MARTIN  Many people love old mechanical things and I am no exception. It was my parents, in collecting all sorts of unusual antique mechanical tools, that really showed me the beauty and intrigue of old machinery and gave me the desire to form my own collection twenty-five years ago. So I set out to find my collectible. It would be 19th century and mechanical, not too large, have a good design range and not be collected by too many others. What I discovered was the world’s first typewriters and my hunt was over.

The collection contains many rare and historically important typewriters from the 1880s and 1890s that demonstrate the astonishing inventiveness of the early typewriter pioneers and the remarkable diversity in the beginning designs of this machine that would revolutionize writing and printing for the next one hundred years.

In this age of blinking lights and personal communication devices, we have a strong collective experience towards typing and nostalgia for the typewriter. The QWERTY keyboard, which first appeared in 1874, is remarkably one of the most important communication tools today. The legacy of the typewriter will live on for a long time.