Vintage Communications Weekend: call for volunteers

The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, PA is hosting a Vintage Communications Weekend on March 15 and 16.

Kristen Fredriksen (kfred@patrolley.org) writes: 

We had over 40 typewriters on display [in 2024] (with most available for typing)! ... Like our previous event, I'll be inviting vintage telephones, radios, cameras, broadcast equipment, the printing press (they've already confirmed!), ham radio club/special event station, victrolas and phonographs, and others. If you have any connections within driving distance of Pittsburgh, please feel free to share! 

Typewriter lover Dave Cannon will be bringing some typewriters and helping with the type-in. He'd love to have others join him. Interested? Send him an email. (Sadly, I can't attend.)

Here are some photos Dave sent me of last year's event. 

The Fifty Freedoms

Fans of Margin Releases have been asking for three years: What is the full text of The Fifty Freedoms, as famously typed by Waldo Rehm?

Now it can be revealed.

The best books for tech skeptics with an imagination

I was invited by Shepherd — a book lovers' platform that's an independent alternative to the Amazon-owned Goodreads — to recommend some of my favorite books that complement The Typewriter Revolution. This was a fun assignment. Longtime readers of this blog will recognize some titles. 

https://shepherd.com/best-books/tech-skeptics-with-an-imagination

 

The discovery of Lin Yutang's Mingkwai Chinese typewriter

Whatever you may think of recent developments in the world, there is one that is undeniably good news for typewriter historians and anyone interested in the Chinese language. 

The long-lost, likely sole prototype of the Mingkwai ("Clear and Quick") Chinese typewriter, invented by polymath Lin Yutang, has been discovered in a basement. The man who found it asked on Facebook, "Is it even worth anything?" Oh, yes. One of the most intricate and brilliant mechanical inventions in typewriter history, one of a kind, developed over thirty years by a man who is well-known and admired in both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, is worth something. 

I am no expert on the Mingkwai and know only four Chinese characters, but as a collector, I have been aware of this legendary machine for years. A true expert on the topic is Thomas Mullaney, author of The Chinese Typewriter. He is aware of this amazing find. There is going to be plenty of discussion and research about the Mingkwai in the coming years, I'm sure, by people who understand it far better than I do, so I'll limit myself to posting a few pictures. 

One of the exciting aspects of typewriter collecting is that you never know what is going to turn up in a basement, an attic, or a junk shop. 

Image courtesy of reader F. Z.