Due to a perceived need for uniformity in the office environment, the vast majority of office electronic typewriters are grey/beige. Olivetti opted for uniformity of a different kind, at least initially, by taking a leaf from Henry Ford’s book (“Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants, so long as it is black.”).

“Black will make the machine compatible with many different working environments and is the best choice for visually reducing its volume.”

Mario Bellini, 1979

Sharp also chose black for its PA series portables, but on the whole portable electronic typewriters were, like their compact and professional counterparts, as grey/beige as Erik Honeker.

“Der Osten ist Rot.“

Uniformity, conformity, the dictates of a totalitarian state rather than a free market economy – and yet it took a former Eastern-bloc manufacturer, Optima GmbH, a spin-off company of the former VEB Robotron, to show a little imagination when it came to colour.

After the collapse of Communism they may, perhaps, have taken to heart the advice of American computer designer Jef Raskin:

“There must not be a plethora of configurations. It is better to offer a variety of case colors than to have variable amounts of memory. It is better to manufacture versions in Early American, Contemporary, and Louis XIV than to have any external wires beyond a power cord.”¹

The East was red, but that was before it embraced the West and a wider colour spectrum.

Grey/beige was not dispensed with entirely of course.

The deep pink (mostly) Optima SP-50 (pictured above) is one of a later SP (SP-50, 51, 54, 55) series of models first released in 1994. The original SP (SP-18, 20, 20-1, 20-2, 22, 22-1, 22 TM, 23, 24, 25, 26, 26 MC, 26 TC, 28) series were released between 1991 and 1993, before being re-released as typewriters of the SP-520 series with a different body shape from 1994 onwards.

The serial number on the SP-50 doesn’t suggest a year of manufacture:

The serial number on a blue SP-50 (pictured below) is 2266678, while my (older) Commodore Fashion Typeline 32 ² has a serial number 2141781 …

A grey/beige SP-18 sighting has the year 1991 (which coincides with the expected year of manufacture) on a sticker located alongside the fold-away handle on the underside of the machine:

The sticker alongside the more colourful handle on my SP-50 is less helpful, although a change from Optima Burotechnik GmbH, Erfurt to Optima Schreibmaschinenwerk Erfurt GmbH, points to a contraction of the business before a final bankruptcy in 2004 and makes me think its year of manufacture is later than I thought (i.e. early 2000s rather than mid-to-late 1990s).

This particular SP-50 is a special edition “tastaquick” machine with a blank keyboard (which might also help to date it). In Germany, tastaquick® …. die andere Methode is a specially developed, copyrighted learning method for 10-finger typing.

According to “Type Like a Badass: Go Blank” https://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/type-like-a-badass-go-blank/

When you’re learning to touch-type, the letters printed on your keycaps are kind of like the training wheels. Real proficiency in touch-typing means that you don’t have to look at the letter, because you rely on muscle memory to find the keys. If you want to dramatically improve your typing skills, it may be time to remove those training wheels and use blank keycaps.

Perhaps these brightly coloured e.t.s were meant to encourage a younger generation of would-be touch typists? Not a bad idea, except these days you’d need a good supply of Optima SP series (Olivetti Praxis 20/ETP-50) compatible ribbons, which are not easy to find.

Like the Gabriele TopType, the SP 50 has a power key which is integral to the keyboard rather than a conventional power switch:

Tired of deep pink? Here’s a blue SP-50 “tastaquick”:

¹ “The Macintosh Project: Selected Papers from Jef Raskin”, May 1979 (https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/primary/docs/bom/anthrophilic.html)

² Optima SP 18, 20 and 24 portable electronic typewriters were also sold as the Commodore Fashion Typeline Style 12, 12 Plus, and 32, respectively. The SP 20 and 24 were also sold as the Type Artist and Type Artist MD.