Going public

In 19 years as a typewriter collector, I've never had the chance to put on a public display of my machines before. But the Xavier University library has agreed to a rotating exhibit of selections from my collection over the next couple of months. There will be four groups, more or less in chronological order. This first group is meant to illustrate some of the interesting possibilities in 19th-century typewriter design. A few postcards, ribbon tins, and a book are included. When the next groups go on display, I'll show them on the blog too.



Here's the text I wrote to accompany the display:

Crandall New Model (USA, ca. 1889): Invented by Lucien S. Crandall, this early typewriter uses an interchangeable type cylinder and a curved two-row keyboard with double shift. It is hand-painted and inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

Smith Premier no. 1 (USA, ca. 1895): One of the most successful 19th-century typewriters, the Smith Premier has no shift key and instead uses a double keyboard, with separate keys for upper- and lowercase characters. Like many early typewriters, it is an understroke or “blind writer”: it types on the underside of the platen (the rubber-covered cylinder), which the typist must raise to see her work.

Odell no. 2 (USA, ca. 1895): The Odell is one of many “index” typewriters, which require the user to point at a character on an index and then perform a separate action to print the character. These typewriters were slower and cheaper than the large office machines. When the standard price for an office typewriter was $100 (comparable to about $3000 today), the Odell cost $5 ($150 today).

Williams no. 2 (USA, 1896): Williams typewriters are known for their so-called grasshopper mechanism, in which the type “hops” from an ink pad onto the paper and back. Only a few lines of typing are immediately visible.

New Franklin (USA, 1896): This model employs a downstroke mechanism and has a distinctive curved keyboard.

Fay-Sho No. 4 (USA, 1901): a copper-plated blind writer known for its elegant neoclassical design. Like many but not all early typewriters, it uses the QWERTY keyboard first introduced on the Sholes & Glidden Type Writer of 1874.

Columbia Bar-Lock no. 14 (USA, 1910): a downstroke typewriter with a double keyboard, named after its system of locking the typebars to ensure good alignment.

-- Now we'll see if I get 12,000 visitors, like Robert Messenger! (A man can dream...)