That’s QWERTY collection Analogue aficionado keen to collate her cache of vintage manual typewriters By: David Sanderson Posted: 11:35 AM CST Friday, Jan. 3, 2025 Last Modified: 12:04 PM CST Friday, Jan. 3, 2025 Updates

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This article was published 03/01/2025 (273 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

First things first, Corah Enns would like to give a shout-out to Mrs. Povey, her former typewriting instructor at Springfield Collegiate Institute, in Oakbank.

Enns, a music teacher at École Dugald School whose hobby is collecting vintage manual typewriters, credits Povey for helping to foster her fascination with the utilitarian devices, which have been around in one form or another since the 1860s.

“Looking back, (typing) was such a valuable skill to acquire, especially for a person like me, who grew up in the country and didn’t have access to a computer or the internet,” says Enns, 40, who believes her Grade 9 class was one of the last in the province required to take typing as a mandatory course.

“Not only did I end up typing out all my high school essays on my grandmother’s clunky old IBM, it wasn’t until my third year at Brandon University that I joined the modern era by getting my first laptop, a Compaq that still functions.”

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California Typewriter is a 2016 documentary film that explores the world of typewriters through the eyes and fingertips of dedicated collectors such as actor Tom Hanks, musician John Mayer and late playwright Sam Shepard.

Enns watched the critically acclaimed feature seven years ago on Netflix. Before the final credits were through, she was already telling herself this was a pastime she could definitely get behind, too.

“I’ve always been more of an analogue person at heart — at the time I was actively collecting fountain pens — so pretty soon I was hunting for old typewriters, whenever I was out and about,” says Enns, an accomplished artist specializing in linocut prints and ink drawings who is especially drawn to the sleek designs and bold colours of typewriters from the mid-20th century.

The Transcona resident was combing through the aisles of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) thrift store on Chalmers Avenue in the spring of 2018 when she spotted what she guessed to be a typewriter carrying case.

She asked an employee if she could investigate further, and was overjoyed to discover that her intuition was correct. Resting inside the unit was an olive-green Eaton’s Viking typewriter, a variety expressly produced for the iconic Canadian retail chain over 60 years ago by industry leader Smith-Corona.

In addition to the asking price — a more-than-reasonable $40 — what impressed Enns most about her find was that it appeared to have scarcely been touched. The letter and number keys weren’t faded in the least, as if its original owner had socked it away in a closet or bureau for decades, for safekeeping.

“The ribbon, the spools… everything was perfectly intact,” Enns reports, plunking the machine-in-question down on a table for show-and-tell purposes.

“The second I got it home I pulled out my old typing manual, to go through the various exercises to see if I remembered what I was doing.”

It was a different story with her next acquisition, a bluish model billed as a Brother Charger she scooped up at the same second-hand outlet for a measly $5. That one was “a bit of a mess,” she admits, but thanks to tips she picked up online, she was able to bring it back from the dead.

“I’m a band teacher, right, so I’m used to examining instruments to figure out how things move mechanically, and what needs to be done if something isn’t functioning properly. It wasn’t overly difficult to transfer that skill over to typewriters.”

By the time Enns nabbed a fifth specimen — a lightweight, Swiss-built Hermes 3000 she calls the “Rolls-Royce of typewriters,” the very sort favoured by authors Sylvia Plath and Jack Kerouac — she had instituted a self-imposed rule. Because typewriters take up more space than, say, stamps or coins, her plan was to cap the number she kept in her house, by adopting a strict, one-in, one-out policy.

She went so far as to sell a beloved Remington to a 17-year-old budding poet before she reminded herself she did have a sizable classroom at her disposal, where she could display a typewriter or three for students to peruse, if they were even mildly interested.

It ended up going much further than that.

Pre-COVID, Enns regularly booked her grades 6, 7 and 8 concert bands to perform at community events in and around Dugald.

