours because I underestimated how picky I'd be in selecting what to photograph. At 24 frames per second, 100 feet only gives you about 2 minutes, 45 seconds of screen time, so you can't shoot with digital abandon. Another reason I spent so time on the beach is that at least a dozen people wanted to know about the camera. I guess it doesn't look like  something most folks see every day. The best conversation was with a couple of film students who asked interesting questions about how I calculated exposure. And now I'm experiencing something I haven't had to deal with for a long time: Waiting for the film to be processed and returned by mail. Talk about a blast from the past!

Photo of a bright yellow box made to hold Kodak 16mm film. Yellow is Kodak's longtimt corporate collor.

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Typewriters highlight museum exhibit

June 22, 2019June 22, 2019 L.T. Hanlon4 Comments
Photo of several people using some of the eight typewriters available for visitors to try out at the American Writers Museum in Chicago.
Test driving typewriters is a big attraction at Chicago’s American Writers Museum, which just opened its “Tools of the Trade” exhibit.

Oops! Never mind my comment below about the birthyear of Gwendolyn Brooks’ Hermes Rocket. I totally misread that as “1954.” It actually is from 1964 — and I wish I were of a similar vintage!

This photo of a typewritten page shows the following. Saturday, June 22, 2019, Chicago, USA. Smith-Corona Silent—Super; 1954; Pica. Museum exhibit is just my type. Thanks to my ex-boss Laura Strom, I got to accompany her to the preview of a new exhibit at Chicago's American Writers Museum called Tools of the Trade. It’s about typewriters mostly. In addition, visitors can test drive the actual models that  are featured in most of the displays. I especially enjoyed trying out an Olympia SG—1 and appreciated its snappy, powerful operation. Another outstanding model on view for testing was a Smith—Corona Super Sterling whose incredible response surprised me. As for the behind—glass typewriters once owned  by famous folks, the most amazing one was a 1902 Bar-Lock owned by Jack London. The thing looks like an Enigma machine — there are separate keys for upper- and lower-case letters. There's a 1926 Underwood 4-Bank once owned by Orson Welles that I found particularly interesting since its keys are so tiny that I can’t possibly imagine Orson managing to have plunged his sausage snappers onto them with any degree of accuracy. Other celebrity machines on view once were the prized possessions of Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Ray Bradbury, and Mae West. My favorite celebrity typewriter was the Hermes Rocket owned by Gwendolyn Brooks — made in 1954  just like me! There’s also a 1939 Royal Portable DeLuxe owned by Jerry Siegel, co—creator of Superman. This exhibit is definitely worth seeing.

Museum display shows Gwendolyn Brooks' Hermes Rocket typewriter. The typewriter is streamlined and graceful, just like Brooks' writing.

Museum display shows Jack London's 1902 Bar-Lock typewriter. This machine bears little resemblence to later typewriters and has separate keys for uppercase and lowercase letters, as well as keys for numbers seemingly scattered at random. It could pass for a spy coding and decoding device.

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