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Poet Frank O'Hara and the Olivetti Lettera 22 Portable Typewriter
It's May 1954 and it's NOT an Olivetti Lettera 25.When one spends much of the day researching and writing, it’s handy to have an in-built radar-system. It can often save a lot of time and effort. The...
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Typewriter Pioneer Virginia Henry McRae: A Tribute on International Women’s Day
EGARDING International Women’s Day, it's about time we gave some long-overdue recognition to the typewriter pioneer, Virginia Henry McRae. Virginia hasn’t received much in the way of acknowledgement...
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It's Up! The Illuminated Typewriter
Further to an earlier post about a typewriter (an Olivetti Valentine with a black front section) this week becoming part of the illuminations on Old Parliament House (Museum of Australian Democracy)...
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Onanistically Speaking, £7000 Is A Lot For A Painted Typewriter
Conroy Maddox's “Onanistic Typewriter II” at Bonhams in London.It was once a working Imperial Model 55.One dictionary offers as its third meaning of the word “onanistic” “serving only for intellectual...
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Is There A Yōst Typewriter on the Antarctic Ghost Ship?
A Yōst typewriter in Ernest Shackleton's cabin on the Endurance.Will a rusted old Yōst typewriter be found on the wreck of the Endurance, the once lost and now found vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir...
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Burying Vital Details: Tanya Berry's 1956 Royal Standard Manual Typewriter
“I can only conclude that I have scratched the skin of a technological fundamentalism that, like other fundamentalisms, wishes to monopolize a whole society and, therefore, cannot tolerate the smallest...
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Kerouac at 100: Is he the most famous user of a typewriter?
Saturday was the centenary of Jack Kerouac's birth. Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac was born on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to French Canadian parents, Léo-Alcide Kéroack and Gabrielle-Ange...
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RIP William Hurt, Who Played 'Paul Auster' at a Typewriter
William Hurt at a Smith-Corona typewriter in Smoke.The actor William Hurt has died, one week before his 72nd birthday. It’s almost four years since Hurt revealed he had terminal prostate cancer that...
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The Power of a Savage Typewriter
Thomas Savage, author of The Power of the Dog, used for much of his writing career a “huge, old, glossy black” Remington Noiseless, the “huge” suggesting a standard size model. He bought it in the...
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67½ Million Words Typed with Four Talced Fingers on a L.C. Smith No 4...
A century ago, major US typewriter manufacturers were in the habit of sending “good news stories” to their agents around the world. These articles were positive publicity puff pieces, penned by PR...
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Who Was ‘Mrs Smith Clough’, Author of ‘Rational Typewriting’?
Using a YōstIt’s rare when a post on Instagram offers a hint of typewriter history, but last week Ian Jerams, of the Typewriter Cellar in Sheffield, England, drew attention to a 1925 book called...
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RIP Madeleine Albright (1937-2012)
Madeleine Albright working on a student newspaperat Wellesley College, Massachusetts, in 1958.Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright was born Marie Jana Korbelová in the Smíchov district of Prague,...
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One Summer of Sport, with Olivetti Lettera 32 Typewriter: A Pressman's Progress
When I stumbled across this New Yorker cover from November 11, 1939, by the Armenian artist Constantin Ivanovich Alajálov (left, 1898-1987), it stirred in me memories of my own one great and glorious...
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Sticking to the Facts
Given this blog was been going for more than 11 years now, I’m pleasantly surprised - and relieved - that the need for me to decline comments has been a rare. At the same time, almost 10,800 comments...
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When a Second-Hand Typewriter is Anything But a Second-Hand Typewriter
This fascinating machine was described last week as a “second-hand typewriter” and was on display at the Antik Passion Almoneda, an annual antiques, art and collectors fair at IFEMA (Institución Ferial...
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Levered Back Into Typewriter Repair Work
It was a bit of a relief yesterday to hand back to their owners three typewriters I'd been working on for the past few weeks: an Underwood three-bank, an 1896 Remington 6 and a Facit TP1. On the same...
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When Shakespeare Employed a Typewriter
Livingston York Yourtee Hopkins was an Ohio-born pioneering cartoonist who worked for the Sydney weekly magazine The Bulletin (1880-2008). Writing humour and drawing cartoons under the name “Hop”,...
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Alexander’s Raggedy Life as a Typewriter Inventor
Jesse Alexander's 1919 US Passport photo.Jesse Alexander went to his grave in the Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale, San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles County, on August 19, 1929, leaving behind,...
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Not So Much a Transgression as a Confession
On Wednesday, December 18, 1968, I was sitting at my desk in the sports department of The New Zealand Herald on Wyndham Street in Auckland, typing my boxing column on an old Remington standard, when...
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From Rio de Janiero to Ulladulla: The Remington 15 Portable Typewriter
It seemed entirely appropriate that on the “Magical Mystery Tour” my wonderful wife Harriet went to so much time and effort to plan and organise for my 74th birthday this week, we should find on our...
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