Transcript

Hi everybody.

Tom Hanks here in my gorgeous theater of typewriting.

(upbeat music)

I'm now gonna walk you through

essentially the, how to change a ribbon

on a Hermes 3000.

No typewriter has ever been made

that is better than a Hermes.

Made in Switzerland.

Distributed in the U.S.A. from

a place in Linden, New Jersey.

I have a feeling that place is out of business.

So, let's say, we're pretending now,

that this ribbon don't work the way I want it.

Some I'm gonna change the ribbon.

How do you do that?, you say.

Well, you tear the top off of that.

You will get ink on your fingers.

Deal with it.

Look at the complicated workings of this typewriter.

Hammers, keys, all this.

And, lo and behold, the ribbon.

Alright, it is time now to replace the ribbon.

So what it do is, you just go ahead

and keep spinning it until

most of the ribbon is onto one spool.

I will take it out of this guy.

I will steer it out of that little guy.

And lo and behold, wallah, undo the snaps.

This ribbon, you can chuck it, you can throw it away

or you can re-ink it.

Alright, so that's the dead ribbon.

Let me, I knocked over this good new ribbon,

and the first thing I'll have to do

is untangle it, ala like a hunk of spaghetti.

(fast forward squealing)

(upbeat music)

Okay, so now you see I have essentially a little car here.

There's no twist in the ribbon.

It is ready to go.

So, I take one end of this and

I place it onto the little post.

And I will place this on the other post.

There, there we go.

All I do now is, tuck the ribbon in between the guides.

You see I've done it on one side right there.

Now I will do it on the other side as well.

The ribbon has now been replaced.

Let me do the incredible, incredibly complex

thing of putting the hood back on this car.

There we go.

Just had to get the carriage out of the way.

And there it is, it's back in place.

Just listen to this, alright?

(keys clacking)

(ding)

(keys clacking)

That's the sound of typing.

It's the cadence of creativity.

It's the percussion of punctuation.

That sound, you'll get lost in it.

It becomes a rhythm.

It becomes a music that will not only tell you,

and the other people in the other room,

that you're working.

It will also spur you on to other areas of imagination

that you will eventually create and record forever

on your typewriter.

(applause)