434 – Antique typewriter

Card no 434 –  Renate

 A cheeky grin from the typewriter museum

Country Card Sent From: Austria

Place that Card Sender Lives:  St Polten

Date Received: 7^th March 2013

Distance Travelled: 890 miles

Time Taken: c5 days

 

In January 2013 the Austrian Post issued a stamp featuring the design which won the contest "Wertzeichen Europa". The "Wertzeichen Europa" contest was organized in collaboration between the newspaper "Die Presse" and the Austrian Post in the form of a media series subtitled "20 reasons to love Europe". Twenty visual designers were invited to submit. The results were presented in "Die Press" and then evaluated by a group of experts. The winning design of the competition by Bruce Mau and Elvira Barriga entitled "Diversity in Unity” is represented by the stamp.

A 1960s study

Card no 339 - Martine

 

A close examination of this card shows that the 'current' reference work to the right of the clock is from 1960.  The Remington (not an Underwood this time) typewriter and French style lamp are earlier but the phone and (Polaroid?) camera are about right for that era. Nearly all the books on the shelf are by Carl Sanburg.

Carl Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He was the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and another for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat".

I thought I had been really clever and traced where the photograph was taken  - Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, located near Hendersonville in the village of Flat Rock, North Carolina.  That site preserves Connemara Farms where Sandburg and his family moved in 1945 for the peace and solitude required for his writing and the more than30 acres (120,000 m2) of pastureland required for his wife, Lilian, to raise her champion dairy goats. Sandburg spent the last twenty-two years of his life on this farm and published more than a third of his works while he resided here.

However, a search of that site led me to this photo which shows his study with its more modern typewriter presumably showing how he left it in 1967.  Still, even though I was wrong it was a fun search and, as always, I had learned things.

Write!

Card no 335 - Martine

I love this picture - and it's sentiment!  I once had a typewriter exactly like this and the story behind the Underwood can be found at this card's post.

The Underwood

 Postcard no 298 - (Reneee)

Sent by a postcrosser in the USA this card is just my cup of tea.  I had an upright typewriter like this when we lived in an old Victorian house and it had pride of place in the study.  (I can remember when my Mum got her first little portable typewriter, in a cream coloured case, to replace her old upright). The Underwood Typewriter Company was a manufacturer of typewriters headquartered in New York City, New York. Underwood produced what is considered the first widely successful, modern typewriter.  

The original Underwood typewriter was invented by German-American Franz Xaver Wagner, who showed it to entrepreneur John Thomas Underwood. Underwood supported Wagner and bought the company, recognising the importance of the machine. Underwood No. 1 and No. 2s, made between 1896 and 1900, had "Wagner Typewriter Co." printed on the back.

The Underwood No. 5 launched in 1900 has been described as "the first truly modern typewriter". Two million had been sold by the early 1920s, and its sales “were equal in quantity to all of the other firms in the typewriter industry combined”.  By 1939, Underwood had produced five million machines.

There were some super stamps on this card -

 This one is part of a series that I love -

The series was reviewed by Danielle in her blog.