A mini-exhibition on early American typewriters currently on display at the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie in Cadwalader Park, Trenton, will run through November 8.

Located on the second floor of the museum, the exhibition was curated by Richard Willinger, Chair of the Museum Society’s Collections Management Committee, and a typewriter collector.

Because people stopped using typewriters many years ago when the personal computer came out, many young people have never used a typewriter. Older people remember typewriters as the standard four-bank machine with a typed sheet visible on the rubber platen in front of you.

In the early days of typewriter innovation, many manufacturers created many different styles of typewriters. With the first typewriters you couldn’t see what you were typing, and on others you had to push a lever to type the selected letter one at a time (called Index machines). They looked nothing like the typewriters that eventually became commonplace in the 20th century.

Today, everyone uses a keyboard on their cellphone, laptop, desktop, or other electronic device. This keyboard, called the QWERTY keyboard (reflecting the first six letters in the top row), first appeared on typewriters in the 1800s.

On display are six unusual looking early typewriters. The first commercially successful typewriter was the Remington No. 2, first sold in 1878. The type-bars hit the platen from below and you have to lift up the platen to see the writing. It is called a blind writer or upstrike machine. The Remington No. 2 included in the exhibit was produced in 1886.

The following typewriters are included in the display: Yost No. 1, produced between 1887 and 1890, an upstrike machine that contains a double-keyboard, one for upper-case and one for lower-case letters; Caligraph No. 4, an upstrike machine with a double-keyboard produced between 1894 and 1897; Hammond with a curved two-row keyboard and interchangeable type-shuttles (over 200 different fonts were produced); the machine on display is a Model 12 made between 1907 and 1908 and converted to a Multiplex between 1913 and 1916; the Columbia Bar-Lock No. 8 with a double-keyboard, produced between 1898 and 1900; and the Blickensderfer No. 5, an early portable that had an interchangeable type-wheel and could produce more than 100 fonts, made in 1902.

Index machines on display include an Odell No. 4, produced between 1894 and 1905, and an American Index No. 2, produced between 1893 and 1902, which don’t look anything like typewriters we are used to seeing. They worked by selecting a letter from an “Index” and pushing a lever to type the selected letter one at a time. It was a low-cost machine at the time.

Also on display are advertisements, a letterhead, envelope and brochure, and an advertising paperweight for several of the typewriters on display, as well as a number of metal ribbon tins that held the spools of ribbon used in later typewriters.

The Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie is located in Cadwalader Park, entrance on Parkside Avenue, in Trenton New Jersey. The museum is free and open to the public on Tuesday through Saturday from 11 to 3 p.m.; Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. Free parking in front of the museum. For more information, visit www.ellarslie.org.

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