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In Bed With Brendan Behan (and his Typewriter)
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Hermes Typewriters and Geneva Peace Talks
Hermes is considered a god of transitions and boundaries and as an emissary of the gods. Fittingly, perhaps, Hermes typewriters were the work tools of choice for journalists covering the mid-July 1955 Geneva Summit, first-of-a-kind peace talks involving "The Big Four": Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, French Prime Minister Edgar Faure and British Prime Minister Anthony Eden.
Bulganin, Eisenhower, Faure and Eden in the gardens of the Palais des Nations, the United Nations headquarters in Geneva.
The four were accompanied by foreign ministers John Foster Dulles, Harold Macmillan, Vyacheslav Molotov and Antoine Pinay. Also there was Bulganin's then ally Nikita Khrushchev, the key figure in what the Western Press of the time called the "B & K Show".
All the talk aimed at ending the Cold War by reducing international tensions - on German reunification, the arms race and nuclear warfare, trade barriers and diplomacy - soon proved empty. Within 15 months Soviet tanks had rolled into Budapest and Britain and France were bombing the Suez Canal. Faure was gone from office by February 1956, McMillan succeeded Eden in February 1957 and in March 1958 Khrushchev forced Bulganin's resignation. Only Eisenhower remained in power by the end of the decade.
These were very different times. Journalists were content to share a work room with a bar and accommodation in a gymnasium while covering the summit, some of them spent their nights in smoke-filled clubs where contortionists performed, little girls stood on pavements thinking the world had been turned upside down, premiers smoked and told jokes, chauffeurs wore stripped socks and Genevans baked in the sun while lying on concrete.
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"An Englishman, a Russian and an American went into a bar ..."
When similar talks were held in Geneva 22 years earlier, during the League of Nations' Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments, Remington portable typewriters were the work tool of choice.
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Nippo P-200 Portable Typewriter Instruction Manual: For the Benefit of Texbodemer
As requested by Nick Bodemer ...
The Nippo Machine Company was founded by Jin Inoue in Yokohama in 1945 and in 1956 started making calculating machines and, using a similar model numbering pattern, a small portable typewriter called the Atlas. Nippo had gained the rights from Royal-McBee Nederlands NV to use the mechanical design which had started out in 1952 as the Halberg and in 1954 became the Royalite. In 1957 Royal introduced new-look portables designed for it by Laird Fortune Covey.
Nippo continued to use the Halberg mechanical design throughout its typewriter-making years. The Atlas was also marketed as the Cherryland, Del Mar, Elgin, Collegiate and Wellon. Later Nippo portables included the P-100 (also the Morse P-100), P-200 (also known as the Argyle P-201) and P-300, as well as the Baby Alpina, Condor, Rexina, Jaguar and Clipper and no doubt a few others.
Nippo stopped making calculators in 1961 to concentrate on typewriters and became a public corporation in 1963. But it found it difficult to compete against the superior quality and reliability of Brother portables, which were introduced in 1962. Brother also quickly established a far wider distribution network. Nippo’s founder died in 1973 and his son, Yuichi Inoue, took over the company and attempted a merger with a thermistor manufacturer in 1989. That company collapsed. Yuichi Inoue now runs Nippomac.
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My Typewriter Will Be Buried With Me: Harper Lee (A Good Scout)
In the postscript to a letter Harper Lee typed on this very day 20 years ago, she wrote:
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RIP Umberto Eco (1932-2016)
Umberto Eco was an Italian novelist, essayist, literary critic, philosopher and semiotician. He is best known for his groundbreaking 1980 historical mystery novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. He later wrote other novels, including Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum) and L'isola del giorno prima (The Island of the Day Before). His novel Il cimitero di Praga (The Prague Cemetery), released in 2010, was a best-seller. Eco also wrote academic texts, children's books and essays. He was founder of the Dipartimento di Comunicazione (Department of Media Studies) at the University of the Republic of San Marino, President of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici (Graduate School for the Study of the Humanities), University of Bologna, member of the Accademia dei Lincei and an honorary fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford. Eco was born in the city of Alessandria, in Piedmont in northern Italy. Eco died this week at his Milanese home of pancreatic cancer, aged of 84.
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England's Right Royal Embarrassment: The Prince of Wales and his Underwood Portable Typewriters
Tally-ho! The Prince of Wales rides roughshod over royal sensitives, all for the sake of this wonderful (and worthy) little American-made Underwood portable typewriter:
Owners of the first model (and British-made) Imperial Good Companion portable typewriter (1932-) will be familiar with its royal warrant decal, prominently placed on the right beside the top plate collar. Image if this had instead first appeared on an American-made portabletypewriter, which might well have been in the case in 1926 if the Underwood-using then Prince of Wales had had his way.
Well, there WAS a precedent, of sorts, because although the Royal Bar-Lock was sold in Britain and elsewhere in the British Empire under licence held by Englishman William James Richardson, with a royal warrant from King Edward VII, George V's father and Edward VIII's grandfather, it was actually only assembled in England (until 1914) from parts made in the United States by the Columbia Typewriter Manufacturing Company, established by the Bar-Lock's designer, German-born American Charles Spiro, and presided over by another German-born American, Julius Freudenthal.
It had apparently escaped the notice of King George V (and understandably so) that seven weeks earlier, on January 1, 1926, his eldest son and heir to the throne of England had declared in the London Gazette that the little three-bank Underwood portable was deserving of a royal warrant. Admittedly, the Underwood was tucked in among a long list of things to which the Prince had extended his royal favours, somewhere in under Telfer biscuits and Twining's tea.
The Prince of Wales loved all things North American, including Americanisms, corncob pipes and Underwood portable typewriters. Here he is dressed as "Chief Morning Star" at a "pow-wow" of the Stony Creek Native Americans in Alberta during a royal tour of Canada in 1919.
Part of the awful truth about all this had dawned on King George V on February 18, 1926, while he was visiting the British Industries Fair at White City at Shepherd's Bush in London. Told that typewriters used in Britain were predominantly American-made, the King declared this to be a scandalous situation, and that henceforth the British were to buy British. It wasn't until three days later that the King became aware of just how thin the ground was upon which he had made his stand - and that his own eldest son patronised a decidedly American brand, Underwood.
From The Daily Express, January 18, 1926
To rub salt into royal wounds, this revelation came through the pages of a newspaper the King despised - the Daily Herald. The Herald was a distinctly left-wing daily started by the London Society of Compositors to argue for a socialist revolution based on workers' self-organisation in trade unions. By 1922 it was in the hands of the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party and backed by Russian money. During the last days of Hamilton Fyfe's editorship, it took an anti-royalist stand on the British-made typewriters issue, pointing out George V had been hypocritical in taking his position on British-made goods. The Herald was, of course, all for buying British, and keeping Britons in work, but thought the example should start at the very top - with the royals themselves.
