FREE is very affordable … but unfortunately someone got there before me.
By a strange coincidence, the day before this FREE Brother 9300 ad got posted on Gumtree, I’d been researching the same typewriter following an eBay sighting.
This is an electronic daisy wheel typewriter with the same moveable carriage and fixed typing element as Brother’s JP-11 and JP-14 golf ball typewriters. Odd that it’s a JP-16 and lumped with the CE Series wedges, but who can argue with JP-16 stamped on the underside of the plastic lid?
eBay sighting: Serial number E21590666 dates it to May of 1982.
Which ties-in nicely with this ad in The Age newspaper (Melbourne, Australia) dated 3rd May 1982 …
And right alongside the Brother ad, a “Typewriter Bonanza” ad (note the apartheid-era article above it) …
I’m not sure IBM were enjoying much of a “bonanza” in 1982. They were probably wishing Brother would “cut it out”.
Here’s a Brother Electronic 8300 (German eBay sighting):
If you look closely you can just make out the daisy wheel in this pic …
But if in doubt, note the daisy wheel motif to the right of the keyboard …
eBay sighting: Serial number M21030902 dates it to December 1982.
JP-16
8 responses to “Affordable Electronics”
[…] also produced Electronic 8300 and 9300 daisywheel typewriters with moveable carriages just like the ones on these JP-11 and JP-14 golf ball […]
It looks like the JP-14 also has a carriage that moves the paper, rather than having the element ball carrier move!
The smallest and lightest *good* electric typebar machine I’ve ever encountered is the early 70’s Royal Apollo. These Silver-Seiko made machines are quiet as a mouse (even after like 40 years) and are actually very portable and much lighter than, say, a SCM electric portable like the Coronamatic.
Heh, I did just notice that the Brother 8300 appears to be the only daisywheel I’ve ever seen where the carriage moves the paper, like a conventional typewriter, rather than having the typewheel carrier move, like just about all other daisywheels. Weird!
Steve, I was given a Brother Super 7800 (with manual) some months ago and plan to post on it soon, You are welcome to come here and take away as many electrics and wedges as you can handle. Probably as many as 20 here gathering dust. They will eventually have to be dumped.
The Olympia Monica Electric portable typewriter is the smallest package.
Thanks Joe (and Ted). I think it’s important to differentiate between “electric” and “electronic”. As Ted points out the electronic mini-wedges are the smallest, whereas electric typewriters are necessarily bigger. The smallest “electric” (non-electronic) typewriter? That’s a good question to ponder!
The thermal electronic Brother EP series is about the smallest you’re likely to get, Joe. (or a Canon Typestar or Panasonic/Sharp equivalent). Small and light, but thermal and require batteries for portable operation.
Gotta say, I am warmed by the fact that people know the differences between the Brother JP models now, and are actively looking for missing examples 😀
I haven’t studied the world of electrics that much, but did own a Smith-Corona, back in the 1980s. Do you have any sense of what were the smallest electric typewriters? I was thinking about the Tandy model 100 laptop computer from that same era, and was wondering if there had been an electric typewriter with similar diminutive proportions.
~Joe