At the time of going to press, there are two Olivetti Lexikon 80 Elettrica typewriters on the TWDB. Each listed separately: a 1958 ‘Elettrica’ owned by Uwe Wachtendorf, and a 1959 ’80 E’ sighting by Guillermo Fernandez Boan:
These typewriters either had standard tabulation or a row of decimal tabulation keys …
Image from il Laboratorio-museo Tecnologica@mente
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Wilfred A Beeching (in his book Century of the Typewriter) says the first year of production was 1955. Guillermo and the TWDB tell us:
“Short lived, the Lexikon 80 E production span ran between the years 1956 and 1961.”
In fact, the Lexikon 80 E production span was a lot longer than that.
I know this because I have (in my collection) an ad for a Lexikon Elettrica which is printed on the reverse side of the cover of the July 1952 edition of Le Vie d’ Italia …
Whatever floats your boat …
According to the Finish Typewriter Museum, the Lexikon Elettrica (80 E) was first produced in 1948, however given this was the year that the non-electric Lexikon came out, I’d prefer to believe the Italians (Olivetti: Storia di un’ impresa) when they tell us:
“Between 1948 and 1960, Olivetti sold approximately 800,000 Lexikon 80 typewriters, including the electric Lexikon 80E, first produced in 1950.”
The Olivetti: Storia di un’ impresa site (link above) also features a rare derivative of the Lexikon 80 E, the Olivetti 84 which was first produced in 1961.
The fotogalleria has other interesting specimens, including this Olivetti Forum:
On the Lexikon 80E, the back of the machine protrudes out beyond the back of the carriage, to accommodate the large electric motor …
Here’s an eBay sighting from last year (I forget which country) …
An interesting machine to have in your collection, even if only on paper.
(Above) From my collection and a February 1956 edition of Le Vie del Mondo magazine
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Collector and Typewriter Talk admin Uwe Wachtendorf owns the real thing, and gives his first impressions of the Lexikon 80E here.
Congrats Richard! Looking forward to hearing more about it via your blog. 🙂
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I finally got one of these! Rare find in the US.
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I’ve been fascinated by the 80E for a few years. Its shape is just so weird and enticing. I got to try one in London, and I experienced Guillermo’s in person when I was in Buenos Aires this February. The 80E weighs a ton, so it is not the most practical typewriter for a collector … especially not if it has to be imported from Italy.
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hmm, one bit of extremely useful data here is that the 80E started in 1950 – which, since we have production numbers for 56-61, it seems likely that approximations can be made from 1955 back to 1950 fairly reasonably. Heck, it would make pretty good sense if the extrapolation took us to 1000000 as a starting number in 1950: that’s less than 40k units to spread among 5 years when they were building about 13k a year after that. works out pretty good, actually.
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