(For "controller" in The New YorkTimes story, read "comptroller"
Just as he had done in Canada in 1919, the Prince of Wales was happy to be photographed wearing "native dress" during his tour to Japan and India in 1922. In the photo below, the prince, front and centre, is kneeling beside his No 1 lackey Lionel Halsey. Halsey also wore a Māori piupiu (war skirt) over his uniform during the naval battles at Heligoland and Dogger Bank.
The Herald had somehow gained access to a letter written by Lionel Halsey to Underwood's agency at Underwood House, 70 New Bond Street near Hanover Square, London, in which Halsey had passed on the Prince of Wales's praise for the little Underwood portables he had been loaned by Underwood and had taken on tour to Japan and India in 1922. Halsey said the prince had subsequently acquired four more Underwood portables and that Underwood would be considered among applications for a royal warrant. This was duly approved and Underwood was issued with the warrant when it was gazetted on January 1, 1926. The timing of this could not have been worse for an embarrassed George V. The Underwood portables might have "behaved splendidly" for the prince in Japan and India but, apparently, in approving the warrant the prince himself had not.
The genius behind the masterstrokes of a loan of typewriters to the Prince of Wales and the subsequent publicity and advertising for the Underwood portable was Arthur William Pollard (above, born Bradford, Yorkshire, April 1882). Pollard knew his stuff. He had been appointed to take charge of Underwoodportable sales in Britain in August 1920, less than a year after the three-bank had been launched in the US.
Previously Pollard had spent five years as Corona's head man in London and, before that, eight years with Blickensderfer from 1907 (including a health-restoring break in Australia in 1912). During his time with Blick, mainly in Liverpool, Pollard's sales efforts had been rewarded with a gold watch from George Canfield Blickensderfer himself. Robert Bastow had Pollard set up Corona's first British branch office, opposite the Hotel Cecil on The Strand, in 1915, and, as in the case of the Blick, Pollard achieved record sales while in charge.
These large display adverts began to appear in The Times of London, a newspaper the Royal family did like to read, after Pollard had taken control of Underwood's British marketing in September 1920:
And this one appeared in Typewriter Topics, a journal the royals did not read, in 1922:
To make matters worse, after the February 1926 royal blushes, Pollard jumped on to the bandwagon and began to advertise the Underwood portable as "the King of its class". It sold in Britain at that time for a princely £12 12s. Pollard twisted the knife even further by saying British typewriter manufacturers had persisted with "obsolete methods and design". American machines could not be matched for size and speed. He was, of course, absolutely correct. Imperial was still six years away from producing its first portable, the Good Companion (an even then it was designed by a German-based Englishman, and based on a German portable, the Torpedo). In the meantime, the little Underwood had nothing which rivalled it among British-made typewriters - only the British-assembled Remington and the Corona 3. Well, the Underwood is most certainly one of the princes of portable typewriters, that much is true.
This image taken at White City on February 18, 1926, shows Bill Mawle (circled white), then a long-standing head of sales for the Imperial Typewriter Company of Leicester, telling George V (circled red) about the plight of the British typewriter manufacturing industry, as George's consort, Queen Mary (circled blue) looks at work produced by an already outmoded, wide carriage Imperial Model D typewriter (circled green). Later this same year (1926) Imperial finally abandoned Moya-designed typewriters in order to compete with the like of Underwood and gain domestic and British Empire sales with a conventional standard, the Imperial Model 50 designed by Arthur Bott Pateman.
It was Norman William Reginald ("Bill") Mawle, a World War I flying ace who was then general sales manager for the Imperial Typewriter Company in Leicester, who sparked George V's White City "British-made" outburst. Mawle told the King his company had just supplied 900 typewriters to the Swedish Government, yet 1200 American-made typewriters were being shipped into Britain each week, duty free. Ironically, American typewriters were in official use at the Industries Fair - and it was later found that 17,95o of 18,000 typewriters being used by British Government departments were American-made (that's 99.72 per cent). (Mawle would in 1935 earn portable typewriter immortality by gaining the rights to make the Hermes Baby in West Bromwich in England as the Empire Baby, later the Empire Aristocrat.)
Mawle complained to George V about the British Government's Stationery Office buying American-made typewriters in preference to British machines. In April 1926, however, a British newspaper reported that "It is common knowledge that British-made typewriters are in very few commercial offices in this country ... It is, in truth, little wonder that English business houses did not install British typewriters, for hardly anyone has ever heard of their existence ... one could have asked almost any businessman or his typists what the names of the British makes of typewriters were, and he would not have been able to give the information. If the firms find that they have no home market for their machines, they have only themselves to blame."
By the time Britain's Financial Secretary to the Treasury, MP Ronald McNeill (later 1st Baron Cushendun) came to address the issue in the House of Commons, on behalf of Stanley Baldwin's Conservative Government, the "foreign typewriter" figure had risen from 17,950 to 24,700. Asked what they were all used for, McNeill retorted, "For typewriting."
American newspapers called him "rotund", but British MP Ronald McNeill was also quick-witted. Asked what almost 25,000 American-made typewriters were used for, he snapped back, "Typewriting."
McNeill added that British workmanship had not yet produced such good value in typewriters and labour saving machines as America. "The typewriting machines used are still of American make, but whenever they could use a British machine which was at all equal in efficiency to the foreign one the Stationery Office would give preference to the British article."
Forelock-tugging Australian newspapers were to back the foreign monarch of their country, railing against outdated attitudes toward free trade and saying freetraders had the "benighted vision of a wanderer among the fogs of antiquated principles". The Melbourne Age said the contrary view was "enlightened common sense". All very well, provided Britain could make typewriters of comparable quality. English journalist and Tory MP Sir Henry Ernest Brittain, of the Tariff Reform League, tried to curry favour with the King by asking questions about British patents being taken out on machines (such as the Remington portable) which were assembled from American-made parts in Britain. To what end, one cannot say. Brittain also made inquiries about typewriters made in parts of the Empire (such as Canada, where the Prince of Wales owned a ranch).
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Naturally, American newspapers were all over this story, taking every opportunity to mock Britain's failure to match American ingenuity and the standard of American-made machines ("showing British machine inferiority"). American typewriters were "real news", one US paper said, resulting from revelations and repercussions of the King's outburst. Another declared George V as "the world's best press agent for American typewriters ... against his majesty's will".
Forelock-tugging Australian newspapers were to back the foreign monarch of their country, railing against outdated attitudes toward free trade and saying freetraders had the "benighted vision of a wanderer among the fogs of antiquated principles". The Melbourne Age said the contrary view was "enlightened common sense". All very well, provided Britain could make typewriters of comparable quality. English journalist and Tory MP Sir Henry Ernest Brittain, of the Tariff Reform League, tried to curry favour with the King by asking questions about British patents being taken out on machines (such as the Remington portable) which were assembled from American-made parts in Britain. To what end, one cannot say. Brittain also made inquiries about typewriters made in parts of the Empire (such as Canada, where the Prince of Wales owned a ranch).
