We, my husband and I, have been collecting typewriters for a little over a year now (one of our prized machines is to your right) and have debated the pros and cons of starting our own blog. We both have an interest, not in typing on the beautiful machines, but in their mechanisms and their history . . . how many different styles exist, what makes each style work, where were they made, who used them? Although the typewriter collecting world is somewhat small (albeit growing by the year), there are already quite a few very good blogs out there, including the ever popular "The Typewriter Revolution" by Richard Polt (http://writingball.blogspot.com/), "Life in a Typewriter Shop" by the Cambridge Typewriter Co. (http://cambridgetypewriter.blogspot.com/), and "California Typewriter" (http://www.californiatypewriter.com/blog/), just to name a few. We didn't want to write yet another blog about the same, but how else could we share our new found love and research with the world?
This December, we found ourselves in our favorite shop, Antiguedades de Oficina (Office Antiques), in my husband's home city of Madrid, Spain, being invited out to a coffee shop by the owner, with whom we spent hours discussing typewriter restoration. He was a typewriter repairman in his younger years, and now he and his wife make their living from the sales and repairs from the store. His own collection is quite nice, and he seems quite pleased to show it off whether you purchase from him or not. One can tell, even without a full grasp of the Spanish language, that he is proud of his typewriters and happy to share them with anyone who has similar interests.
So, there we were, sipping good Spanish coffee in the shop down the street from his own, quite homey, and the blog inspiration bug hit me. This is the time. From what better inspiration could I draw than the pure love of the typewriter? Here, a shop owner who loves what he does is just happy that two people came from another country to pick up a typewriter on reserve. This is the business from the past where the shop keeper knows your name and his wife gives you a hug and two kisses when you walk in; an owner who still works his own floor and knows more than the typical vendor at an antique mall.
I decided I didn’t care if no one would read this; I would do it for myself. It will motivate me to finish my year of subscription to Newspapers.com with as many typewriter articles as I can get in the next 1.5 months, and to re-exercise my hand at writing about one of the more interesting topics I've come across. So, with this, I give you the Typewriter Gazette, a typewriter inspired and research motivated blog.