Misc. Typewriters, Adding Machines

 By Bruce Shawkey

I've been intrigued with typewriters and adding machines since I was a kid. I think I started to type when I was about seven, fueled in great by the fact that my mom was a secretary and used both machines as part of her job. Later, I would become a writer and journalist, and part of those jobs is being able to touch type. I took two semesters of typing in high school, and learned on an electric typewriter, an IBM Selectric (with the type ball) which I thought was pretty high tech at the time. Later, I worked at the Wisconsin State Journal and typed on a Harris "dumb terminal," which of course replaced the giant Merganthaler Linotype machines.

Here are some typewriters and adding machines from the Internet Archives.


Here, of course, is Christopher Sholes, credited as being the inventor of the modern typewriter. Note that he is from Milwaukee, Wis.









Here are a couple of early typewriters from the Remington company:




A typewriter chair. Man, this looks uncomfortable!








A 1919 adding machine from Monroe:










And then we have these cheap calculators from the '60s and '70s from Japan. They sold for a dollar or two. You could find them in novelty catalogs like Johnson Smith or stores like Spencer Gifts.


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