Brother Deluxe 900 manual typewriter
I gave some thought to the object to include as the significant artefact milestone of number “50”.
I heard about Tom Hanks having started in the 1970s a collection of typewriters – and that was it. Tom Hanks has over 100 vintage typewriters and is about to publish a volume of short stories which all refer, in some way, to typewriters (article ref).
My own manual typewriter harks back to the 1970s and the photo shows me using it, somewhat pretentiously, in the garden at Crewe. I also have a quantity of what was written on it at that time. It is, of course, the source of the novel or two that has never been completed.
My Dad used the typewriter for a while but it hasn’t been used for twenty years. I opened it up and it worked straightaway, even the ribbon was good: no dead batteries, no hard-disk cranking-up, no waiting while a new version of Adobe updated. It just worked!
One of the reasons it has survived so well through travelling is the hard plastic case. It will not get thrown out yet as it might be useful when the dust settles after armageddon.
Epson Stylus Photo 810 Printer – artefact 49
I bought this inkjet printer in 2010 at the same time as the Dell computer I am
using right now. (Dell had sent another printer by mistake and didn’t want it back when they finally sent the one I had ordered.) This Epson printer was most disappointing for photographs and has been hardly used. It is destined for the charity shop. I have continued to use a rather fine HP laser printer I acquired in 2005 which also has a one-button copying function – and I have a Samsung colour laser printer. You know the thing with printers: cheap to buy but expensive to run. Can you imagine buying a car and then finding it costs as much to re-fuel it? These other printers may feature as future artefacts but for now it is set up rather nicely for the old technology of artefact 50.
Read further information about my Artefact project.
The first 50 artefacts are compiled into this 35-page booklet Artefact (3.2mb pdf)