Adler Special Adlerwerke, Frankfurt am Main · full-size office typewriter · service manual dated October 1962

The Adler Special is a standard typewriter. That is the old trade word for a full-size office machine, as opposed to a portable. It was made by the Adlerwerke in Frankfurt, a company that started out building bicycles under Heinrich Kleyer and kept his name on its manuals.

This page is built from the factory service manual: the English edition, 116 pages, print code A 415/1062. That code dates it to October 1962.

It is a segment-shift, front-strike machine with 44 type bars and a four-row QWERTZ keyboard. Photographs of machines like it run from 1953 to 1970, so the design was made for a long time.

Two numbers set everything else. The keys sit 19.05 mm apart. The carriage moves 2.6 mm per character, which is 9.77 characters to the inch. The manual calls it ten.

Segment shift. To type a capital, the whole segment lifts. That is the half-ring that holds all 44 type bars. It rises on links and lands on a stop, so the capital on each slug hits the platen instead of the small letter. You can hear it: a clunk under the keys before the strike, and a duller one when you let go.

Front strike. Each key pulls a type bar up out of the segment and over. The slug lands on the front of the platen, where you can see it. The bar swings about 117 degrees on the way.

Escapement. As the slug lands, a trip releases the escapement one tooth and the carriage steps 2.6 mm to the left. The manual sets the trip about 6 mm before the platen and the escapement wheel 0.5 mm off the body.

Ribbon. A vibrator lifts the ribbon into the slug's path for each strike and drops it again so you can read the line. The manual gives 9.15 mm at rest and 22.15 mm lifted.

The machine on this page was built in Blender from the manual's drawings, part by part: 1,580 objects, with drivers so a key pressed on the sheet moves its own lever and type bar. The mechanism is measured. The outside is derived from the cover drawing, scaled to the key pitch, because the manual says little about the body.

Maker	Adlerwerke vorm. Heinrich Kleyer AG, Frankfurt am Main [M] manual
Type	Standard (full-size office) typewriter, front strike, segment shift [M]
Keyboard	Four rows, QWERTZ, 44 type bars, 19.05 mm key pitch [M]
Pitch	2.6 mm per character, 9.77 characters to the inch [M] s.m. 161-1
Carriage travel	265 mm, as built [D]
Ring-and-cylinder gauge	25.3 mm [M] s.m. 501-1
Ribbon vibrator	9.15 mm at rest, 22.15 mm lifted [M] s.m. 241-1a
Tab stops	46, left-hand [M] s.m. 312-1
Weight	About 15 kg. A class figure; the manual gives none [C]
Manual	Service manual, English edition, print code A 415/1062, October 1962 [M]

[M] measured from the manual · [D] derived from a measured figure · [C] an estimate. The build uses the same three marks.

Heavy, the way a good office machine is. The key travels a long way down, the bar swings a wide arc, and the slug lands with a 15 kg frame behind it. The return is a long throw that ends on the margin stop with a thump.

The strikes, spaces, returns and the paper feed on this page are recordings of a real Adler Special: eight strikes, three spaces, two returns. The engine rotates through them so nothing repeats. The bell and the shift are rendered from the machine's figures because they were not recorded. Every other typewriter in Type Write Now uses a rendered voice built from its own model. This is the one you can compare to the real thing.

Click a key on the machine or type on the sheet. Nothing you type here is saved.

The Adler Special is the first machine every writer starts on. Type Write Now is a daily writing habit: ten minutes a day, an exercise, a streak. The machine is the desk you do it at. You unlock other typewriters by showing up. The Olivetti Lettera 32 comes with a run of consecutive days. The rest are further up the ladder.

It is a simulation. You type on your keyboard and the machine is drawn on the screen. What you get is the part of a typewriter that changes how you write: a page that fills from the top, a bell at the end of the line, no paste, and the sound of a letter landing.