Typewriter Porn at the Library of Congress…

There’s a discussion in the PTF about another copy of Clarence Leroy Jones’ ‘Typewriter Mechanical Training Manual’ having popped up, and how this copy differed from existing versions like the one at The Classic Typewriter Page. This caused me to go look up the linked versions and prodded me into pondering what other Typewriter-related ephemera the government may have put up online, which eventually led to me typing the word “typewriter” into the Library of Congress’ website. Jackpot!

A lot of the images are from WWII typewriter collection drives, where typewriters were collected for military use from the civilian market. Here, a Remington gets turned in for the war effort.

This battle-scarred veteran Underwood survived a bomb which obliterated everything else in the room.

Maureen O'Harra collected more than 70 typewriters from RKO Radio to donate for the war material drives.

some of the images are just hauntingly beautiful, like this amazingly-lit photo of a man repairing his machine.

Even Dr. Seuss got into the act, producing this flyer for the war department.

Anyway, the list goes on for 237 results, enough to keep ya clicking for hours on end. Give it a shot!

Updated: December 29, 2012 — 11:57 pm

9 Comments

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  1. Super! With progressing digitalization, state and national libraries become easily accessible and super rich archives for us.

  2. Wow, good stuff. Thanks for the tip.

  3. Thanks for the photos and the link. Perhaps the same will happen to you as with Robert Messenger. For every typewriter that goes out 2 seem to come to him.

    Happy New Year!

  4. Is there much value in old typewriter manuals such as the 1945 Clarence LeRoy Jones?

    Thanks

    1. Well, I’d value having a copy (:
      Do you have one?

  5. I do. Just dug it out the other day and there isn’t much information about it online.

    1. Well, I know a little bit about it – I’ve seen partial scans that are intriguing, and I’ve heard that the US Army’s 1947 typewriter repair manual is based off of the Rocky’s manual. Other than that, don’t know much either. I don’t think there’s a lot of copies floating around anymore.

      Would be handy to have that scanned somewhere that it could be useful for people again. (:

  6. I’d have no problems getting it scanned if somewhere needed it. I’d also be happy to sell if I knew of places. I’m in Australia and don’t know if there’s a market for it

    1. Hmmn, there are several collectors in Australia I can think of off the top of my head who might be local to you:
      http://filthyplaten.blogspot.com/
      http://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/
      http://writelephant.com/
      http://teeritz.blogspot.com/

      As far as worth, I couldn’t say as I don’t really collect ephemera. I do however collect information for preservation at the Typewriter Database:
      http://typewriterdatabase.com/
      and a scan of that book would be very nice to include in the documents we’ve collected there. I would be happy to host it if you were to scan it. (:

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