The Hermes 3000 is a lightweight, segment-shifted portable typewriter manufactured by .[1] [2] "Bulbous" and "angular" in shape,[3] it came with a fitted, hard-shell removable cover. The machines were built in Yverdon, Switzerland, by Paillard S.A.[4]
The Hermes 3000 was introduced in 1958 as a successor to the Hermes 2000. 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.[5] 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.[6] The typewriters predominantly came in a light green (occasionally described as a mint[7] or "sea-foam green") colour.[8]
William Kotzwinkle's 1972 novel was named Hermes 3000 after the machine.[9] 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] [10]
Other notable users of the machine are Sam Shepard, Eugène Ionesco and Stephen Fry. Beat writer Jack Kerouac wrote his final novel, Vanity of Duluoz,[11] 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[12] ($46,071). 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.[13]