The Collectors
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Episode 41, Friday 21 November 2008
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Collectors goes all QWERTYUIOP this week with a collection of over 600 vintage typewriters, including ones that belonged to Miles Franklin and actor Richard Harris. Canberra newspaper columnist Robert Messenger only started collecting seven years ago, but he is on the verge of forcing himself out of his own home, so much room do they take up.
The collection seems an ideal fit for a life – long journalist of some 40 years experience, and Robert says that Canberra is the perfect hunting ground for a typewriter collector due to its history of bureaucracy and academia.
If he had to evacuate the house and could only take one machine with him it’d be his 1893 Blickensderfer 5, which he reckons is the best typewriter ever made.
As a writer himself, he finds the machines inspiring. “No scrolling back or deleting or other computer trickery, when you’re on a typewriter you hammer away, it just drives you on, it forces creativity. Very satisfying.”
