Above: Corona Model 3 Folding Typewriter, 1927 (History San José Collection)
Because of the breadth and size of History San José’s Collection, we are often approached by other local museums to borrow artifacts for their exhibits. The SFO Museum at the San Francisco International Airport is one example. HSJ’s artifacts have been used on multiple occasions to enhance exhibits throughout the airport complex.
The Typewriter: An Innovation in Writing opened this weekend in Terminal 2 and features several typewriters from HSJ’s collection. The exhibit focuses on typewriter technology through more than a century of design. Developed in the later part of the 19th century, the typewriter revolutionized communication through speed and ease of use, a vast improvement over the fountain or quill pen that required cumbersome refilling. Typewriters efficiently produced legible documents and were a mainstay of our landscape until replaced by word processing computers.
Several of the typewriters on exhibit were donated to HSJ by Barry Swenson in 2003. The antique office equipment collection had been acquired from Richard and Betty Dean, who owned Hunter’s Office Equipment Company in downtown San Jose at 71 East San Fernando Street since the late 1960s. Dick Dean spent a quarter of a century building his collection, which included over 150 typewriters. A rare 1885 Sun typewriter is among the typewriters selected for the exhibit.
This new exhibit in SFO’s Terminal 2 runs thru January 2018.
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