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"Break Even Bill"
When I first worked with Bill Mordey, more than half a century ago, I wasn’t a smoker, I was an almost complete novice with alcohol, and I abhorred compulsive gambling. I also liked to get a decent...
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1875 Letter Written on a Sholes & Glidden Typewriter: ‘The Prettiest Thing...
On November 30, 1875, 29 days after Locke, Yost & Bates - then sole sales agents for the Sholes & Glidden typewriter - had entered into a new agreement with E. Remington & Sons, David Ross...
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20 Portable Typewriters I Once Owned and Wish I Still Did
I've lived a life that's fullI travelled each and every highwayBut more, much more than thisI did it my wayRegrets, I've had a fewBut then again, too few to mentionI did what I had to doAnd saw it...
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The Wedding Bell Was at the End of a Typewriter Carriage
Myrtle in later life.The Reverend Errett Cornelius Sechler of the Central Christian Church knew just what to do when Myrtle Lowany Lawson and Archie Franklin Breedlove asked him to marry them at the...
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101 Cities and Towns Where I’ve Used a Typewriter
(In Chronological Order, 1957-2021)Fremantle, Western Australia (July 1979)1. Greymouth (1957)2. Hokitika3. Harihari4. Christchurch5....
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New Year Happy
PS: To really cap off this awful year, my relatively new PC has gone bust, hence I couldn't scan this typecast. Just as well I have typewriters, isn't it? And this is why I have typewriters! Windows...
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RIP Betty White (1922-2021)
Actress and comedian Betty White has died 18 days shy of her 100th birthday. She was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on January 17, 1922, and died at her home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles...
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The Slocum Typewriter: A Dream Shattered When Phebe Slocum Did a Bolt
An article headed “A Brief History of the Invention of the Type-Writer”, published in the New Orleans Daily Picayune on Monday, July 26, 1886, listed writing-machines said to have been on the market at...
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Best Books of the Past 125 Years, and the Authors' Typewriters
The New York Times Book Review has marked its 125-year anniversary by asking readers to nominate the best book of the past 125 years. Submissions were narrowed down to a list of 25, which were voted on...
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Corona Typewriter Coin Box Writing Competition Winner
Luke East, a New Zealand historian and former journalist and political aide from Te Awamutu in the Waikato, has won our inaugural Corona Typewriter Coin Box Writing Competition, launched back on...
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Here's To You, Nancy Robinson, and Your World Typewriter
This must surely be one of the earliest photographs of someone with an index typewriter. The lady with the World by her side is Nancy Robinson Miller. At the time of her death, aged 85, in Sacramento...
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Keeping the Memory of Typewriters Alive in Lockdown
I was tick-tacking yesterday with Typospherian and Canberra Times journalist Jasper Lindell about the constant flow of by-lined front-page lead stories he has been producing lately. It hasn’t been easy...
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Billy Rempfer: Ultimately Subdued by the Thunders of Silence
The fellow at the Oliver typewriter is William Christian Rempfer, an interesting cove who at various times was a socialist, a pacifist, an anti-conscription campaigner, a debarred attorney, farm labour...
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RIP Sidney Poitier (1927-2022)
Sidney Poitier with co-star Bill Cosby in the 1975 comedy Let's Do It Again, directed by Poitier.Actor Sidney Poitier died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles, aged 94. In 1964, he was the first...
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When the Clacking of a Typewriter Stopped a Davis Cup Final
Texan Tut Bartzen said "tut-tut" when reporters' courtside typewriters pounded out the story of the American team's demise at the Royal King's Park Tennis Club in December 1960.The blind partisan...
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The Simplex No 5 Typewriter and the Discus
If you’ve ever covered the discus throw at Olympic and Commonwealth Games and a multitude of other international track and field meetings around the world, you cannot help but think of the Simplex No 5...
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Crime and Publication (A Work of Unadulterated Fiction)
How Raw Ambition Grossly Outstripped Abilityand Brought Down a Half-Decent NewspaperThe plot: Buck Smith has died. After standing in as editor for a couple of weeks, while Johnno Duncannon was doing...
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Corona Portable Typewriter Christmas Carton
I've accumulated quite a bit of typewriter ephemera over the years, but I've never seen a Corona portable typewriter special Christmas gift carton come up for offer. Given my passion for Coronas and...
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The Empire Corona Portable Typewriter
Relabelled again and sold in Australia through the H.G. Palmer department stores.I was rather surprised yesterday to find that at the end of July 2007 I had not alone made an inventory of my typewriter...
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