The SFO Museum typewriter exhibit

Back in February, I posted about the SFO Museum coming to the house to pick up a few typewriters for their upcoming exhibit, The Typewriter: An Innovation in Writing.

At long last, it opened earlier this month! It's behind security so I needed to be escorted in. But what better way to see an exhibit than with its curator?

It was great getting to see an original Sholes & Glidden in person.

The exhibit isn't large, but it is well-packed with typewriters from all eras and parts of the world.

Typewriters used by famous people are placed out towards the walkway to catch the eye of passersby, like John Lennon's Imperial.

I have four typewriters in the exhibit, one of them is my Moskva 4.

My Olympia SM7, Everest Jolson K2, and Blue-Bird 18b (not shown) complete the list.

And last but not least, the curator, Daniel Calderon! The exhibit is the result of a year of planning and lots of hard work from everyone involved at the museum, but he has had an especially high level of personal involvement.

If you're ever at San Francisco International Airport, this will be on display through 28 January 2018.

Typewriters in the TPL archives

1937 - The Stationers Inc typewriter showroom.

I've been digging through Tacoma Public Library's online photo archive; here are some interesting typewriter-related images I've found.

1937 - The Stationers Inc typewriter repair shop.

1937 - The Stationers Inc typewriter repair shop.

1940 - Tacoma Times newspaper office.

1941 - Interior of the Cunocar mobile accounting service's van.

1952 - Sears display of Remington portable typewriters.

1952 - New Royal standards delivered to the Washington State Federation of Labor.

1975 - 16-year-old Randall Bailey with his antique collection, including an Oliver.

Typewriters at the SFO Museum

I was contacted by the SFO Museum because they wanted to add some color to the mid-century section of their upcoming typewriter display (May 2017 to January 2018 in Terminal 2, if you're curious). They chose these four, along with two change-a-type kits.

At the end of last month, Daniel and Alisa made the drive from San Francisco to pick them up. We'd discussed by email the possibility of including my Moskva 4 in the international display as well, but space constraints prevented it.

But, after showing it to them, we decided I'd loan it to them and they'd try to fit it in anyway! Fingers crossed the space can be found for it! Many years ago (way before I started this blog) I'd had the idea to set up a typewriter display in my local library, but it never materialized. So I'm glad to finally be able to do something like this.

Interior decorating with typewriters

Olympia SM9

I was leafing through my copy of The House Book by Terence Conran (1974) and came across this stylish setting and thought to myself "they picked that Olympia because it matched the color scheme" (even their stationary of choice is yellow to match the accent color!)

Hermes Baby

So I went through the book and found all the identifiable instances of typewriters in their various settings. I think this Hermes (or is it an Empire?) wasn't chosen to match the color scheme.

Olivetti Lettera 22

What's a stylish room without an Olivetti? Putty looks pretty good here.

Olivetti Studio 44

And for this second Olivetti, did they pick it because it matched the table and chair? Or did they paint their furniture to match their typewriter? Part of my hopes it's the latter.

Typing is not this puppy's strong point

A friend of mine came across this adorable and hilarious article in the archives of the local newspaper today, and I knew I had to share it with you all! From this angle I can't make out the typewriter, anyone have any ideas?

115 typewriters on the move

The move we've been planning for all year has finally arrived. The movers cleared out the house, minus typewriters and other essential items (okay, the typewriters aren't essential but I wouldn't entrust their care to a moving company!)

At W's suggestion, I decided to take advantage of the great empty space of the living room to do a group photo of all 115 of my typewriters. I spent several hours last night arranging them (with his welcome help in carrying them around) and posted an out-of-focus teaser to the Antique Typewriter Collectors group on facebook.

So here they are, all 114 portables and 1 lone standard, laid out for your eyes to feast.

I'll save any grand speeches for my beloved Tacoma for another time.
But, the next time you see me, I'll be in Sacramento.

Hi, it's been a long time

Sent from my Groma Modell N

Deep typewriter dreams

What in the world? What's happened to that beloved picture of Sholes liberating the women of the world that we all love so dearly?

DeepDream is one of those crazy and wonderful things that you had no idea would ever be created, but now that it has been, it seems like the most natural and essential thing. Google gets one more point on the love side of my love/hate opinion.

It's not my job to explain how or why. This SciShow video does a much better job at that. You should also look at this video which has been processed the same way.

Anyway, the reason why there's dogs appearing everywhere is because the DeepDream system was tested out expensively on recognizing dogs in images. So any time something in an image looks a bit like a dog to DeepDream, it draws us a dog there.

 
DeepDream isn't only useful for creating trippy dog-laden images, though. It can also be used to create some really lovely artistic effects better than any Photoshop filter ever could.

This classic Sholes image turned out to be very good fuel for DeepDream's interesting effects.

I created all of the images in this post using Dreamscope.  The output quality is unfortunately not that great, but this service creates them in a matter of seconds, rather than others which have queues that are over 24 hours long.

I also have tried it out on a couple typewriters of mine.

I have to say, the "trippy" effect has to be my favorite one. It's just so weird. And unpredictable, at first, until you start to recognize what cues tend to bring out the weird.

This is supposed to be a little child typing at an Erika 10.

This is created from what has to be my favorite ebay listing image for a typewriter ever.

Sometimes the artistic effects are really quite beautiful and turn out works of art.

And sometimes you just.... I don't know. I have no idea. But I love it.

Create your own.