Typewriters

Today I visited an exhibition at the Canberra Museum and Gallery. Quite where the museum part is I'm not sure, one sort of expects some history of Canberra, but apart from an office manned part-time by the local historical society it doesn't really seem to have much of a regional history purpose. 

The exhibition spaces host an ever-changing and extremely varied range of displays, and as soon as I heard 'typewriters' I was interested. There was an amazing array of typewriters in the display case (part of a collection owned by local journalist Robert Messenger) and there were also a few on tables at the back of the room for people to try. It was interesting to watch a couple of young children enthusiastically typing away, occasionally struggling with the carriage return. Imagine such a thing, a mechanism you have to remember to activate to move to the next line!

So here are a few photos of the typewriters. Many seemed familiar, only varying in style and colour from the ones I have used, but some had intriguingly different mechanisms.