Ko-Rec-Type, Part No. 3

[The secret word is ploks. 2 1/16″ × 1 3/8″ × 3/8″. Click for a larger view.]

This sort of stuff was once ubiquitous. Make a typing error, take out a little piece of correction film, hold between paper and ribbon, hit the offending key, and the mistake is gone. The result: a neater and more discreet fix than what could be had with correction fluid, aka Liquid Paper, aka Wite-Out.

I’ve had this little box of Executive Ko-Rec-Type Typewriter Correction Film for many years — probably from the early 1980s, when I was a graduate student banging out papers on an Olympia manual typewriter. I like the matchbox-like design (“one strike is all it takes”) and the strange contrasts: fancy script over stencilled letters, secretarial pink clashing with the word Executive. (Is this film reserved for executive secretaries?) I like the (unnecessary, to my mind) “Part No. 3,” which names a product that isn’t part of anything larger than itself. I like the spelling of Ko-Rec-Type, perhaps a joke on the mistakes the film was meant to hide, or perhaps just a space-age spelling. I really, really like the arcana on the side of the box: “To correct colored originals ask your dealer for Part No. 1-ES.” A more complicated part!

The box bottom has a bonus in the form of an adhesive strip:

Peel off protective covering
Attach to typewriter or any surface

I guess then you would really be in the executive lane.

I have a second, less interesting container about half full of Ko-Rec-Type Opaquing Film, which appears to be Typewriter Correction Film with a newer name. This container, from which films slide out like sticks of gum, has an address for the Ko-Rec-Type Corp.: 67 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211. Here’s a post from Forgotten New York with some photographs of the building. As of 2018, the company, founded in 1955, was still in business but looking to sell its Brooklyn properties. As of this morning, Ko-Rec-Type was still selling newer-fangled correction tape and other items on Amazon.

I would now like to imagine a scene in an office-supplies store:

“Good day, sir. Please, a box of Ko-Rec-Type’s Part No. 1-ES, with a vignette effect, if you would.”

This post is the twenty-second in a very occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. The vignette effect in the photograph is by the Mac app Acorn.

Other Museum of Supplies exhibits
Ace Gummed Reinforcments : C. & E.I. pencil : Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27 : Dr. Scat : Eagle Turquoise display case : Eagle Verithin display case : Esterbrook erasers : Faber-Castell Type Cleaner : Fineline erasers : Harvest Refill Leads : Illinois Central Railroad Pencil : A Mad Men sort of man, sort of : Mongol No. 2 3/8 : Moore Metalhed Tacks : A mystery supply : National’s “Fuse-Tex” Skytint : Pedigree Pencil : Pentel Quicker Clicker : Real Thin Leads : Rite-Rite Long Leads : Stanley carpenter’s rule