Some stories implied the Prince of Wales - along with his younger brother, the later George VI - had backed his King dad on the "Buy British" campaign. But Edward remained, at least for the time being, staunchly pro-American, and stuck to his Underwoods:
As for skirt-wearing Halsey, in 1936 he was dismissed from the staff of Edward, by then King Edward VIII, because of his opposition to American double-divorcee Wallis Simpson becoming queen. In 1937, however, Halsey got back his stripes when he was appointed an extra equerry to King George VI.
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Halsey, in bowler hat, back seat, gets driven around the bend by Edward, at wheel.
Underwood portable typewriters get driven into Kyoto in 1922.
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The Smartest Deal in Typewriter History - the $35 Million Bargain
In the late Spring of 1909, a group of well-dressed New Yorkers knocked on the door at 186 Greenwood Avenue, Brooklyn. They had an offer for the widow who lived there, 53-year-old Catherine Marcley Rose. If the beneficiaries of the will of her late husband Frank signed over to them the typewriter patents assigned to him, as well as ownership of the Rose Typewriter Company, they said, they would give Catherine and her son George Francis Rose $150,000.
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A Groton businessman, banker and politician. Educated at Groton Academy and the Union Free School, with his older brothers Frank and Jay (see below) he entered the business world through the large mercantile house started by his father, Corydon W. Conger, in 1870. He was also president of the Groton Mechanics' Bank and a member of the New York State Assembly 1900-01 and a State Senator in 1909-10. In January 1910, he opposed the election of Jotham P. Allds as president pro tempore of the State Senate, and accused Allds of having demanded, and received, a bribe in 1901 when both Conger and Allds had been members of the State Assembly. Eventually Allds was found guilty, and resigned first the presidency pro tempore and then his senate seat. Embroiled in the scandal himself, Conger also resigned his seat, on April 4, 1910, and retired from politics.
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"There's someone at the door, Mum," says George, as he interrupts his piano playing. "I wonder who it could be?"
Franklin Sebastian Rose, who had died almost exactly four years earlier - on May 23, 1905 - had developed the aluminium folding portable while running his typewriter sales, repairs and refurbishing business just a few doors down the block, at 112 Greenwood Avenue.
Franklin Sebastian Rose (1856-1905)
The proposal to Catherine and George was accepted and the rights to the Standard Folding Typewriter - which the Roses, with the backing of Marshman Williams Hazen, had been producing in Harlem and West Manhattan since 1907 - were duly transferred.
Some few weeks later, on Friday, July 9, a new organisation, the Standard Typewriter Company of Groton (omitting the word "folding"), was incorporated in Albany, with capital of $1 million. This company would develop and manufacture the Corona 3 folding portable typewriter, launched in 1912.
By the time production of this latter model ended, with the last 260 machines in 1941, 692,500 had been made. At $50 a typewriter, sales had totalled $34.6275 million. Yes, that's 231 times the original investment of $150,000. It has to be the smartest typewriter deal in history. In a way, I guess, it could be matched by buying a Nakajima for $5 today and selling it for $1154.25 in 29 years' time - but that would still be slim pickings, compared to $35 million.
Here are the seven men who stitched the deal together and pulled off this massive coup (note that many of them didn't subsequently live long to enjoy the benefits):
BENN CONGER
(October 29, 1856 – February 28, 1922)
JAY CONGER
(August 1854-December 10, 1920)
Was financial manager of the Groton mercantile enterprise and as a director also represented the family interests in the First National Bank of Groton. Educated at Groton Academy.
CHARLES HAZEN BLOOD
(April 7, 1866-early February 1938)
It was through a distant family connection of Blood's - Marshman Williams Hazen - that the Conger syndicate tracked down the Roses in Brooklyn. Through Cornell University he was also closely associated with brilliant typewriter design engineer John Henry Barr - who would no doubt have advised, "Go for it!" Charles Hazen Blood was the son of a Civil War brigadier general also involved in the mercantile business. Charles was a leading member of the Tompkins County Bar and practised at his birthplace of Ithaca from 1890. He received the degrees of PhB and LLB at Cornell University in 1888-90 and served as district attorney of Tompkins County from 1894-1903, and as county judge and surrogate of Tompkins County from 1904-10. He was a director of the Ithaca Trust Company and the Tompkins County National Bank, and a trustee and chairman of the finance committee of the Ithaca Savings Bank. From 1901-24, he was a trustee of Cornell University, and a trustee of Ithaca College. With his former law partner Jared Treman Newman, in 1901 Blood acquired a tract of 1000 acres of farmland on Cayuga Heights from Ezra Cornell’s son Franklin, They developed it as a strictly residential "high-class" park overlooking Cayuga Lake and the valley below. From the start, Cayuga Heights was envisioned as a community of scholars and professionals. But by 1911 there were just 21 houses built.
JACOB SLOAT FASSETT
(November 13, 1853-April 21, 1924)
A businessman, lawyer and member of the United States House of Representatives from New York, he was born in Elmira and attended public schools and graduated from the University of Rochester in 1875. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1878 and began practice in Elmira. He was District Attorney of Chemung County in 1878-79 and became proprietor of the Elmira Daily Advertiser. Afterwards he enrolled as a law student at Heidelberg University in Germany. He returned to Elmira in 1882 and began the practice of law. Fassett was a member of the New York State Senate from 1884-91, and was President pro tempore from 1889-91. He was secretary of the Republican National Committee from 1888-92. In 1891 President Benjamin Harrison appointed Fassett as Collector of the Port of New York, a post from which he resigned to run for Governor of New York. After retiring from politics, he resumed his work in the banking and lumber business in Elmira. He died in Vancouver, British Columbia, while returning from a business trip to Japan and the Philippines. He was an investor in various mines, among which was the Oriental Consolidated Mining Corporation in Korea. His son, Jay Fassett, starred in Hollywood films.
DAVID WADSWORTH VAN HOESEN
(January 6, 1864-January 15, 1923)
Also a former New York State assembly member and a lawyer, he was Benn Conger's counsel and represented Conger in trials related to the bribery scandal outlined above. Born at Preble, Cortland, he spent most of his life in Cortland but left for Mesa in 1920 to grow apples and became an Idaho State Senator. He died of a heart attack in the Hotel Owyehee in Boise while a candidate for State Governor. He graduated aged 16 from Homer Academy in 1880 and taught school in Preble and McLean before entering Hamilton College, graduating with honours in 1886. He entered the law office of Eggleston & Crombie, was admitted to the bar and entered into partnership with O.U. Kellogg.
WILLIAM ERNEST ALBERT WOODS
(November 30, 1869 -April 5, 1913)
A Syracuse real estate broker.
