Showing posts with label convention. Show all posts
Showing posts with label convention. Show all posts

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Saturday at the convention

Saturday started with a good swap meet, including rarities and common machines, art by L.A. Marler (who was here with her mom), and typewriters just brought for show and tell.



I sold this Standard Folding to a journalist who's looking forward to displaying it. Someone said that it would be neat if this typewriter could write in the same style as its logo. I agreed that that would be a cool American counterpart to the German Fraktur machines.
 ETCetera editor Ed Neuert holds the world's tiniest Oliver no. 5. (The summer issue of ETCetera should be ready in a couple of weeks.)



FUTURISTIC: George Jetson's favorite typewriter platen!


Gigi Clark gets started on her presentation about teaching typewriters of the 1930s and on: machines with color-coded keyboards, animal keyboards, blank keyboards, etc. In the foreground: two Oliver 7's with consecutive serial numbers.


Mike Campbell spoke on techniques for working with rubber and making new rubber feet.


Peter Kirwan, founder of Collexion, also introduced us to this new website for collectors.

Meanwhile, Professor Typewriter, AKA Herman Price, had devised a challenging quiz. For instance:

High Volume = ?
Slick Willie = ?
blocuiam = ?

All answers are names of typewriters.


The prize for whoever got the most quiz answers right: a one-of-two-kind Lego model of the Travis Typewriter, created by the Professor himself. The winner was a local collector who's been at it for just one month!


There was also a five-minute typing speed contest. Gabe Burbano lugged this Remington electric from New Jersey just so he could type the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners' names on certificates that he had designed himself ...


... and look at its 6-point typeface! Maybe it should be called ... Standard Folding.


As for the typing contest, it was won by this contestant on a KMM who managed to get into the second paragraph of expertly prepared drivel from 1924 quick enough to make up for his numerous typos ...





Saturday, August 9, 2014

Friday at the convention

On Friday at the collectors' convention, we went to the Milwaukee Public Museum for presentations on the industrial history of the city (Jeff Vanevenhoven), the typewriter insurgency (me), and the history of typewriters and women (Peter Weil) ...


... and we also got to gawk at a small selection of the museum's amazing typewriter collection.



Early Sholes experimental model (big—these are real piano keys):
 

The Harr, a complex and delicate index typewriter. Only example known. Type is located on tiny upward-swinging typebars.


Jones Mechanical Typographer. First factory-produced typewriter, 1852. (More on Jones.)


My personal favorite: the Nickerson, a very complex vertical-platen machine.


But this is the most impressive piece of antique technology in Milwaukee, and it's still in use:


Onward we proceeded to Forest Home Cemetery and the grave of Christopher Latham Sholes, marked with a monument erected some time after his death (1923?):


Many of us, including me, took selfies with our buddy Chris.


And to top off a good day, I added a little something to my collection ...