Those appearances came to a screeching halt during the pandemic, only Enns still wanted her students to fulfil their role as musicians by engaging with the public. But how?

“We came up with a project where they became pen pals with seniors living at a Dugald retirement home,” Enns explains, noting the catch was that at least a portion of their letters had to be written on one of the typewriters she’d brought to school.

“At first they were bewildered, but after quickly realizing the keyboard is the same as what they see on their phone, most of them couldn’t get enough of typing.”

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Tony Casillo is the author of Typewriters: Iconic Machines from the Golden Age of Mechanical Writing. What makes the ultra-informative, 208-page tome particularly noteworthy is that every last typewriter shown in the book is from Casillo’s personal collection.

“I have a dedicated room in our finished basement where it’s hundreds of typewriters, floor to ceiling, along every wall,” says Casillo, when reached at home in Garden City, N.Y., about 40 kilometres east of Manhattan.

“People ask all the time and the answer is yes, I have a very understanding wife.”

Casillo, 69, has been a typewriter-repair person in New York City for close to 50 years. In the late 1970s he wandered into a space in the rear of the shop he was employed at, a “junk room” that was loaded to the hilt with abandoned, decades-old typewriters.

Previously, he had never given outdated typewriters much thought — his job focus was modern-day, electric typewriters — but he was intrigued by a “monster-looking” Oliver typewriter that barely resembled the machines he worked on, day-in and day-out.

After being told by his superiors it was his to take, he proceeded to study it further, with the assistance of books specific to the subject.

He ultimately discovered it hailed from the early 1900s, but while doing so, he came across umpteen images of typewriters from the same era, all of which were unique in appearance.

Within weeks, he was driving as far as Pennsylvania to scoop up treasures such as a 19th-century Blickensderfer, originally unveiled at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, that he saw advertised in newspapers and trade magazines.

“In those days you couldn’t email or text,” he says. “Lots of times I’d write a letter asking ‘how much?’ then wait a week or two till I got a reply.”

One of the rarest typewriters in Casillo’s possession was marketed in the late 1880s by the Horton Typewriter Company, Canada’s first typewriter manufacturer.

Designed by Torontonian Edward Horton, the “Horton” caused quite a stir, as it was one of the initial so-called visible typewriters, meaning a person could see precisely what they were typing, as they were striking the keys. (In the earliest models, paper ran through the underside of the machines.)

“Only four (Hortons) are known to exist; even the Smithsonian doesn’t have one,” he says, with a hint of pride.

Casillo, whose typewriters have appeared in various movies and Broadway productions, says colleagues of his each have “their own method to their madness,” when it comes to keeping machines that can easily command tens of thousands of dollars when they come up for auction.

“I collect early American typewriters, with very few exceptions” Casillo says. “There are European machines, of course, but America was where the market was established.

“Also, the last quarter of the 19th century into the early part of the 20th century is where the most clever, ingenious designs come from, and that’s what I go for, primarily.”

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Back in Transcona, Enns says she hopes to meet other local typing enthusiasts by organizing what she refers to as coffee-shop “type-ins” in the coming months, for anybody interested in talking parts, repairs and whatnot.

Additionally, she is forming an art group at her school for students keen on using typewriters as a medium for creating illustrations and portraits, by patiently tapping the keys, and overlaying letters and symbols.

“There’s an English artist I’m inspired by who is doing absolutely amazing things,” she says, referring to James Cook, a 28-year-old whose meticulous image of Paris’s Arc de Triomphe rendered on a 1920s Underwood has garnered over two million “likes” on Instagram.

“I guess what I enjoy most about typewriters is that they teach you to slow down and use your skills. You can’t instantly correct your mistakes with the help of a backspace key,” she continues, adding as a band teacher, there is one other characteristic of typewriters that calls out to her.

“Have you ever heard the typewriter concerto (The Typewriter, by Leroy Anderson), with the tapping of the keys and the ding of the carriage return coming in time with the music? Now that would be fun to stage at school, one day.”