CARLETON FRENCH BROWN
(June 16, 1882-March 1, 1967)
By a long way the last survivor of this group, Brown was a young mechanical engineer at the time of his first involvement with the Conger syndicate. He came from Elizabeth, New Jersey, and had been educated at Pingry School and St Paul's, New Hampshire (1896-1900). He gained a civil engineering degree in 1904 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Brown became general manager and treasurer when the Standard Folding turned into Corona. After the merger with L.C.Smith he was Smith-Corona’s vice-president of manufacturing. He retired in 1953 and died in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The chimney stacks were still smoking at the end of the street in 1941 ...
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Why It Didn't Pay to be a Travelling Royal Typewriter Salesman: Effa and her Electric Vibrator
In Omaha in 1898 Tommie married 17-year-old Effa Mary Van Cleave, who was born in Beaver City, Nebraska, in September 1880. I swear, I'm not making this stuff up.
The couple were together for 12 years, during which time they moved to New York, where Tommie joined Royal soon after its foundation in September 1904. The new company was in need of expert, experienced salesmen and, given his English connections, Royal boss Ed B. Hess had little hesitation assigning Tommie to the European beat. Sometimes Effa travelled across the Atlantic with her husband, on his regular typewriter-related visits there, but not always.
Eventually Effa grew tired of Tommie's long absences on his typewriter selling trips and in 1910 she left him. In 1912 they got back together, but the reunion didn't last long and by the next year they were permanently separated. Effa, a trained nurse, remained at 400 St Nicholas Avenue, where she let rooms to provide herself with some extra income.
This left Tommie wanting a divorce and Effa wanting some male company.
Ace Royal typist Millicent Woodward
So divorce had become an imperative for Tommy - and this was long before the enlightened era of blameless divorces.
Ace New York private detective Ray Schindler
In the spring of 1914, just before he was due to return to England from the US, Tommie hired the famous (and very expensive) private detective, Raymond Campbell Schindler, of New York's Schindler Bureau of Investigation (opened in New York in 1912). Tommie and the renowned sleuth had something in common - Schindler had started his working life as a typewriter salesman in New York. Schindler was a smart operator - and in his employ was a pretty young trainee called May Gruer. Schindler had Gruer rent one of Effa's rooms so she could keep on eye on Effa. Effa was naïve enough to include Gruer in dinner parties she held for Vaughan and soon the honey trap was set.
No divorce - Judge Delehanty
In Tommie's absence in Europe, on June 25, 1915, the evidence of Schindler and Gruer was presented in the Supreme Court of New York before Judge Francis Blase Delehanty and a jury. Effa denied everything and Vaughan gave nothing away. Within two minutes of being sent out to deliberate, the jury returned with a verdict. Effa was found not guilty.
Tommie's "stag" party - only Tommie is smiling
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Triumphant Trumbo or Hideous Hedda?
Mirren as Hopper, above, and the real Hopper below:
And Hopper in bed with her Olivetti Lettera 22:
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Rare and Toy Typewriters For Sale
Desperately in need of money to feed the Typewriter Guard Cat (not to mention me) and to pay the bills, so I am selling some of my more cherished typewriters and toy typewriters. If anyone is interested, they can make an offer to oztypewriter@hotmail.com (but please make it a sensible, realistic offer and don't waste my time or yours. Yes, times are tough, but that's no excuse to insult me. True collectors will know the value of these.) Payment can be arranged through a friend's PayPal account (for overseas buyers) or into my bank account (domestic sales).
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Gold-plated Corona 3
Folding Bijou, comes with leather case
Has wooden box with sliding lid
Take your pick from above or below
Comes with Valentine-lookalike case.
Would be expensive to post.
Ditto - this is very heavy for its size
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Build It And They Will Come: Typewriter Collector's Outlaws Outfield in the Outback
Ray Nickson is one of those Australian typewriter collectors
who really does know how to use a typewriter.
But it turns out he did, and those dreams are now turning to reality. Ray, who I knew did take with him to Armidale Australia's largest and finest collection of Depression Era typewriters (along with his lovely American wife Alice and their little daughter Cynthia), has got himself involved as a player with Australia's newest baseball club, the Armidale Outlaws.
I find it amusing that, given his area of academic expertise, Ray (left) is playing for a team which is named in honour of a real Outlaw - 19th Century bushranger Captain Thunderbolt (Frederick Wordsworth Ward, 1835-1870). Thunderbolt was our own Robin Hood, a "gentleman bushranger" who holds the record for having been the longest roaming bushranger in Australian history. After making a Papillon-style escape from Cockatoo Island in 1863, Thunderbolt headed to the New England district and during the next six-and-a-half years robbed mailmen, travellers, inns, stores and stations across much of northern New South Wales. 
Our typewriter collector Dr Nickson has worked as a barrister and solicitor in the Supreme Court of South Australia, specialising in criminal defence, and has professional experience in the fields of international security and counter-terrorism. He earned his BA with honours in criminology and his LLB/LP with honours at Flinders University in South Australia (that's the Flinders baseball shirt he's wearing above) and his PhD in Law at the Australian National University in Canberra. A lawman joining the Outlaws? Only in Australia!
I look forward to seeing Ray cover an Outlaws game from the dugout, using a Smith-Corona Skyriter:
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I look forward to seeing Ray cover an Outlaws game from the dugout, using a Smith-Corona Skyriter:
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Reviving Remington Rand: The Typewriter Wars 1978-81 - The 101 v IBM Selectric v Exxon Qyx
The New York Times, May 20, 1980
While researching the "end of days" for Remington typewriters this week, I was surprised to find that there was a brief "after-life" for a company which, as The New York Times described it in 1980, was "one of the grand old names" in the typewriter industry, with "taproots in the 19th Century".
Note the absence of "SR101". The Dutch maker's plate under the machine simply states "Model 101", serial number 1484795.
My discovery of this post-September 1978 period in the company's history led me to revisit my Remington Rand golfball typewriter, which I was given last year and posted on in August ("Not So Still Life With Remington"). At the time I wrote that post, it did cross my tiny mind to wonder why all the paperwork I had suggested this machine was a Sperry Rand SR101 when on the front it said just "Remington Rand", and neither Sperry nor 101 got a mention.
Perhaps I should have had a closer look back at an earlier post of mine on the 101, "The $340 Million Typewriter", written almost a year previously, in August 2014.
Richard Polt commented that this latter post told a "sad and sordid tale", and of course he was, as always, spot on. It was a long and involved summary of a 1984 New Jersey court case, in which Remington Rand was awarded (at least initially) $221.4 million in damages for the misappropriation of trade secrets by Dutch company Business Systems Incorporated International (BSI), manufacturers of the 101.
Of this amount, $178 million was for estimated lost profits from sales of the 101 between 1982-89, or $209.67 a machine on sales of 100,000 machines a year for those eight years. In the event, Remington Rand sold NO machines in those years!
A 1995 US Court of Appeals finding ruled against the damages, because of their “speculative nature" - in part Remington's estimation of its market share and its assumption that sales would have remained constant. The court found that "Given Remington was unprofitable and in bankruptcy at the time ... BSI might have questioned the level of Remington's assumed profits." (Now, there's an understatement!) "Furthermore, Remington's assumption that it would have sold 100,000 typewriters per year from 1982 to 1989 invites rebuttal based on the huge growth in the use of word processing computers in place of typewriters during that period."
