by Mark Adams
on May 6, 2026
The caption appears as one column, but it is two. Here is a readable version of it –
“It all depends upon the quality of imagination just how real reality may be. For instance, there’s the reality of an office — with its wooden furniture, its metal filing cabinets and all the other things, including the girl at the very real typewriter — but my, how swiftly they vanish at the touch of memory! All, save she, become as thin as air, when HE appears, stills her fast-flying fingers and bids her look into his eyes.
Could anything be more real than he in THIS moment?”
— from The Washington Post (Washington, DC), May 2, 1921
© 2026, Mark Adams. All rights reserved.
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by Mark Adams
on April 29, 2026
People did imagine a dialect typewriter (see here), but this is utterly clever:
Grand Forks Herald (North Dakota), January 1, 1901 –
Note: AI-generated image.
© 2026, Mark Adams. All rights reserved.
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by Mark Adams
on April 22, 2026
I would hazard a guess that the price of a Remington Standard No. 1 (with table) would be $10,000 or more today. In 1886, it cost only $50. (Accounting for inflation, that number jumps to $1,700.)
Note: The machine pictured above is a Remington Standard No. 2 with an eight-drawer cabinet.
The Springfield Daily Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts), December 4, 1886 –
The full advertisement can be found here.
© 2026, Mark Adams. All rights reserved.
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by Mark Adams
on April 22, 2026
In the space of one column of newsprint, this 1875 article touches upon nearly all aspects of the narrative forming around the typewriter:
- Mark Twain wasn’t impressed, calling it a “little joker” (later on, he’d change his opinion), but enthusiasts saw endless potential
- It’s not a new invention, but the culmination of “successive improvements” to machine writing
- Sholes & Glidden designed the first practical machine
- E. Remington & Sons manufactured the machine, producing some 3,000 as of 1875. (The final numbers, I seem to recall, were around 5,000 total, though the contract with Remington allowed for upwards of 25,000 machines.)
- It was widely believed that the typewriter would supersede manuscript writing, i.e., handwriting.
- Finally, while the machines were expensive ($100 and more), the typewriter would save time and resources, amply justifying the cost.
Note: The image above is from a 1894 article, the caption reading “Writing his sermon” – see here.
The Tri-County Independent (Honesdale, Pennsylvania), October 23, 1875 –
© 2026, Mark Adams. All rights reserved.
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by Mark Adams
on April 15, 2026
Typewriter manufacturers regularly gifted machines to royalty, but, in this case, Spain’s King Alfonso purchased one for himself, even receiving a typing lesson from a local agent in Madrid. The king’s Underwood No. 5 was finished in white enamel, and it was the second such machine, the first going to the Czar of Russia. Because white paint dried slowly (taking days or weeks), it was more expensive than black paint, and was rarely applied. Such a machine were exceptional prior to the mid-1920s.
The Penman’s Art Journal (New York), August 1907 –
American Exporter (New York), September 1908 –
© 2026, Mark Adams. All rights reserved.
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