In the early days of the typewriter, machines were mostly sold through agents. Only gradually were machines available in department stores. So, typewriter agents could be particularly aggressive, reaching out to potential customers… again… and again… and again… The Clay Center Dispatch (Clay Center, Kansas), June 4, 1903 – © 2024, Mark Adams. All rights […]

When I was a teenager, I purchased a $20 stereo for my car. This was the late 1980s and twenty bucks was a real bargain. The packaging displayed obvious features: volume control, fast forward, channel selection, tape player — which were the only features! Twenty bucks, after all. When the typewriter was introduced in the […]

Describing the newly introduced “Type Writer” in 1877, one author writes, “Alas for poor clerks and legal scriveners! With Babbage’s calculating machine perfected, and the ‘type-writer’ complete and in working order, there is only one more invention to smash this shivering universe into ‘smithereens.’ Who will win the laurel by inventing a ‘thinking machine’? — […]