The hints offered by that summary were that there was a Remington Rand company beyond Sperry's involvement in it, but that that later company went bust in 1981.
In other words, there are TWO101s, the Sperry-Remington (SR) 101 and the Remington Rand 101 (which is the machine I have). The Sperry-Remington and post-1978 Remington Rand organisations were different companies, owned and run by different people (but using the same Dutch factory, and most probably the same design). Without an SR-101 (which I had previously assumed I owned) to compare with my Remington Rand 101, I cannot say whether they differ at all, but I am assuming they are pretty much the same machine, just produced for different companies.
Sperry Remington SR101 serial number 1407040 (with a golfball more akin to IBM's; this one is a 10-point Courier font, Remington 563 )
Remington Rand 101
However, given the many observations about the likeness of the IBM Selectric's components to those of the SR101 (launched in June 1975), an added twist to this tale is The New York Times' revelation that the 101 was made under licence to IBM.
Above and below: The New York Times, October 28, 1979
Why on earth would IBM allow Sperry-Remington to make such a similar machine (as its "sole activity")? Well, one of the comments to my "$340 Million Typewriter" post, from John Lavery, along with reports in The New York Times, offer an answer to this poser. Put simply, IBM did not see the SR101 as competition, and rightly so. As long as the prices remained comparable (as John Lavery pointed out), and IBM retained its stranglehold on the marketplace, IBM merely considered this as an opportunity to profit further, from royalty payments for the use of its patent rights. As The New York Times pointed out, if buyers went looking for a golfball typewriter, overwhelmingly they asked for an IBM. Even by May 1980, after almost 18 months of trading, the new Remington Rand outfit still had only 7 per cent market share, and that was double what its predecessor, Sperry-Remington, had achieved. By January 1976, when its monopoly was scrutinised by the US Federal Trade Commission, IBM's market share was 80 per cent and in 1978, before Remington Rand entered the fray, this had reached a staggering 94 per cent.
The New York Times, May 20, 1980
March 24, 1981 (again, note the absence of "SR101" from the front)
Suggesting IBM's domination might be the subject for a future post (this one?), John Lavery commented on Remington's "failure to market what should have been a winner. I could not believe it when I came across many instances of Remington being in competition with IBM and trying to get an IBM price. When push came to shove, what were you going to buy, for the same price, an IBM or a Remington? They could have hurt IBM in the market by discounting, as IBM had a strict policy of never discounting and always offered very low trade-in prices. I must say that many other manufacturers of single element typewriters did not cover themselves in any kind of sales glory, and I include Facit, Adler, Olympia, Olivetti and Hermes in this group. [Each] failed to understand what a grip IBM had on this segment of the market."
One competitor not mentioned here is the Exxon Qyx, developed by Jerry A.Klein and markedly different from the IBM Selectric and its close cousin, the SR101. The New York Times said this machine, launched in 1977, had "burst into the market" and "competed with the best from IBM". The Times added:
How Sperry-Remington came to secure its patents deal with IBM in the first place might well relate to a lawsuit it filed against IBM at the time of the launch of the Selectric, in July 1961. IBM allegedly settled by agreeing to supply specifications, which Sperry-Remington presumably only started to put to some use in 1975. In 1978 Remington Rand acquired the proprietary technology for producing the 101 from Sperry-Remington. Remington Rand then licensed this technology to its Dutch manufacturing subsidiary, Remington Rand Business Systems BV, at a $50 a machine royalty fee.
In writing my two previous posts on the 101, I had completely failed, as I have said here, to grasp that there were two separate companies involved.
Opting to concentrate on computers, Sperry Rand offloaded most of its subsidiaries in the second half of 1978. Sperry-Remington was picked up by a Philadelphia consortium headed by a 23-year IBM veteran, Herman V.Williams. Williams had been in charge on IBM's reconditioning and sales operation, but when knocked back by IBM on a proposal to expand this beyond typewriters, Williams jumped ship and started his own concern with his group of private Philadelphia investors. The company was renamed Remington Rand Corporation and based at Princeton, New Jersey. Its target, based on Williams' spurned proposal to IBM, was to establish close manufacturer-dealer relationships. The new organisation retooled the factory in 's-Hertogenbosch (colloquially "Den Bosch") in southern Holland to the tune of $4 million, which suggests at least some changes were made to the SR101.
The honeymoon was soon over. By the end of March 1981 Remington Rand was applying for reorganisation under Chapter 11 of the Federal bankruptcy laws. It fell into the hands of the Kilbarr and Pennbar corporations of Plymouth, Pennsylvania, and in mid-June the Dutch factory, by then 54 per cent owned by Claneil Enterprises of Plymouth, was sold to Middle Eastern interests. By March 1982 even IBM was buckling in the face of challenges from electronic typewriters and word processors, and its market share had dropped to 50 per cent.
The last Remington Rand 101s sold before the advent of eBay went on January 5, 1983, at a final liquidation auction in the wash-up from the 1982 Louisiana World's Fair. Today there is an SR101 listed on German eBay for 750 Euro!
IBM Selectric III
Remington Rand 101 (beside IBM)
SR101
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Hah! That's not a Newsroom. THIS is a Newsroom!
This is what happens in newsrooms today, where there aren't typewriters (and people using them who have some grasp of the world at large):
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The Taupe Typewriter and the Yellow Van
Alex Jennings at his Olivetti Lettera 22 portable typewriter as the writing Alan Bennett (he also plays the caring Alan Bennett) in the movie The Lady in the Van.
Typewriters in movies two weeks in succession! First Trumbo and now this. How good is my luck?
I anticipated typewriter action in The Lady in the Van in my post of November 1, and got to see this movie itself last night. I wasn't to be disappointed. Even at the end, there was the unexpected bonus of a Lettera 32 amongst the jumble in the back of the lady's van.
This is the model of portable typewriter Bennett uses today, but the film is set from 1973-88, so the Olivettis are probably more appropriate for that period. But while Alex Jennings, playing both the writing and the caring Bennett, is reasonably adept at the typewriter, the movie is really a tour de force for the 81-year-old Maggie Smith as the "lady". In her skillful hands, the movie succeeds in being both quite funny yet deeply poignant.
Jennings and the real Bennett on set.
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A-Y of Women and Typewriters
This blog turned five years old last week (February 27) and yesterday clocked up 2.2 million page views (averaging around 440,000 a year). That pans out at almost 37,000 page views a month, 8500 a week and more than 1200 a day - or about 1000 a post. This is the 2162nd post (average 432 posts a year) and there have been 8123 comments (average 3.75 a post). I needed something to celebrate the occasion, so here is an A-Y of women in typewriter adverts and posters:
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The Centenary Typewriters (Almost) Forgot
The New York magazine once said of Rita Reif that "Even among the city's media prima donnas [she] seems to be a standout." Reif, The New York Times' long-standing arts and antiques columnist, certainly got herself into a bit of a tizz in July 1973, over what she perceived to be a failure to properly mark the centenary of the typewriter.
