I'm a burgeoning typewriter collector and hobby repairer who began to grow increasingly interested in antique machines and the history of where typing originated. My typewriter journey actually began, as fate would have it, on the other side of the timeline. My first typewriter was the mechanical marvel that is the IBM Selectric III, a birthday gift from my lovely wife. I instantly fell in love with the beauty of the machine and its interchangeable type ball (colloquially, golf ball) elements. It seemed to check all my boxes: it was mechanically interesting, it was innovative, and, perhaps most importantly, it was weird. The ability to change typefaces at will, the impressive engineering, the capacity to keep up with my typing speed while also not requiring me to learn a whole new typing style. I immediately began watching all of Phoenix Typewriter's videos on the Selectric to better understand it and figure out, as any Selectric owner can attest to, how on Earth to repair and maintain it.
That brought about the next season of my hobby. I really liked going out into the wild, finding a non-working Selectric for cheap, and bringing it back to life. My ambitions were never particularly lofty, but I had a good time and it provided both a challenge and something to do with my hands. Before too long, I decided to visit some local antique stores to see if I could find a manual typewriter to play with. I didn't want to purchase one yet, as I wanted the opportunity to try out any machines I could find first in order to identify what I liked. After all, I was only going to buy 1, maybe 2 machines, of course. That led me to a somewhat busted up Olympia SM3 that I must have cleaned decades of nicotine off of to bring back to its stunning, mid-century glory.
After that, the collection began to grow quickly. First, mostly other common, mid-century stalwarts like a tuxedo 4-series Smith-Corona Silent and another Olympia, this time an SM4 in much better condition than the SM3. Then an SM9 and even a grey, italic SM3 (my first "valuable" typewriter) before moving into standards with a Royal KMG. All while also trying to collect every model, color, and configuration of the Selectric series. One day in an antique store, just burning some time, I came across a Remington Portable #2. I had never owned a machine that old and, even though it had some issues, I was entranced by its condition considering its age. Thus began the most recent chapter of my journey.
Since the early days of my collection, I had developed a trifecta of interesting, historical machines that I wanted to eventually get my hands on one day. They were weird and unusual, but also still "attainable" as far as early typewriter models go. These were the Hammond, the Blickensderfer, and the Oliver. The Hammond and the Blickensderfer offered early implementations of the kinds of changeable type systems that IBM would later make famous and the Oliver... well, who could resist those bat wings and that olive green paint? In time, I was able to acquire at least one of each type and learn how to do simple repairs and cleaning to get them all back into typing shape. But I still didn't care about the history of these machines as much as just marveling at their designs and enjoying their elevation back to the working ranks.
That is until I purchased a Remington Standard No. 6 from 1897. I had never owned a typewriter from the 1800s (I also have a mini-goal of owning a typewriter from every decade, which is now complete minus the 1870's), so this was an exciting opportunity. It wasn't much later that I fell down the rabbit hole and really started to dig into the history of some of these older, more fascinating and innovative designs. I never was a fan of history class in school, but something about the tangible experience of working and typing on these machines ignited a passion. I was no longer content with just learning how a machine worked or attempting to get it as close to working as possible.
Which brings me to now. Perhaps not quite a budding historian, but maybe a storyteller? I currently own a number of early machines and I prize each of them for what they meant to the evolution of both machine and ideas.