International Typewriter Day

I recently learned that there is an International Typewriter Day. No joke! It is celebrated (by a select few people around the world) on June 23 of each year, commemorating the anniversary of the granting of the first "practical" typewriter patent to Christopher Latham Sholes in 1868. That makes this patent (and the typewriter) 144 years old. Further, the problems with key jams encountered with this first patented typewriter led Sholes to design the QWERTY keyboard. A good piece of trivia for you.


Page from a later typewriter patent granted to Sholes, available online courtesy of Google.

"A machine by which it is assumed that a man may print his thoughts twice as fast as he can write them..." (from Scientific American, July 1867)

Do any of you reading this out there have a typewriter of your own? I love my fifties-era Remington Rand. What make do you have? They are all so beautiful in their own ways, every incarnation of C. L. Sholes' "Type Writing Machine." If you are lucky enough to own a typewriter, why not buy a fun (and quite useful) typewriter cozy from Thread Lock Press to celebrate this year? Accessorize your typewriter! I can also make custom-sized cozies for any typewriter. Just send me a message at threadlockpress@gmail.com and I'll get to work on it for you!

Comments

  1. Sofia O.June 19, 2012 at 9:12 AM

    Whoa! I'm excited. My grandmother passed along her typewriter from college a while back. A typewriter cozy is definitely a good idea. How are you going to celebrate?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lindsay L.June 19, 2012 at 1:13 PM

    Good question! I'm thinking I'll do a bit of typing... Haven't really planned out anything special though. Any fun ideas?

    (We could type together!)

    ReplyDelete
  3. L CaseyJuly 1, 2012 at 6:30 PM

    A belated happy Typewriter Day to you. Those cozies are very cute, especially with the buttons on them. I don't want to favor any one of my typers over another, but I will definitely keep these in mind when I need one for the machine I keep on my desk. Really neat, and awesome that they are handmade. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lindsay L.July 1, 2012 at 10:11 PM

    Ken: Thank you so much! I began making these cozies because I wanted a fun one for my own Remington (named Hildegard) and I couldn't find anything out there other than the usual plastic ones, which are not very aesthetically pleasing. Again, thanks for the positive feedback. Hope you had a great Typewriter Day!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

There are birds here

Image
We are now in the full porch-swing of summer, which means Summer Poetry Salons at my beloved Lit House. In celebration of the second salon of the summer on June 24 (tomorrow!), I was given the unbelievably fun task of designing and printing a letterpress broadside for Jamaal May's poem "There Are Birds Here,"  a love song for Detroit. As much I loved this poem on my first reading (and second and third), it was a particularly difficult design challenge. Don't get me wrong — there are so many ways  to illustrate this poem because it is so packed with images. But to illustrate it in a way that actually adds to the text, that builds on the complex foundation set down by the poet — that is the challenge to be met. That is the challenge we always aim to meet at the Literary House Press .   So that means no birds and no buildings. For me, those are the two most obvious, but least important images in this poem. Those details are just the shell around the ...
Read more

"Imago" on Hannibal season finale

Image
While watching the eagerly-awaited season 2 finale of Hannibal (one of my absolute favorite TV shows of the moment), I was happily surprised when a vocabulary lesson emerged mid-conversation between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. — "Do you know what an imago is, Will?" — "It's a flying insect." — "It's the last stage of a transformation." — "When you become who you will be?" — "It's also a term from the dead religion of psychoanalysis. An imago is an image of a loved one, buried in the unconscious, carried with us all our lives." — "An ideal." — "The concept of an ideal." Of course this term, in both of its definitions, has some great significance for me. It is a word I didn't even know until I stumbled across it in my dictionary browsing and knew immediately that this is the title of my chapbook . It was perfect. So when it snuck up on me again in my favorite TV show, in...
Read more

On the end of a year & a decade: 2019

Image
In this last month of the year, I've had five poems accepted by three different literary journals and two new reviews of my book appear in The Cincinnati Review  and Harbor Review . I also completed the letterpress printing of the Rossetti Prize broadside for American Literary Review , designs for four more digital broadsides , and the initial edits & contributor proofs for Cherry Tree 's sixth issue. Whew! It's been an amazing and overwhelming and utterly fulfilling year ; and I'm riding into the new year on 2019's coattails.  Also featuring the gorgeous handmade scarf that Jehanne Dubrow wove for me this past year. One of my favorite December inventories will always be reflecting on a year's worth of personal accomplishments and progress. By the time the end of the year arrives, it's so easy to forget all that happened just a few short months ago. Making a list has a way of bringing it all into perspective. Here's my roundup for the yea...
Read more