Reif, who also covered auctions, wrote often in the Times about the resurgence of interest in old typewriters in that early 70s period, and knew her stuff. Indeed, she declared 1973 the year typewriters changed from being disposables to collectibles. But in this outburst, which appeared on July 21, she said there had been no "updated published history". In truth, Michael Adler's The Writing Machine came out that year, though published by George Allen & Unwin in Britain.
Still, if Reif was comparing the 100th anniversary of the typewriter with the celebrations which marked the 50th Jubilee, in 1923, she was on the money. Apart from many other events, two significant works appeared that year: A Condensed History of the Writing Machine: The Romance of Earlier Effort and the Realities of Present Day Accomplishment, edited by Ernest Merton Best for Typewriter Topics, and The Story of the Typewriter 1873-1923, written by Alan Campbell Reiley for the Herkimer County Historical Society.
This nostalgia of 1973 was not, of course, a substitute for real celebration. But there had been no events to mark the 75th Jubilee in 1948, and there were to be none in 1998 to mark 125 years. What will happen in in 2023, one wonders? A look back at the events of 1923 gives an indication of what might have been, or might still be, on the 150th:
Tomorrow:
Dust Off That Old Banger: A Pictorial History of Typewriter Collecting (1934-1984). Part I: Dietz, Haining & Smock
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Dust Off That Old Banger: A Pictorial History of Typewriter Collecting (1934-1984). Part I: Dietz, Haining & Smock
From the Jolly Juggler to
the Krazy Kat Drummer
In the Percy Smock Corneron his The Classic Typewriter Page, Richard Polt lists resources for the modern-day typewriter collector. Smock (real name Percival Edward Schmauch) was a post-war collector in Redwood City, California, and Richard has dedicated the corner in his honour as he "was collecting typewriters back when only eccentrics would do such a thing".Never were more true words written. Smock and Carl Praetorius Dietz were the two most famous American typewriter collectors in the 40 years from 1934-74 (Dietz died in 1957 and Smock in 1979). And "eccentric" is, if anything, an understatement in describing these two pioneering gentlemen.
Rochester, New York, October 1894
It was written that Smock "knew his South Seas and his traps". There were traps for beginners, too, when Dietz put down the juggled plates and hit the road in search of old typewriters.
Dietz must have felt like the solitary example of a very rare breed indeed when he first began to travel the highways and byways of America on his typewriter quest in 1934. That is, until he reached Detroit on this day 80 years ago, for the 1936 Great Lakes Seaway Conference, and met there the Canadian typewriter salesman and collector Byron Alexander Haining.
Haining, born in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1892, was still working for the American Writing Machine Company, famous for having been established by George Washington Newton Yost and James Densmore on January 12, 1880, to produce the Caligraph typewriter, the first competitor to the Remington (this venture was backed by Edward Mead Johnson of Johnson & Johnson fame). 
It was the kiss of death for Haining, who on August 8, five months after meeting Dietz, suffered a nervous breakdown. He committed suicide by jumping into the Detroit River at the foot of Mount Elliott Avenue and refusing to grab a police life preserver on October 17. He was aged a mere 44. Whiting didn't fare all that much better - after parting with the Caligraph he was divorced. Here is a photo of Dietz with the typewriter in question:
X marks the spot - the critical crossroads where Dietz made
the fateful decision to drive to Elgin insead of Woodstock.
Donald Hoke at the MPL in 1982.
Apart from typewriters, Dietz left behind this scale model of the Kleinsteuber workshop on West State Street, Milwaukee, where Christopher Latham Sholes (seated right), Carlos Glidden and Samuel Willard Soulé had worked on the earliest prototypes of the typewriter.
Smock was born in Campbell, Santa Clara, on March 17, 1904. He died at San Mateo on July 7, 1979, aged 75.
Tomorrow:
Part II: Calvert, Peters & the Brookes
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Oakland's American Venus and her $25,000 Underwood Portable Typewriter Promotion
The "Queen of Stenographers":
How her typing skills saved the
sanity of 1925's Miss America
This bronze statue of Oakland's Fay Lanphier was sculpted by Howard Chandler Christy, a judge of the 1925 Miss America contest in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Christy sculpted the statue soon after Lanphier was crowned. Because of its undeniable likeness to Lanphier, the public reacted vociferously to its nudity, but Christy declared that Lanphier never posed for him.
Fay Elinora Lanphier was born at Greenwood, El Dorado, California, on December 12, 1905. Her father, Percivelle Casper Lanphier, died in Oakland in February 1920, four days before the birth of a fifth son and leaving Fay's mother Emily a widow with seven young mouths to feed. Aiming for a career as a secretary, Fay stayed on at Oakland High School and graduated in 1924.
That same year, as an 18-year-old, Fay won the Miss Alameda title, was crowned Miss California and came third in the Miss America contest in New Jersey. In 1925 this strawberry blond, hazel-eyed Oakland typist and Underwood stenographer became the first Californian to take out the Miss America title (she was also Rose Queen, and the only contestant in Atlantic City to represent an entire state). 
After her win Fay became an overnight national celebrity and travelled to New York City in President Calvin Coolidge's special railway car, the Constitution. Motorcycle policemen escorted her car through Manhattan and she was toasted at a round of parties by such celebrities as Rudolph Valentino, Mae Murray and Will Rogers (who preferred a Remington portable).
When the partying died down Fay went to Greenwich, Connecticut, to become the first Miss America to star in a movie. She appeared as "Miss Alabama" opposite Louise Brooks and Douglas Fairbanks Jr in Paramount's The American Venus. Filming was completed at Famous Players-Lasky's Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, while the Miss America pageant sequences were shot on Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. The movie was released on January 31, 1926, almost exactly coinciding with the launch of the new Underwood four-bank portable typewriter.
Paramount Pictures had sponsored an "American Venus" contest, held before the Miss America pageant, to determine which of the Atlantic City contestants had the best "photographic possibilities". Fay won and was chosen by Famous Players-Lasky production manager Walter Wanger to star in the movie. In 1928 a yellow journalism New York rag was forced to retract a claim that the 1925 Miss American contest was rigged in Fay's favour. Its entire widely syndicated story was just a pack of lies.
After the film's release, Fay embarked on a 16-week personal appearance tour which earned her an estimated $50,000 - at least half of which came from her endorsement of the newly launched first model Underwood four-bank portable typewriter. Cashing in on the movie's reach across the US, Fay appeared in stage revues called The Venue of Greenwich Village and at each port of call did promotional work in Underwood Typewriter Company branch offices.
After marrying her high school sweetheart, Berkeley and San Jose stationer and book store owner Winfield John Daniels, in Carson City in July 2, 1931 (her second marriage), Fay lived at 17 Richard Drive in the East Bay Oakland suburb of Orinda until her death from viral pneumonia on June 21, 1959, aged 53.
