Typewriters at Benton County Museum

The current exhibition at Benton County Museum is a traveling show from the Smithsonian called “Things Come Apart.”  One of the objects which has been disassembled is a 1964 manual typewriter. As the label for this item notes, the typewriter was invented by Christopher Sholes in the 1860s. The Benton County Historical Museum has over 50 typewriters in its collection, ranging in age from the 1880s to the 1970s. 

Artifacts in the Benton County Historical Society storage vault

 

One aspect of the typewriters I found interesting is the various ways manufacturers arranged the type-bars.  The early typewriters were called up-strike machines because the type-bar swung up and hit the paper on the underside of the roller (platen). The typist could not see the result without lifting up the top portion.  I imagine there were lots of typos in the early days! 

The Calligraph 2 typewriter pictured here is an example of an up-strike machine, with separate keys for lower case and upper case letters.  It was the first typewriter purchased for use on the campus of what is now the Oregon State University and was used by then president John Bloss, who did his own typing.  

University President John Bloss' typewriter

The Oliver Standard Visible Writer #3 used a different arrangement of the type bars which permitted the typist to see the results directly.  The type-bars, which have an inverted U shape, swing down to hit the paper on top of the platen. It has two shift keys—one for upper case letters and one for figures. Because this motion exerted more force, the machines were especially useful for making stencils. The arrangement of the type-bars into two towers led some to call it the “iron butterfly.”  Various models with this design were produced from 1894-1928; this model dates from 1902-1906. 

Oliver Standard Visible Writer

In the next post, I’ll tell you about some other odd typewriters in the collection.

By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon

Poison dart quiver :: Around The World From 80 Countries

One of my favorite objects in the Around the World exhibition was the pair of earrings made of beetle wings.  The Shuar men who wore the earrings live in the tropical rain forests of eastern Ecuador and northern Peru, near the headwaters of the Marañón River. The Shuar people supplement the food from their gardens with meat from birds, iguana, monkeys and peccaries.  When they go hunting, they fill a bamboo quiver with darts or arrows made from the sharpened central rib of a palm leaf.   

They tip the darts with poison made using curare from plants, possibly supplemented with poisons from snakes or frogs, boiled until it is a thick paste.  Attached to the quiver is a gourd which would be filled with cotton from the kapok tree.  When the Shuar hunter spots prey, he wraps the kapok around the end of the dart and inserts it into his blowgun.  The kapok ensures an airtight fit. The hunter blows through the end, sending the dart flying.  When the animal is hit, the curare causes its muscles to relax and it falls to the ground and dies.  The curare is absorbed slowly so the flesh of the animal killed this way may be safely eaten.

Using blowguns as long as 7 feet and foot-long darts, a Shuar hunter could hit birds over 130 feet away.  Today, however, most of these hunters use shotguns. 

By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon