Hermes 3000
Make of typewriter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Hermes 3000 is a lightweight, segment-shifted portable typewriter manufactured by Paillard-Bolex.[1][2] "Bulbous" and "angular" in shape,[2]it came with a fitted, hard-shell removable cover. The machines were built in Yverdon, Switzerland, by Paillard S.A.[3]
The Hermes 3000 was introduced in 1958[4] as a successor to the Hermes 2000.[2] The original Model 1 was produced until 1966; with subsequent design modifications to the external casing and a variety of subtle changes in colour finishes, the Hermes 3000 was manufactured into the 1980s.[4] Although it was a portable machine, the Hermes 3000 had a few deluxe features, such as a "beyond the margins" key, which could also be depressed to free any jammed keys and return them to their resting position.[5] The typewriters predominantly came in a light green (occasionally described as a mint[6] or "sea-foam green") colour.[2]
In popular culture
William Kotzwinkle's 1972 novel was named Hermes 3000 after the machine.[7] During his acceptance speech for Best Screenplay (Brokeback Mountain) at the 2006 Golden Globes, author Larry McMurtry specifically mentioned his Hermes 3000, stating: "Most heartfelt, I thank my typewriter. My typewriter is a Hermes 3000, surely one of the noblest instruments of European genius. It has kept me for thirty years out of the dry embrace of the computer".[2][8][9]
Other notable users of the machine are Sam Shepard, Eugène Ionesco and Stephen Fry.[2] Beat writer Jack Kerouac wrote his final novel, Vanity of Duluoz,[10] on the Hermes 3000 in 1966. In a March 2018 auction at Bonhams in London, the Hermes 3000 on which Sylvia Plath had typed her only novel — The Bell Jar — in 1962 was sold for £26,000[11] ($46,071).[note 1] In 2013, in an appearance on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, actor Tom Hanks named the Hermes 3000 as the luxury item he would choose to take with him.[14][note 2]
Notes
- Described in The Financial Times as "a mint-green Hermes 3000 typewriter, lightly smudged, bought in Boston in 1959",[12] The Guardian later noted that the Bonhams' sale placed the value of Plath's Hermes "comfortably above Jack Kerouac’s, also a green Hermes, which pulled in $22,500 (£16,000), and John Updike’s $4,375 (£3,110)".[13]
- Hanks has been described as a "connoisseur" of typewriters, possessing 250 of the machines.[14] In a 2013 opinion piece for The New York Times, Hanks described the Hermes range as the "Cadillac of typewriters".[15]