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Dust Off That Old Banger: A Pictorial History of Typewriter Collecting (1934-1984). Part II: Calvert, Peters & the Brookes
Monte Calvert, far right, seen here as a college newspaper editor, had a life-long interest in the history of American mechanical engineering and a deep fascination with typewriters.
Under-weird: From the
academics to the passionate amateurs
About the time The New York Times' arts, antiques and auctions columnist Rita Reif declared, on July 21, 1973, that "this is the year when old [typewriters] have been transformed from disposables into collectibles", mechanical engineering historian Monte Alan Calvert had put together a contact list of typewriter collectors across the United States. Reif was herself a trailblazer, as her New York Times antiques and auctions articles inspired many others - such as Ralph and Terry Kovel, Lynn Hopper, Lita Solis-Cohen, Ann McCutchan, Leslie Hindman, Anne Gilbert and Anita Gold - to syndicate newspaper columns containing advice for a burgeoning population of antiques collectors across the country. These proved an enormous boon for typewriter collecting, right through to the early 2000s, and initially were a very valuable vehicle for the like of Darryl Rehr, Dan Post, Don Sutherland and Paul Lippman to promote their expertise and their collections, and later to publicise the existence of a more formal organisation for typewriter collectors. Espousing the idea that these collectors and historians were "official" advisers and contact points, the antiques columnists served the typewriter collecting community extremely well.
More localised publicity for this "new" interest began in September 1972 with Calvert. It started to reach a national audience with Reif in July 1973. Reif mentioned that Calvert, then based in Potsdam, New York, and teaching the history of technology at Clarkson College there, had since January 1973 been in touch with as many as 50 collectors, to form "the country's only society of typewriter collectors", an informal group with no name. It would be another 14 years before a formal group with a name would be established, under the presidency of Jim Lacy (right): the still vibrant Early Typewriter Collectors' Association.By which time Calvert's early contribution to a collective of typewriter collectors had all but been forgotten.
Calvert in 1963, when he was curator of the archives
being gathered by the University of Pittsburgh.
At the end of November 1980, by which time Hoboken collector and historian Paul Lippman believed there were more than 125 typewriter collectors in the US, and up to 75 overseas, Lippman declared Calvert's attempt to form an association as "abortive" and that it had failed. Calvert's list had, however, survived. Calvert, born in Los Angeles on April 16, 1938, died in Portland, Oregon, on July 29, 1988, a year after the ETCA was formed (his death didn't rate a mention in ETCetera). A folder containing his typewriter collecting contacts had reached the hands of Lippman in New York. It had, apparently, been used when Californian typewriter book publisher and typewriter collector Daniel Roger Post (right, 1923-89) launched The Typewriter Exchange in 1981. Lippman died on April 3, 1995, and following the death of his widow Barbara on December 13, 2002, the folder was acquired from the Lippman family by current Typewriter Exchange editor and publisher Michael Brown. (Mike has been editing Typex, which predates ETCetera by six years, since he resurrected it after a three-year hiatus in 1997.)
Paul Lippman with some of his typewriters.
Calvert, who also taught technology and engineering at the University of Delaware in the early 1960s, is best known today as the author of the much-referenced work The Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830-1910, published in 1967, in which he defined the differences between "shop culture" and "school culture" and the conflict between them. (He also wrote American Technology at World Fairs, 1851-1876 in 1962 and The Abolition Society of Delaware, 1801-1807 in 1963.) By 1972 he was talking knowledgeably about typewriter history and displaying the pick of his collection.
September 1972
Darryl Rehr
Unlike Calvert, Dan Postdid get an obituary in ETCetera, written by founding editor Darryl Rehr. Unfortunately, Rehr did not not say when Post started collecting, just that it was "way back in the days when many years would need to pass for typewriters to become antiques". Presumably, then, it was before 1973. Post was certainly using typewriters from at least 1944, when he brought out the first of his custom car books, a replicated photo album including photos of typewritten copy. Rehr went on to say that Post had, with Typex, "helped lay the foundations for ETCetera" and that he was "the one who got us all together [Rehr's italics, not mine]. "He took what was once a ragged grapevine of tenuous pen pals [Calvert's list, perhaps?] and forged it into a bonafide network." Since Rehr suggested this was with the start of Typex, and Calvert gave Post his folder of contacts, perhaps Calvert deserved more credit than he received. But Rehr did say Post provided the "principal impetus" for the foundation of the ETCA.
Ed Peters at his Old Typewriter Museum in New Holland, Pennsylvania.
Images courtesy of Mike Brown.
Three years after Typex first appeared, another typewriter collector had the idea of corresponding with a loose-knit community of collectors and to start a similar, associated newsletter. He was Leo Edward Peters Jr of the Old Typewriter Museum on East Conestoga Street, New Holland Pennsylvania, and the short-lived publication was called The Typewriter Collector (its first issue was called Typewriter Topics).
The young Ed Peters
From the very start of ETCetera, in October 1987, Peters also contributed articles to that publication. Without the research resources and communications technology available today, he could never hope to match the efforts of Dirk Schumann and Ted Munk with their wonderful typewriter serial number databases, but he did find an old copy of the original Typewriter Topics magazine and reproduced for ETCetera its "where to find typewriter serial numbers" guide. Peters also put together this page for ETCetera's first issue, containing advice to collectors:
Ed Peters was born in Charleston, West Virginia, on February 2, 1928, and educated at the University of West Virginia, Morgantown. He worked for newspapers and in public relations and advertising (for Sperry). Peters began collecting typewriters in about 1972, after coming across an early Burroughs, and later an all-brass Underwood 5. Before being advised himself by pioneering collector Dennis Clark, Peters had been "ripped off" by another collector, one "no longer in the hobby, fortunately" (Who could that have been, I wonder?). In December 1984 Peters wrote to fellow collectors suggesting ideas for his newsletter, which he envisaged as a way of publishing buy-sell-swap classifieds, more than 10 years before the advent of eBay. Peters died in New Holland, on May 10, 2006, aged 78.
How times change!
1986
Mike Brooks
Some time before his death, Peters sold his entire collection to California typewriter collectorMichael Harvey Street Brooks. Brooks, however, died in Berkeley, aged just 61, only three weeks after Peters had passed away. Brooks had battled cancer for many months, yet seemingly remained optimistic enough to secure the Peters collection. An avid collector of antiques, a lawyer and a journalist, Brooks also contributed to ETCetera. He was born in Detroit on October 26, 1944, and graduated from Oak Park High School in 1962. Brooks graduated from Michigan State University in 1966 with a degree in journalism. In 1968 he was inducted into the US Army and stationed in Germany. Brooks moved to the Bay Area in 1970 and studied law at Golden Gate University, earning a California State Bar degree in 1976.He had a passion for antiques, attending flea markets and antique fairs regularly, including Antiques by the Bay in Alameda on the first Sunday of every month. His collection of Statue of Liberty memorabilia, including an invitation to Liberty's opening, earned him the attention of the Wall Street Journal and several television shows.
