27 January 2009

Beloved Curiosity: The typewriter.

Every morning I come into the home-office and sit before a keyboard, and I always wish it was a typewriter instead. I have big plans one day to write a novel about my mother's mother's life called, The Many Secret Lives of Eula Mae Jean Prater Bachmuth Williams. This novel must be written on a typewriter.

Typewriters are remnants of a life I wish I had been a part of. Parisian apartments, filled with the smell of fresh baguettes and the rolling waves of cigarette smoke and the sound of the tick, tick, tick, tick of stories being created on some old desk and the ringing of a bicycle bell in the distance. (Okay, so it could still be my Paris, but in my mind it's 1954.)

Here's to the typewriter...



left: 1949 Olivetti MP1
right: Jack Kerouac's Underwood Portable



left: Underwood No. 5 (credited as the most successful typewriter design in history)
right: c.1960 Remington Sperry Rand



left: 1924 Remington Delux Noiseless
right: c. 1920 Woodstock 5 HN



left: c.1930-1940 Adler No. 7
right: 1954 IBM Model B Standard



left: Brother Opus 885, date unknown
right: 1965 Hermes 3000



left: 1930 Corona 4 in Mountain Ash Scarlet
right: c.1970s SCM Coronet Automatic 12


left: 1870 Hansen Writing Ball, check this out at The Typewriter Museum. Wow.
right: 1970 Olivetti Valentine. Check it out here, to die for. (I actually came across one of these at an estate sale less than a month ago, and for some reason I did NOT GET IT. Ugh. I could kick myself!!)

Happy typing today, Everybody!

1 comment:

  1. wow those are so cool, looking at the way technology has developed over the years.

    thanks ofr the trip through the decades

    ReplyDelete