Ned Brooks
Mike Brooks and another typewriter aficionado, Cuyler Warnell “Ned” Brooks, were unrelated. Ned Brooks was born on February 8, 1938, in Glasgow, Montana, and spent his childhood in Chile. He died in Lilburn, Georgia, last August 31, aged 77, after falling from his roof while making repairs. This Brooks was most famous as a co-founder of Slanapa (Slanderous Amateur Press Association) and as leading light in the science fiction fan group Southern Fandom Conference. Brooks worked for 39 years as a NASA wind tunnel engineer at Hampton, Virginia, being hired after graduation with a degree in physics from Georgia Tech in 1959. Brooks published 28 bimonthly issues of It Comes in the Mail (1972-1978) and 36 issues of It Goes on the Shelf, which he started in 1985. "It died of success," he said, "with only an electric typewriter and a mimeograph machine, I could not keep up - the larger the zine got, the more came in the mail." Brooks retired in 1998 and in Lilburn bought and arranged a large house with a separate room for his collection of more than 300 typewriters.
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Paul Lippman had started collecting typewriters (his first was a Corona 3) in the early 1960s, when he was a copywriter for the award-winning advertising firm J. M. Mathes Inc in Greenwich Village. By running classified adverts in Hobbies Magazine, he soon amassed a large and very impressive number of rare machines. Among those he found was a Blickensderfer Electric, which Wilf Beeching twisted his arm to sell. He was also invited to look over some surplus machines for sale in the basement of the Milwaukee Public Museum (the Dietz Collection). By the late 1980s, however, his health had begun to deteriorate after he had suffered a stroke, and he began to sell off his collection. He kept one machine, a decorated Sholes & Glidden. Lippman rescued the British journal Type-Writer Times, which had been started by Graham Forsdyke in 1985 but, after just 12 issues, had failed to find another British editor. As a result, the British group was renamed “Anglo-American”. From 1991-93 Lippman also edited The Type Writer, a successor publication to Type-Writer Times. Lippman died of neurological problems in a New York hospital on April 3, 1995, aged just 66. A graduate of New York City public schools and New York University, he had been a Korean War veteran, a cartoonist and an editor of Hoboken History magazine.
Darryl Rehr, Jay Respler, Paul Lippman, Jim Rauen and Uwe Breker in Kansas City in 1991.
Don Sutherland
Donald Scott Sutherland, born in Harlem on January 21, 1944, and a graduate from the Manhattan High School of Music and Art, knew the precise moment his passion for collecting typewriters started. It was on December 8, 1968, when he went looking for a ribbon retaining screw for a L.C. Smith 8 that a friend had given him for helping him move. Sutherland chanced upon a typewriter repair shop called the All Language Typewriter Company. He found there for $25 a Hammond Multiplex with reversible carriage and open frame, spending his grocery money on the machine. It was, he said, "the beginning of the end". "I wanted to rescue all the fascinating gizmos I could find!" Of the 750 typewriters he did find, he was "most partial" to a Wagner-Underwood experimental model and a W.J. Hull, and his favourite was a Caligraph 1. As far back as September 2000, Sutherland made very accurate predictions about the impact of eBay on skyrocketing prices for typewriters, including the Olivetti Valentine. Sutherland died of cancer, aged 66, at his home in New Brighton, on May 24, 2010.
THOSE STILL STANDING
Another in that upper echelon of collectors with Clark is Californian James J. "Jim" Rauen (below, 1935-), who developed an interest in typewriters when he was teaching at Little Rock, Arkansas, in the early 1960s and started collecting them some years after that. His first "unusual" find was a Smith Premier No 2 in the mid-70s. His collection also grew to almost 700 machines, including 13 Sholes & Gliddens, as well as a large number of early Remingtons, Blickensderfers and a Royal Grand.
Michael Hugo Adler, below, was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on September 20, 1934, and grew up in Australia, where he studied music at the Sydney Conservatorium. From 1956 Adler backpacked around South America before settling in Caracas, Venezuela, and working as a journalist and foreign correspondent. Adler moved to Rome, Italy, in 1967, where his interest in collecting typewriters was sparked by finding a Frolio 7 index machine at the Porta Portese flea market - he paid 100 lira for it. Adler, 81, now lives in East Sussex in England.
In 1973 Adler published The Writing Machine, the most complete history of typewriters written in 50 years - putting to one side Bruce Bliven's 1954 The Wonderful Writing Machine, which, as a history, was notoriously incomplete, and Richard Current's The Typewriter (republished by Post in 1988), which was extremely accurate but concentrated on the Sholes & Glidden.
In 1997 Adler and Rehr published books, both titled Antique Typewriters, in which an attempt was made to put an approximate price on various vintage machines. In almost every case, these speculated figures were outdated even before the ink had dried on the pages. The publication of these two books, however, reflected a growing interest in the value of old typewriters which had already been well fostered over a period of 24 years by syndicated antiques and auctions newspaper columns.
1997
Darryl Charles Rehr was born in California on July 31, 1950. In the 1970s, as a journalist, he bought himself a 1911 Royal No 5 and a 1908 Remington No 10 - not as collectibles, but to use. In 1984 he started collecting typewriters. He also began to write about typewriters, his first article appearing in Antiques and Collectables in 1986. He also wrote for Popular Mechanics, The Pittsburgh Press, Antique Trader Weekly, Pennsylvania Magazine, The Office Magazine, Business Electronics Dealer and Spokesman (National Office Machine Dealers' Association). In 1987 Rehr was one of the founders of the Early Typewriter Collectors' Association and was the founding editor of ETCetera. He edited the first 49 editions, from October 1987 to December 1999 (Nos 1 to 49). From 2000 Rehr has concentrated on his career in movie and television producing, directing and writing.
CHANGING VALUES
Pre-ETCA: 1970
Post-ETCA: 1988
1989
1991
1992
1995
1998
1999
2001
2003
2013
In Australia, early collectors included Bob Moran of Precision Dynamics, Mona Vale, Sydney (below), the late Bruce Beard of Western Australia, and Richard Amery, a former New South Wales parliamentarian, of Rooty Hill, Sydney.
FOOTNOTE: My thanks to Mike Brown for his help with this article.
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Modern-Day Heroes: Typewriter Collectors, Historians and Enthusiasts of the World
A TOP 60
These are just some of the typewriter collectors, historians and enthusiasts with whom I have had much contact over the past decade (at least the ones I have photographs of). Most, though not all, I have met in person, but I have found the vast majority to be most helpful and friendly, generous with their time and knowledge (and often their unique typewriter images) and a pleasure to deal with. May you all type on well into your dotages (None of the forgoing applies to Tom Hanks, of course, as he simply qualifies for owning one of my old typewriters, plus I have a photo of him):
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